A Blog Post from Taiwan:
November 20, 2008
with very little time left, i'm finding myself reminiscing about how much i've changed and how much i've done since coming to taiwan, and i feel like i haven't written nearly as much as i should have, or given things nearly as much credit as they deserve. i'm so different than i was only ten months ago, and even more different than i was fifteen months ago. and it's weird, because i don't look different, and most of the time, i don't even feel different. but when i talk to people, or i read old diary entries, i know the changes are there. and so i have this film montage running through my head of moments of life in taiwan (most likely set to 90s pop music, but that could change to chinese pop depending on where i'm standing and when):
...sitting in a dark fourth floor classroom at the hess kindy while the government looks for illegal foreign teachers...
...cleaning smoke stains off the wall of my first apartment, and putting together my first few pieces of furniture - a bed, a desk and a metal rack that doubled as a closet...
...playing a silly game with mandy, the tiniest of the kindy lion class, where she tried to touch me with her little socked foot before i 'noticed' and went pouncing after it...
...trying to come up with weird games at the buxiban to keep bored kids interested and discovering that sticky-balls and fake money were the best things ever...
...the moon festival barbecue at lynn's house where i first tried squid-on-a-stick and rice sausage...
...dancing with a drunken martin at glenn and melinda's, and not feeling too sober myself...
...being amazed and amused by the total lack of politcal correctness at my favorite teppenyaaki restaurant - aptly named 'red man teppenyaaki'...
...talking with fourteen year old may during the break at the saturday afternoon focus class...
...listening to and being comforted by the noisiness of taiwanese streets in my first fongyuan apartment - at least, until an ambulance broke the 'city at night' ambiance...
...first discovering that i didn't have to get new markers every time the old ones ran out of ink. i could just unscrew the top and refill them with ink from the little glass bottles...
...discovering that what sounded like ice cream tucks were actually trash trucks, and then learning to avoid that sound (and smell) on my scooter...
...trying to come up with reasonable and simple motions to go with vocabulary words like teacher (miming writing on the board) and school (think 'a' from the 'ymca')...
...wandering around with a group of ten other expats, only two of whom i knew, while trying to flag down three taxis in order to go to a club that i'd never heard of...
...learning to like football while eating fish and chips and playing really bad pool at the londoner...
...driving around the loop road in fongyuan just because driving a scooter was fun...
... being forced to take baths only for the first months because my landlady hadn't yet fixed the shower (only to have nt$13,000 stolen from me when she finally did fix the damn thing)...
...sitting with a group of sixteen other hess trainees while eating bad falafels and good french fries at uzo's...
...apartment hunting and discovering two things: rents were incredibly low for incredibly nice apartments, and nobody had carpet in taiwan...
there are thousands of other memories, and these are just from the first couple of months. i'll post more of them when time permits, because i don't want to forget all of these things that turned me into a grown-up.
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