I HAVE ARRIVED!

Today’s Taffy is brought to you by jet lag. Ohhh jet lag, how I loathe thee. That is why this post is kinda late. We’re out of the house a lot lately and when we’re in the house, I’m snoozing away. So, here we go!

Let us begin this written journey with the topic of sleep. Lovely, right? My sleep schedule was off before I came to Taiwan. The night before my flight was spent wide awake due to a terrible clash of exhaustion and energy. So it resulted in flying out of Texas while being awake for the past 30+ hours. Yeah, I was running on only adrenaline. If you factor in the present jet lag condition, I’m sure you can find it in your heart to forgive this delayed message.  Pretty please?

Anywho, my flights went like this. Beginning in Houston, we fly off to not San Francisco, but the opposite direction, aaaaaaaaaall the way to Moscow. That’s right, I’ve been to Russia! BAM! XD From Moscow, we go to Singapore and then to Taipei. So three flights total. Now here’s the ironic thing. I am very much an adrenaline junkie. Roller coasters and airplane turbulence are like candy to me being oh so yummy! So naturally, you would think that when the airplane takes off, hits turbulence or lands I would be excited beyond belief. You’re right. Especially since we had really nasty turbulence on two flights and none to soft landing on one when people around me were freaking out with how badly it was. Those are just thrilling. The thing is, for the darnest reason, every single take off, turbulence and landing there was, I feel asleep immediately. I fail to see how this happened in the slightest.  Every….single…time… (that’s about 10+ times) It’s like this intense shaking of the plane was a lullaby. I guess one way to make me sleepy is shaking me asleep. That’s quite an image there, isn’t it? Let’s not test this theory out please.

The transit from Moscow was squished and chaotic beyond belief! I will now attempt to describe the mentioned place as best as possible. Picture a high school hallway, small not big, and on opposite ends are several different transit lines. Now in this small hallway, stuff over a thousand people in it, each individually trying to get somewhere. Some people have to go right and some have to go left. Now compress these one thousand people to the point where all four sides of you are being smushed inward. There is constant friction because when you are trying to go one way, someone is clashing against you to go the other way. Tons of body heat fill this hallway. Your particular line is hard to locate the end of because everyone is so compacted and even harder to get to. And this chaos wasn’t just a one time thing. A lady was telling me how this happens every time and even though the Russian airport knows about it, they don’t do anything to help it. Just wonderful! Combine this with Russian signs with little English and employees that spoke little English as well, we get my transit experience. Oh how I wished I knew Russian or had a Russian speaking friend with me during that time. I like to describe the compacted hallway like this: In America we have the saying “sandwiched between two people.” In Russia I declare the saying “being rolled into a crumble cake” where each crumble is a single person. But hey, some of those crumbles were some fine looking Russian testosterone. :P That’s the only humor I can find in that un-fun situation.

Another thing with the airport in Moscow was the security check in. In Houston as y’all know, we have to take off our shoes, remove any jewelry, take out laptop and liquids, remove belt, etc. In Russia you take off your shoes….and…yeah. I went through the sensor machine with my belt, rings and retainer and nothing beeped. They did however have a problem with a “large liquid” in my bag, which was non-existent. I showed them my 3 oz bottles in a quart size bag but they said that wasn’t it. Thankfully, they let me go without doing an intense search of the invisible large liquid.

Just boarding the plane from Moscow something extremely fun and bubbly happened. (Note the sarcasm) I put my bags away, sit down and we are nearing take off when my eye acts up.  I feel something in it so what do you do in a situation like that? That’s right! You rub it out! So there I am, rubbing and rubbing, checking to see if it’s gone but not succeeding.  I continue to rub…it’s still there… it really hurts now. three minutes pass. Still rubbing. More pain. No progress. Three more minutes pass. Rubbing and rubbing. Pain and pain. Frustration starts to boil. I hurry off to the restroom’s mirror to find whatever has latched onto my eyeball. I look hard and long but there is NOTHING! Absolutely nothing abnormal appearance-wise is in my eye. So what do I do? My eye really hurts to the point where it was naturally sheading tears to clean it out but it wasn’t working. I tried all sorts of techniques to banish the eye demon but to no avail. Another three minutes pass. On the plane there is a crazy girl who keeps rubbing her eye, probing it open, tearing up and looking like a sentimental lunatic for ten minutes straight. That’s ten minutes with doing nothing but fight an eye battle. The pain was getting so bad trying to keep my eye open that I was desperately wishing for an eyepatch. For the people that understand this, the eye in agony was my left eye…I wouldn’t mind an eyepatch on that eye at all. :P Suddenly the pain stops. Why? I have no idea. But it left me with a swollen red eye. What a fun way to start off the flight, huh?

Bidding farewell to Russia, our travels take us to Singapore. The airport there was scary because it felt so deserted as hardly anyone was there (comparing it to Houston’s airport). There was a five hour lay-away time to kill and we (another Rotary exchange student named Akiko and I) began with searching for our flight’s gate. The lady at the help desk said the wanted info would be available in an hour or two. An hour or two passes and on the screen I see clearly “Taipei – 0878 - A20.” So we mosy on down to gate A20 and wait. Each of us are tired as heck and as she described us, we looked like druggies because of the blank looks on our faces. Boarding time was 10:55 for our flight and at 10:45 we still see no sign of our flight. Smelling something fishy, Akiko goes to ask something about this. What do we find out? We find out our flight is unfortunately not at gate A20…it’s at gate B6…on the OTHER SIDE OF THE AIRPORT!! We each have heavy bags to carry and even with a trolley, it’s still a lot of work. We are running and running seeing discouraging signs of “14 minutes to B6-10.” I seriously thought we would miss the flight and be stuck in Singapore. I have no idea why we were able to arrive on time but thank the lord, we were blessed in doing so. My lungs were on fire with a delicate layer of sweat coating my skin from the amount of panicked scurrying we did. Add that to the insomnia and jet lag. See what I’m getting at here?

I’m sure I’m forgetting some things to rant about but my brain is so dead right now (it’s 11:16 PM currently) but shall we move on to my arrival? A hot, tired Andrea gets greeted by a friendly sign and a crowd of sweet people. It was so nice and honoring! All fears of Taiwan were immediately banished in the warm radiance of the welcome. I absolutely loved it. I was told that people in Taiwan are really friendly but never did I imagine they were this sweet! There’s always smiles and laughter! It’s just so amazing!

But guys, I have to point out something. Ever since early middle school, I’ve always wanted to go to Asia. I remember in 7^th grade social studies class we had an assignment of questions, one being “What is a life desire?” or something. I wrote down “To travel to Asia.” I’ve lived with this intense wish for all my matured life, creating such fantasies in my head of going to Asia. I’ve listened to their music, watched their shows, studied their culture and more. But now, I’m finally standing on its ground. Guys, this is so humbling and definitely a dream come true. I still can’t believe it. This is just too wonderful to be true.

The night of arrival in Taiwan (GAHHH I’M IN TAIWAN! OH MY GOSH!!! THIS IS AMAZING! :D ) was spent eating at a Japanese restaurant. I don’t know what you would call this type of restaurant, but it was very unique. So unique that I had nooooooooo idea what to do. Yeah, It was that different. So you sit at this table of four and each seating has a pot of soup substance. They give you an overflowing bowl of stuff including things such as vegetables, meat, tofu, fish, seaweed and whatever else was in that abyss of a bowl. I’ll try to include a picture of it but let me tell you, the picture doesn’t do just to the size at all. You manually control the temperature of the pots and cook whatever substances you wish. Sounds easy enough right? Wrong! It was so overwhelming at first, not knowing what to start with, how long to cook it, what temperature to cook it, what all this stuff was they had to cook, what type of sauce to use, what to put IN the sauce, what tea to have and not to mention SO MUCH FOOD! I haven’t felt that full in a long time and I wasn’t even close to finishing all the available food. But it was sooooooo good!  As my host father says “yummy yummy!”

We then walk off our stuffed stomachs around the area close to the house. Just to distinguish, we live in New Taipei City, not Taipei. New Taipei City is just West of Taipei only separated by a river. The two cities are extremely close to each other and I was told a lot of people who live in New Taipei City actually work in Taipei. Anyway, there is so much around the house. There is a huge library where people were doing Tai Chi in front of at night (very interesting no?). Right next to that is a dog park with TONS of activity going on late at night. So many people were running, playing basketball, doing workout sessions and other sorts of energy-required-activities at 8 or 9:00 at night. That’s super cool because I’m totally a night owl and will willingly go sweat out my guts that late with peeps.

Continuing our walk we stop by a much anticipated place…. A BUBBLE TEA SHOP!! MUHAHAHAHA I GET AUTHENTIC BUBBLE TEA!!! ANDREA IS HAPPY!! ^_^ That is also “yummy yummy.” Though the menu is impossible for me to read at my current state, my family so lovingly helped me out to get a blueberry tea. After leaving the shop I stumble upon something very fascinating. You know how ice cream trucks play that extremely happy, bubbly tune as it drives around town? Take that same concept, and apply it to a garbage truck. Yeah…the garbage truck plays the most controversial song ever as it rides around picking up trash. Did anyone know that sort of thing existed because I sure didn’t. It’s actually really cute. :P

We end the night by going to a bread bakery to buy our breakfast. It was called “Semeur De Pain.” Um….I believe that is supposed to be pronounced “pan” in French but it nonetheless made me do a double take. It’s like ‘Welcome to the bakery of PAINNNNNN’! (cue dramatic music) Even with it’s scary name, the bread was so good! I think we bought a garlic cheese something-something, a raisin loaf and some toast bread. All very tasty.

Which brings us to my first morning in Taiwan. (OH MY GOSH THIS IS AWESOME BEING HERE!!) I surprisingly woke up a couple hours before my family. I expected to be passed out for hours due to jet lag and the fact that I nearly passed out (actually I might have dozed off several times) when watching TV with my family. But nope nope, my sleep system had other plans. So I just begin unpacking my five thousand pound bags until they awake.  When they do, we have a breakfast of fruit and bread. The fruit consisted of cherries, guava, yellow kiwi (never seen it before but it’s super sweet and yummy) and something we translated to “wax apple.” I don’t know if that’s what it’s called in English but that’s what the translator said. Apparently this wax apple is only available in June and July but by some strange miracle, we are able to get some in August. This fruit is similar to a regular apple but not as sweet and has a very peculiar texture. If styrofoam was softer, it would be similar to a wax apple. That’s the best I can do to describe it. The toast shocked me though because my host father set out buttered toast, jammed toast and….wait for it…PEANUT BUTTER TOAST!  Oh my goodness they have peanut butter here! I was totally not expecting that because, as I’m sure I’ve told you all, Spain completely lacked the creamy substance and so does a lot of European countries. Asia has converted to its sweetness! Whoop whoop! :P The second thing that surprised me was that there was milk. I was told by a girl who lived in Taiwan and also my mom that milk isn’t very common and usually is the powdered kind. Nope. This milk was in a carton and though it smelled different and strange, it actually was pretty tasty.

Concluding the breakfast experience, we now move to the afternoon spent in Taipei, beginning in the Taipei 101. Now Taipei 101 is like the Galleria except more vertical than horizontal. We only skimmed around the building because Rotary is apparently going to take us there in the future and go to the top of the building, shop, etc. Taipei 101 was the tallest building in the world but I think got beaten a bit ago. (I would look it up for cold stone facts but Wi-Fi isn’t available right now and I’m writing this in a Word Document) Before coming to Taiwan, my host mother told me that the national sport of Taiwan is shopping. I thought it was funny and cute but little did I know how much truth there is to that statement. Allow me to paint a picture of Taipei shopping. Take the Woodlands mall and compress the stores to be smaller and closer to one another, to the point where it would in total be the size of the newest wing in Klein Collins. Now give it 6-8 stories. Now multiple all of that by 11+ buildings right next to each other. Yeah. There is shopping up the wazoo here! They label the buildings by “A4” or “A8” and I only walked around several but I saw an “A11.” How many buildings are here?! And that’s not including the Taipei 101 or other shopping centers like “Bellavita” or a giant theater. THERE’S SO MUCH HERE!! And I only tasted a sliver of what’s all here. It is seriously overwhelming. If you can’t find what you are looking for here, you never will. From clothes to arcade or electronics to movies to grocery stores. We stopped by an arcade and my brother and I played a couple games.  One was a co-op where you throw balls at the screen at whatever target which was a fantastic ice breaker for us. My brother is very shy so it was a lot of fun playing with him. The other game was an animal versus game where you press a button to try to get the higher number, the highest being the winner. It wasn’t so much gameplay as it was pretty cinematics. Larry, my brother, beat me and the machine gives you a card of an animal that you can play next time. The sweetheart gave me the card which was a great horned owl. I really like it because it has the American flag on it but also has “Taiwan” AND a bird! 3 fantastic things in one! It’s so cool!  OH! And there’s a GIANT bookstore called “Eslite.” I have no idea how to pronounce it but it dominates Barnes and Noble by far. This thing is HUGE! I can’t even remember all of what I saw because there was just so much! I do remember something really shocking, there was a Yankee Candle store. Yankee Candle! And here I thought that was only an American thing. Oh! And there was a KFC in the Galleria. KFC PEOPLE! How did KFC get over here? I don’t know but my host father says he really loves the fried chicken. He also says that all you do in Taipei is shop and eat, shop and eat, shop and eat, etc.

So the eating part… good lord this food is delicious.  For what I think was lunch, we ordered fruit smoothies and went to the buffet area. Now the buffet was pretty small (about 4 tables worth) but it had splendid things. There were main course dishes such as rice noodles and vegetables with tater tots on the side. Tater tots?! Whaaaaaaaaat? Other do-dads where there such as bread and fantastic ham and cheese sandwiches with some sort of strange cake squares for dessert. Later for a snack, we stop for meatballs, corn, fish something, tea and bread for the next morning’s breakfast. No it wasn’t from the Pain Bakery, sorry. Describing the restaurants around Taipei and New Taipei City, my host father kept pointing out that this place was Japanese and that place was Japanese and so was this place being Japanese.  He also knows some Japanese and says he’s been there and likes it a lot. Some people even think he’s Japanese in appearance even though he’s pure Taiwanese. I made the joke of “I don’t think I’m in Taiwan. I think I’m in Japan” because there is a lot of Japanese things around here. For the restaurant, I can explain because Chinese food uses a lot of oil and sauce where Japanese food uses less with more vegetables, making it a lot healthier. For that reason, people here prefer Japanese food. Either type of food is very delicious. For dinner we went to a hidden place in a hotel that is fancy-shmancy. I had to be tutored a bit in how to eat the food here but thankfully it was a lot simpler than the previous Japanese dinner of confusion. Some quite tasteful that I’ve never had before is fried tofu. It’s sweet yet light and healthly. There was rice (duh), chicken soup, veggies and the main course of round dumplings. So this type of food we had was, as my host father described it, simple ingredients but complex technique. This saying was contrasted with the Japanese dinner of complex ingredients but simple technique to differentiate the two dinners. The dumplings had veggies and meat in them but somehow it also had a soup/broth in it. So when you bit into it, it oozes out delicious juice that you catch with your spoon. I utterly failed a couple times because the juice squirted across the room. Ah I’m such a clumsy American. Then you sip the broth up, completely the experience. Duuuuuuuuude. This stuff was like Asian heaven. There I was, thinking this meal couldn’t get any better, when they bring out dessert. So first there was a slice of watermelon and guava but the main dish was something spectacular. A date with sweet rice placed inside. Oh my gosh. Words fail me to describe this wonderful treat but if you ever get offered this dish, TRY IT!!! The same goes for a milk bubble pudding thing we had. It’s really hard to describe but I know it’s a soupy pudding including milk and tiny bubbles of something. Whatever it is, it is delicious! We then stop by a grocery to get pudding for a snack later and drive back home. More yummy food. Yay!

The driving is very, veeeeery different. In Driver’s Ed, I learned to create a safety space between the other cars and yourself, preferably in the shape of a diamond. Here, you’re lucky if you get the shape of the car you’re driving. Taxis, vehicles and scooters are EVERYWHERE! Especially scooters! Easily there will be 50-100 scooters at one stoplight and hundreds of them are parked on the side of the road. I’m attempting to take a picture that will do this mammoth amount of scooters justice but I haven’t achieved that yet. Just know they look like a herd of animals constantly moving with more herds right behind them. It’s actually really cool to see so many people being efficient with gas and transportation. I admire that.

That night at the house, I learn about the goings of the bathroom. Here you don’t flush the toilet paper but instead put it in a trashcan next to it. The shower doesn’t have a curtain or a door so I have to be really careful not to accidently flood the floor. It’s different for sure, no?

I shall wrap up with today, August 22^nd. The breakfast had the same, yummy fruit again but was accompanied by other foods. Now I don’t know what they are called but one was a long, cylinder looking bread and the other was a crispy flat thing with eggs and veggies inside. It’s similar to a breakfast burrito but flat and flaky. Both were very yummy but to my surprise the beverage was very tasty as well. The mentioned beverage is none other than soymilk. Soymilk! Who knew soymilk tasted so sweet and yummy? I’ve never had soymilk except for this morning, only hearing none-to-pleasant things about it. But, no! This stuff is yummy yummy!

Following breakfast was a speed rush to get dressed for a lunch meeting with the Taipei West Rotary Club. Not knowing what to wear, I picked the nicest dress and jewelry I had. Good thing I did. The meeting was at a veeeeeery fancy hotel with just as fancy food. It was similar to the food I had the previous night. I really can’t tell y’all what was on the table, but it was in the style where it was a rotating circle in the middle for the food and Spanish tea. There were many dishes including pork, veggies, fish, eggplant, green peppers, soup, chestnuts, mushrooms, rice (duh) and more. My counselor offered up one dish with pork and green peppers and said it wasn’t spicy. Gladly I received some and the pork was quite tasty and not spicy at all. So I then tried the green peppers….let me rephrase his statement. It’s not spicy for Asians. Granted it might not have seemed so spicy if I was expecting it to be, but boy I was hit hard with heat. Nearing tearing I attempted to calm my exploding taste buds with plain rice. Unfortunately, at a high-end meeting, my nose started running from the spice. Curses! Thankfully it wasn’t that bad. The dessert made up for it in full with watermelon, a green fruit, some clear triangle with black dots throughout and to my joy, the milk bubble pudding soup stuff! Hello my love! But food aside, the Rotary Club consisting of roughly fifty men present that day and they all were so nice. You can’t get much nicer than these sweethearts. Anywhere from offering to be my uncle or guardian to describing the room as my castle and me as the princess. I’m so honored! I kept saying “xièxiè” (thank you) constantly because I was so overwhelmed with their friendliness and generosity. One man had his birthday and the Rotary gave him a good quality lunchbox for a gift and the dear man ended up giving it to me as something to remember him by and for me to carry around hot and cold food. I couldn’t believe it! There is no end to how pleasant these people are. They were very forgiving that my Chinese is limited and helped me out when I did a short introduction of myself in Chinese. Though a lot of them spoke Taiwanese instead of Chinese which by the way I must mention. Remember how I compared Chinese and Taiwanese to Spanish and Mexican? NO! It’s totally different!! I’m trying to learn a bit of both but my focus will be Chinese it seems since it is used a lot more here and because I will be taking Chinese classes.

Wow, this is really long isn’t it? I better post it now before it gets longer and longer. Updates will be often ^_^ Hope you enjoyed a taste of Taiwan taffy. WAAAAH! I’M IN TAIWAN, PEOPLE!! I’M SO HAPPY!!! I caught myself thinking, “Can I live here?” Then I went, “Hold up…I do live here! I have a legal resident visa for a year! MUHAHAHAHA! THIS IS AWESOME!!” Anyway, farewell for now my friends!