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.