Arrival!

I'm here in Taiwan! The flight was long, but 'night time' the whole way, so I got a lot of sleep and arrived in Taipei at 6 am, wide awake. I followed the directions to look for someone holding a sign with my name on it once I went through customs and met up with 3 other girls -- Rachel, from Tennessee; Kenzie, from Minnesota; and Katelin, from Ontario -- and our taxi driver Simon. He spoke a bit of English and told us that we would all take one cab to the hotel. Other than that, all he had was a half-sheet of information about who our representative for the school was (Rita), the branch name that we are going to be teaching at, and notice that we would be going to the hospital on Monday for our government health check. We all felt that we were pretty trusting, just going with whatever Simon said! (Simon says get in the van and follow me!) When the van arrived, we all piled in with our luggage and headed off. Just about 5 minutes later, we pulled into a shady parking garage and the driver started to unload our luggage while we had no idea what was going on...apparently we were transferring into 2 separate cabs to go all the way into the city. Our next stop was the hotel (actually a hostel) where the other 3 girls would be staying. All Simon said was, "go to the 22nd floor to check in"...and then he and I were off! Then I was driven to the apartment and delivered, with instructions to call Rita on Monday morning.

When I got to the apartment, I was greeted by Atty, Marissa, and Sharon, the 3 maids who run the apartment. They had prepared a breakfast, some kind of bun/pastry with a sausage in the middle, as well as some fruit. Sharon and Eddie (the driver) then accompanied me out to show me how to buy an MRT Easy Card and load money onto it. From there, they showed me how to cross the streets (usually it is 'safe' when the little green running man shows up, but you still have to dodge the zillions of scooters, that apparently have no rules to follow! Then there's the intersections that constantly have a red blinking hand, where it's just up to you to find a suitable time to cross without being runover...) When we got back around 11:30, I thought I would take a quick nap even though I had been feeling pretty good so far. When I woke up, it was past 8:30pm! I hadn't meant to sleep the entire day away, but I got up for some dinner. This consisted of about 8 different small dishes, all for me! There was duck, mushroom soup, broccoli, red cabbage, a whole fish, fruit salad, some sort of green vegetables, and more fruit for dessert...all quite tasty. Since I couldn't go back to bed just yet, I watched some Taiwanese TV with Marissa and Atty, which consisted of various talk shows where everyone laughed a lot, and some news channels where I learned that a small typhoon was headed our way! I could understand very little of what was going on, but it was so fun to watch! After all this, I went back to bed, since I was going to meet up with Kenzie and Katelin in the morning to tour the city.

I took the MRT (which is very convenient and clean, although there is a shocking lack of trashcans anywhere -- either they are hidden or trash just magically disappears, I don't know!) from the apartment to Taipei Main Station and met Katelin.

From there, we walked around, got some bubble tea (since I had no idea what the choices were, I picked option #3 just because there were 2 Qs in the name...) then looked around for a cell phone. Here it is very easy to get a cell phone...although it is all done in steps at different stores. First you go to an electronics store and choose a phone -- the cheapest ones are only about US$45! Then you go to one of the phone company's stores to buy a SIM card and a phone number. The last step is to go to any 7-11 (which is hard NOT to do, with one about every third store!) and buy a prepaid phone card. The only trick in a few of the places was finding a way to communicate when neither of us had a common language...but a bit of gesturing and writing prices down seemed to do the trick.

Next we met up with Kenzie and the three of us headed off to see the Taipei 101 -- the world's tallest building. Once we arrived at the outside of the building, we had to find our way through 4 floors of shops and eateries. We took the world's fastest elevator to the top -- 84 floors in 37 seconds! It was amazing how we could barely tell we were moving, except that our ears kept popping! The view from the top observatory deck was great, but for being on the highest building, none of us felt like it was that far up there! Next we stopped at a market we had seen from the Taipei 101 for some lunch. We got some sort of fried fish balls (or maybe squid, octopus?) and pork dumplings. Everything is so cheap here, the whole meal only cost each of us about US$2! Once we were done, we walked to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. There are two guards who stand watch for one hour at a time inside, and they don't move at all! It was impressive to see. Then we watched the ceremony of the changing of the guards, which involved lots of gun twirling, boot stomping, and precision! After being inside where the mood was very quiet, we were all surprised to see several young hip-hop dance groups practising just outside the entrance doors!

After this we headed back to the hostel to sit down for a bit and then headed out to the most famous night market of Taiwan -- Shilin Night Market. It is just North of downtown by MRT. We thought we knew where we were going, but we ended up walking in a circle and then some, so we took a cab. Since most taxi drivers don't speak English, having our Lonely Planet guide book with the place names all written in Mandarin proved to be very useful so we could just point and the driver understood! When we got there, it was insane how many people are packed into such a long, narrow alley! There is everything for sale here...dinners, drinks, fruit, pet birds, shoes, jewellery, household items, and of course numerous t-shirts with strange English sayings...my favourite was "Giraffe goes the Moose!" We ended up getting some food from a stand by pointing at the pictures. I ordered a shellfish dish, when it came it looked great but smelled just awful! I mustered my way through about half of it, but this overpowering smell/taste was just a bit too much to even think about finishing the whole thing!


This was all just my first day here, and there is so much more that I saw and experienced, it's hard to write it all here! But the main things that so far all three of us have noticed: Taipei is extremely hot and humid (about 95F/32C with 85% humidity!), everyone is very helpful and friendly, and none of us feels any culture shock yet! I think the last part may change, because right now it just feels like we are on a vacation, but once we start to do more everyday things like finding an apartment and buying groceries and teaching, perhaps it will seem like more of a difference. This is not to say that things seem the same (because almost everything is somehow different and new, or funny because of the little illustrations that accompany any sign or because the English translation is just slightly off) but I don't feel really out of place. I think that this is because I have been with 2 other English speaking girls, and everyone else is just really friendly!

It's getting late here and I should try to adjust to the time change, so time for bed! Tomorrow is more sightseeing...