Normal is Relative, anyway.

Saturday, October 6, 2007 – I don’t know what Day it is anymore – time to stop counting.

So much for my commitment of writing every day. Things have drastically improved in Kaohsiung – it’s amazing how much of a difference a solid group of friends and a new apartment can make in one’s life. We now live with a Costa Rican named Keylor in a brand new apartment at the corner of MeiShu 2nd E. Road and MeiShu 3rd Street. Or something. It is spacious and clean, with a gorgeous view of the Love River, the downtown city core, and Monkey Mountain. We only pay $140 CAD a month. Golden. Rachel has a scooter – I am still looking. I have started teaching; thankfully I am not as awkward at it as I am at most other things in life (pool, bowling, scooter-riding, etc.) I don’t want to go home when I wake up in the morning.

It’s strange how quickly one accepts certain normalcies (my Macbook is telling me that this isn’t a word…let’s roll with it anyway) Going to bed at 3 am and getting up at 1…normal. Chocolate and strawberry flavored cheese, eggs soaked in tea, smoking in bars, riding a scooter to work, saying “Neehao!” to my doorman (I have a doorman!) every night, sending absurd amounts of text messages because it’s cheaper than calling, all normal. Typhoons: normal. I was terrified that I wouldn’t ever adapt to life here, but in so many ways it’s really just like home, but the people are Asian and the writing on all the signs is all in Chinese. I saw a woman on the MRT in Taipei who reminded me of Auntee Judy. We have Subway, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Ikea, and Costco. Everything here is very modern and efficient; I am amazed every day at how many things make so much more sense here than at home, except for the movie theaters – we went to see Evan Almighty the other night and had to wait in line for almost ten minutes to buy tickets, and there was only one person in front of us. The ticket counter was the same as the concession stand which was on a different floor than the theater itself, and we had assigned seats in a nearly empty viewing room – I guess not too many Taiwanese people feel the need to see Steve Carrell as Noah in a language that they don’t speak.

Last night we found out that today Taiwan was going to be hit with a “Super Typhoon”, so all of our classes were canceled. We went out and spent the money we would have made getting stupendously drunk (that’s a lie…it was $9 for an all you can drink entrance ticket, and we lost precisely $120 today by not working…eesh. Time for me to start getting paid…) so today has been a cozy, rainy day. I don’t think Rachel has emerged from her room yet, and I have been relaxing, writing, reading, and enjoying being inside while the wind rages outside. It’s raining horizontally, if that’s even possible. My Douglas Coupland novel has provoked me to start reveling about my life – the protagonist in the book that I’m reading is in his thirties and is what I guess you would call your typical screw-up with a lack of direction. It occurred to me that I don’t have much direction either, and while I’m thoroughly enjoying getting there, could it be possible that I will end up as one of those archetypal twenty-somethings who moves back in with their parents because they don’t know what else to do with themselves and have blown all of the money that their friends seem to have for houses and cars on things such as drugs, (not me) booze, (ok, me) and oh, I don’t know, travels throughout Central America, Asia and the Pacific?? I have no idea what I want to do with myself, but I do take pride in the fact that for the most part I live in the here and the now and don’t think too much farther ahead of what I want to do for dinner, speaking of which...I'm pretty sure I can hear a large plate of fried rice and koh shing tsai (tasty green veggies to you) calling my name...

September 26, 2007

I suppose it’s a good thing that I haven’t written anything in three days, even though I plan to practice writing every day while I’m here. It means I have had other things to do. We have been apartment hunting and trying to get ourselves in order. We still need phones, and scooters, but are close-ish to apartmental success. We may move into Tye and Antoinette’s apartment in the north – it seems like our best bet at the moment. I need to feel comfortable here, and the other places we have seen don’t work for me, and if they do, don’t work for Rachel. They have to work for both of us. I will feel so much happier once we are more settled, even if it means I have to walk 45 minutes to work because I can’t make a scooter go straight.

Yesterday was Moon Festival, a celebration of the Autumn equinox (I think) so we had the day off, and Rach, Brieanna, Jon and I took off for the day to Little Liouchiou Island. We caught a
bus to Donggang and then a ferry to the island, on which we were given the VIP treatment and allowed to sit in the captain’s quarters, even if this meant nearly losing our McDonald’s breakfasts all over the floor.When we got to the island we were immediately overwhelmed by tiny little Chinese women trying to get us to rent scooters from them, to which we eventually ceded because one of them chased us down so persistently that we managed to haggle her down to 350 NT for two scooters for the day, which is
a pretty solid deal.

The island is tiny, and we were able to get around it on the scooters in
about 30 minutes. It was beautiful, the pollution and noise and crowds of the city left behind, I felt like I was in South East Asia at last. We weren’t too far though – you can still see the 85 building and Monkey Mountain in Kaohsiung from the north coast of the island, and there was still KTV; I guess there is KTV everywhere. Jon gave us scooter lessons, at which Rachel excelled, and I failed miserably. I’m a little worried I’m not going to get the hang of it and will be doomed to a year of walking and cabbing and inconvenience, but I’m going to try a 50 instead of a 125 and hopefully things will go better. If not, I’m already prepared to write the email entitled “death by scooter” – it should be a good one.







I haven’t been sleeping well, but after 2 nights of non-sleep and a full day of activity, I was ready for it. Ben came by to watch a movie and left after thanking us for propping him up during it, because we both passed out hard and my body was finally afforded the good night’s rest it deserves.

September 23, 2007 (That's September 22 to you!)

Things are better now that we are in Kaohsiung. I’m still not entirely sure that this is where I want to be, but I am much more inclined to give it a chance here – one more day in Taipei and I surely would have been fighting my way to the front of the ticket line to get a flight home. We took the bus here on Friday and found our way to Kojen school 1, which is where I’ll be working – Rachel will be at school 2, which is not too far away. We were met by Michelle, who is my academic director, and taken to our second temporary apartment right next door to the school. We were thrilled to find that Ben was staying there as well and the three of us went to dinner where I feasted on my first vegetable of the week – asparagus salad, which consisted of asparagus covered in what tasted like sweet cream cheese icing, with a cherry on top, literally. After dinner Rachel went to sleep and Ben took me to the Chiang Kai-Shek cultural center where we watched groups of people breakdancing outside and what looked like some sort of aerobics step class accompanied by La Cucaracha. We walked home via Wufu road and for the first time since I’ve been here I was happy.

I woke up in the morning wanting to go home again, but this time knowing that the feeling would probably fade by the end of the day. Michelle took me to the hospital to get my vaccine and told me her life story while we were waiting, and the doctor was nice and chatty – wanted to hear about Costa Rica and about what I thought of Taiwan so far. He really didn’t think I needed the vaccine; shocker, no one does. I’m so glad to have that one less thing to worry about now – I’m not too worried about tsunamis anymore, now all I need to get over is the threat of being bombed by China, and I’ll be ok. Kaohsiung is the nationalist city of Taiwan and Ben seems to think that there must be many missiles pointed at us. Rose, a Taiwanese woman who used to work for Kojen and who is known throughout the city as being the best thing to have ever happened to foreigners (because she really is) says that maybe after the 2008 Olympics we can worry, but certainly not until then. After the hospital I ate lunch at the school and then took an afternoon nap before observing classes. I am observing Brieanna, an American teacher who is here with her husband Jon. I am taking over most of her classes and Rachel is taking over most of Jon’s because they are leaving Kojen for another school. Right now they live right below us in the Kojen apartments and they’ve taken us under their wing; we seem normal, they say, so it’s their pleasure. The class was a little overwhelming; the kids were raucous. I’m glad that I’m not being thrown into the lion’s den right away, I’ll be observing for at least another week.

Afterwards, Brieanna and Jon invited us out to dinner with them, so we went to this Japanese all you can eat restaurant with Rose and her blind father and the rest of their family. While there wasn’t much I could eat, it was an interesting experience nonetheless. I watched others eat jellyfish and learned how to say “My mother is mad at the horse” in Chinese – “Ma ma ma ma”. We then went to Green Bay, a bar down by the love river (Rose’s blind father and children came to this, as well) for some good times, and I got my happy birthday at last.

Birthday

Day 6

I cried until I passed out, and then I tried as hard as I could to not get up as long as possible. I was just dreading this birthday. So I finally got up, received my gift of two Kit Kat bars from Rachel, and got ready to go observe our first class, which was the way in which Kojen had decided I was to spend the night of my birthday. Why we couldn’t have observed a class in Kaohsiung, or even at the Kojen branch that was two blocks from our temporary apartment, is beyond me. Nothing at Kojen has made sense to me so far. Instead, we hoofed out to a part of the city that we weren’t familiar with, with patchy directions, to look for a street that was spelled incorrectly on the directions, and then spent four hours watching other people teach. We were going to check out the Shilin night markets afterwards, but tired and frustrated decided to head back to the apartment instead, where Rachel promptly fell asleep, and I spent the end of the worst birthday ever on the couch by myself.

Day 5

We had our first experience with the Taiwanese medical infrastructure today and our first introduction to Kojen. We headed to the head office for 10:30, and were escorted to the hospital by Alison, one of Kojen’s Taiwanese staff members. From the outside, the hospital was one of the nicest buildings we’ve seen so far. The inside felt more like a people processing machine than a place where people are treated. The whole ordeal took less than an hour – in, pictures, rapid health check, blood test, x-ray, out. We experienced what Brett refers to as “positive racism”; after the nurse checked our vision (a test I failed miserably) and our height, weight, and blood pressure, we saw the doctor, who checked our hearing with some machine that made a buzzing sound, and were told we could leave. I actually watched this doctor check off normal in the boxes next to spleen, liver, stomach, etc, without having laid a hand on me. Apparently, this is because I am white and thus healthy. This bothers me both because of my paranoia about my health and because I don’t like being treated preferentially. Ok, I take that back somewhat – it wouldn’t be so bad to be treated extra well when in a completely foreign environment where I am not at ease, particularly because I have been feeling almost invisible since I’ve been here. Walking down the street, I am one non-Asian person in a sea of nine billion Asian people; I think I have seen about 6 other white people since I’ve been here. I have never witnessed such a lack of racial diversity before, and it feels kind of strange. In comparison to Central America, where the locals stare you down, say hello, and are eager to start up a conversation wherever you go, here, people here pass you by without a second glance. I’m not sure why that is yet. I think it is mainly a cultural thing, as from what I’ve been told Asian culture is less outwardly welcoming than I would normally like.

In the afternoon we headed back to Kojen to sign our contracts. We were both feeling pretty good and productive before this but for some reason once we left the office we both felt horrible. I think it was information overload, which lead consequently to emotional overload. Rachel’s bags had finally arrived in Taipei so we decided to head to the airport to pick them up. Christine from Kojen gave us a map and directions to Taoyuan airport via an express bus. Once we’d finally located the bus stop, we waited nearly an hour for it to not come. “Maybe this isn’t the right bus,” we thought, and a nice man behind us who spoke just the smallest bit of English assured us that it was. Still no sign of any bus, the man behind us, who introduced himself to us but I didn’t understand so I’ll just call him Mr. Nice, asked us to share a taxi with him because he was going to miss his flight to Australia. I was so happy merely to have been noticed that I nearly cried, and we clearly accepted his offer. An hour later we were at our destination and without any difficulty picked up the bag and hopped on the express bus back to the city. This, my friends, is where we ran into trouble. We were exhausted, and upon arrival at Taipei Main Station we decided to hop in a cab home – unfortunately for us though, we didn’t have the little slip of paper with our address on it, only the map that Christine had given us, which as it turns out was not so good. The cab driver dropped us off in the location that we pointed to on the map, which turned out not to be near enough to where we needed to go, and we henceforth got horrifyingly lost in downtown Taipei, which was not a nice place for us to be lost in, because everything looks the bloody same. The map was not to scale, and I nearly lost it at one point, until a friendly couple stopped to ask if we needed help, and tried their best to help us find our way until I glorifyingly recognized the Diamond HK Style 24 hour restaurant that was on the corner of the street we needed to be on. Finally home – the word home used as loosely as possible here – we ate noodles from the 7/11 for the third night in a row and I started my 24th birthday off by crying myself to sleep.

Typhoon Day in Taipei

Day 4

I woke up this morning at 5 am – granted, I’d already been asleep for 9 and a half hours, but it was still no hour to be up at. “What am I doing here?” I thought to myself, for at least a half hour, before falling asleep again. My alarm woke me at 8:30, and I woke Rachel, only for us both to find stickies from Brett on our doors that read, “There is a note on the table. Read it.” It turns out that a “super typhoon” is affecting Taipei today, and Kojen was closed for a typhoon day, so we have been left alone to fend for ourselves for yet another lonely day. I know it’s not really fending, it’s more watching Chinese tv and doing nothing, but we are really quite anxious to do what we have to do, get to Kaohsiung, get settled in and attempt to restore some element of normalcy to our lives. My reportings on today are minimal: we watched some CSI, some Pirate Masters, and a horrifying movie about voodoo in Haiti featuring Bill Pullman in his early early years. I am experiencing the recurring cramp in my side that has plagued me for the past month, which is leading me to convince myself that I have rabies/malaria/stomach cancer/any other serious stomach disease that might exist – I am in desperate need of a way to curb my anxiety (other than the 4 Ativan that I have left…) otherwise this is going to be a lonnnng year. The seed has already been planted in my head that I may not make it the full year, which isn’t a good thought to be thinking so soon after my arrival. I’ve spent the better part of the afternoon talking with Paul online, who is in India, and has experienced many of the same fears and doubts that I have. It’s been amazing to talk to someone who understands how I feel, and he reminds me that when something doesn’t feel right, it’s just not worth sticking around for pride’s sake – so I will give it time, and hopefully things will start to feel right here soon. What’s meant to be, right? For now, I will try and enjoy the Billy Crystal movie we’ve just started to watch and hope that tomorrow brings better things – including, but not limited to, Rachel’s bags.

Taiwan, Part 1: Days 1, 2 and 3

Days 1, 2, and 3

It’s strange to think that I left home almost three days ago – I’m not quite sure what has happened in the interim. We left Buffalo on Saturday afternoon and after a brief chain-smoke in the Cleveland airport, hopped a flight to Los Angeles. In LA we had a 6 hour layover, the majority of which we spent in the food court staring at the departures screen, on which our flight was not yet posted because it was still far too far away, and in the horrifying lines at the ticket counter and the security checkpoints. We were two of maybe 10 non-Asian people in a sea of oh, maybe eight billion travelers at 1:00 on a Sunday morning. Once at the gate, I hungrily removed the bagel I’d purchased for 4 dollars from my bag, only to discard it due to moldiness, and instead took a sedative and waited to board the plane.

Our Malaysia Air flight to Taipei was pleasant – mostly because the Ativan helped me sleep for about 10 of the 14-hour flight, and because Rachel and I had a row to ourselves, facilitating as comfortable a sleep as one can muster on a trans-Pacific flight. At one point some rocky turbulence rose me from my slumber, which would normally evoke severe panic, but I was so doped up that all I could do was lift my head and then put it down again – what will be, will be, I figured. God bless that pill.

We arrived in Taipei at 6:30 am local time. Less than a third of the people on our flight had reached their final destination – the plane was going on to Kuala Lampur. Unfortunately, it seems as if Rachel’s backpack may also have continued on to Kuala Lampur, or was left behind at one of our many U.S. destinations. We’re not quite sure how to use the phones here, and furthermore, when we actually got it to work, the number that the airport people gave us doesn’t seem to be right.

We were met at the airport by a woman sent by Kojen to pick us up who, after not introducing herself to us, ushered us to the car and drove us into Taipei to our temporary apartment on something something lane. The apartment is owned by Kojen, and a Canadian named Brett lives here permanently. Another new teacher, Ben, was sitting in the living room watching TV, and he kindly took us for breakfast after we’d cleaned up. We ate at a little restaurant around the corner where Ben had befriended the staff during the course of his three day stay in Taipei, and we enjoyed some dumplings and iced soy milk, and upon request I armwrestled one of the guys who worked there. Or at least I think he worked there. While I was happy and quite relieved to be on solid land, I was still quite overwhelmed at the fact that I was in Asia. And was going to be for a year.

We were exhausted but knew we had to make it through the day in order to minimize the effects of jet lag. We decided that we would brave the MRT (massive rapid transit, I think, subway, in laymen’s terms) and visit Taipei 101, formerly the world’s tallest building, officially beat out only last week by some newly constructed monster building in Dubai. The bottom floors of the building are full of designer stores of the likes of Versace, Prada, Luis Vuitton…I was first given the impression that Taiwanese people must be really wealthy, but Rachel tells me that apparently they like to buy these expensive things, but can’t really afford them. Unfortunately, after we paid our $14 to ride the world’s fastest elevator up the 89 floors to the top, it was too foggy out for us to see any of the “most spectacular view of Taipei.” We saw what we could, had some ice cream and hot chocolate, gossiped about home for a while, which made us laugh – something we were greatly in need of doing. We headed back to the apartment, stopping at the 7/11 to get some noodles, which was more trying than it should have been, for me at least who doesn’t a) eat meat or b) read Chinese, and tried to stay awake as long as we could. We were both asleep by 7:30.

Observations about Taiwan so far:

-There is an overwhelming abundance of 7/11s here. We counted 8 on the way home from Taipei 101, and know that there is another one around the corner in the other direction.
-The crosswalks have counters, just like at home, but here they have little green men that run faster as your time to cross runs out. Also, some crosswalks allow you up to 90 seconds to cross while others only give you 21.
-There is an absence of obvious pet-owners in Taipei; perhaps, as in Vanuatu, people here think it is strange to keep dogs and cats as pets?
-There is meat in absolutely everything here – maybe there is a correlation between this and above?