And When the Thrill Dies, What Then?

The honeymoon is over.

I’ve been kept up til 2am by the unceasing cries of a yippy little dog from several stories below. I’ve been woken up by a combination of the cockadoodledos from the roosters that live in a pen across the street and the noisy machinery of the construction crews that are constantly at work behind my building. When I get up early to study for Chinese tests I find huge red bug bites on my arms that make me think I’m allergic to the mosquitoes here. I’ve been chastised for not taking out my trash often enough and for not separately it properly (into paper, plastic, and glass recycling, organic trash, and general trash). I’ve learned that restrooms on campus are often dirtier than those in American gas stations.

However, C.S. Lewis once wrote: “Thrills come at the beginning and do not last... The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better... not to live in the beautiful place? By no means... if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest.” (Mere Christianity)

Even as the romanticism burns away, new blessings are visible through the smoke. I’ve already written some about my friends and my church so I want to introduce you to my home and my school.

My apartment building is new and really nice. We’ve got three security guards on rotation who take turns watching the security cameras that used to show me fixing my hair in the elevator’s mirrored walls before one of them teased me about it. We have short chats as I leave the building and return home- a few nights ago one of the security guards taught me the Chinese word for umbrella and I taught him the English. As you walk into the lobby and pass the security guard’s desk, you come to the workout room (complete with ping-pong table), the waiting area featuring 70s-style avocado green couches and an artificial pink-and-silver Christmas tree (it’s not uncommon to leave Christmas decorations up all year round in shops and restaurants here), a kids’ play area with little plastic slide, and a business meeting room with small square tables and chairs.

I live on one of the highest floors and my apartment is quite big and really comfortable. When you walk into my place you’re standing in the L shaped “great room” with the dining room in front of you, the kitchen beyond that, and the living room to your right. I have awesome views of a forested hill from the huge windows in my living room and bedroom. My bedroom’s a good size and I love having my own bathroom connected to it. There are 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms in my place but so far my landlord hasn’t found anyone else to rent the other bedroom (it’s very small) and I don’t mind. I’m enjoying the freedom of having the place to myself- I can cook, come and go as I please, sing out loud. =)

Cooking has been fun- I’ve made Korean kimchee stew (thanks Anabelle and Ashley) and refried bean burritos (thanks Amanda). For a few mornings I “toasted” bread in my frying pan (which is faster than any toaster because my gas stove heats up like crazy- aka I usually end up burning the bread) and threw really sweet Taiwanese peanut butter on one slice and raspberry jam on another. Then I ran out of bread and decided to try frying up two leftover tortillas, putting pb on one and j on the other, and folding them in half. That’s a combo I would never have tried in the States but it’s all “Western food” here. It’s actually quite good! Last week I made french toast and bacon (not as good as my dad’s brunch, but how could it be?), baked cinnamon oatmeal cookies in my brand-new toaster oven, and made rice in a rice cooker for the first time as part of a pork and bokchoy with soy sauce/Korean spicy sauce concoction.

My favorite part of living alone is being able to have friends over. A couple of weekends ago I went out to dinner with friends (to an “Italian noodle” place where I always order smoked chicken and ham with white sauce over rotini, all baked with cheese on top) and then brought them back to my place to watch a movie. Everyone lingered talking till almost midnight- it was so fun. That night I invited three different groups of friends who hadn’t met each other and I was thrilled that they all got along and had a good time.

Another great thing is that I have my own washing machine! It’s out on my deck, along with a metal bar where I hang my clean clothes on hangers to dry. In Italy I dreaded trekking to and from the laundromat with my heavy duffel bag full of clothes and then hanging my laundry out the attic window with clothespins, so I really appreciate how easy it is to do laundry here! I don’t have a dryer but I prefer to let my clothes dry naturally anyway. I do have a dish dryer though- a little machine above my sink that heats up and dries my hand-washed dishes. I never knew such an invention existed or was needed but I guess it’s useful in a humid climate.

I feel like I’m living in a high rise in the country- next to my building there’s an old canal with a river running through it, and the house across the street definitely has an outhouse. I’m not living on the main street where most of the restaurants and shops are (it’s a 10 minute walk from my door down the hill to the main gates of my university/the main street), but I like living partway up the mountain and seeing nature from my window. This district of Taipei is older than most areas of the city, and pretty run-down in parts, but my apartment is like an oasis- definitely a blessing from God.

Now onto school- I had a hard first day because I was placed in a level that didn’t feel challenging. The next day I tried out a higher level and really liked the class. My classmates include Japanese, Turkish, Irish, Korean, and German guys, another American girl, and a Finnish girl, Ulla. Ulla and I became friends (along with a German girl, Maren) on my birthday- we met after taking the placement test and then went out to lunch. I’m also good friends with the Korean and German guys, Shizhen and Robert- Ulla and I actually recruited them! Robert is Maren’s friend and Ulla and I had coffee with him and Shizhen after the second day of class. We told them how much we liked our teacher, and they complained about theirs, so they switched classes and attended ours the next day!

Our teacher is a petite 32 year-old who looks like Reese Witherspoon with glasses. The class is entirely in Chinese, besides the occasional English translation of a new vocab word. We have class from 12-3 each day, with 2 ten-minute breaks at 1 and 2. The cashiers at the 7/11 across the street from the International Building where I have class know to expect me and Ulla at 1pm every day- I always order a small “American style” coffee with one creamer.

Each week we do a new chapter of our textbook- so far we’ve studied “I love performances,” “Be careful of bad habits,” “Relationship stuff,” and “Women’s social status is not the same.” Our class has a lot of fun creating our own stories/skits using the new words we’ve learned and watching tragic Chinese movies and cheesy Chinese music videos. I have more homework than in Italy but less than at Georgetown. Chinese is a challenge and I’ve learned I can’t just absorb it by osmosis, so I don't mind the homework. I like learning new words and grammar structures and weaving them into my Chinese conversations with friends.

The second week of class I took a free course from 11-12 each morning on bopomofo, a phonetic system used in Taiwan to teach children how to pronounce Chinese characters. It’s also the only way to write text messages in Chinese characters on cell phones here, so I was eager to learn. Bopomofo is interesting from a linguistic perspective because orthographical systems are in themselves interpretations of a language’s sounds. One day in class we had a spelling bee in which we had to race to spell out the word our teacher said with bopomofo symbols- I won and my prize was a bag of peanut M&Ms! I discovered I’m really competitive when it comes to language games!

I’m also auditing an interesting course taught in English: American Sports History. I think it’s kind of funny that the professor and I are the only Americans in the class. This week he taught us about the first baseball clubs in New York City in the 1840s. My Korean friend who also takes that class and I have started a once-a-week language exchange in which I teach her English for an hour and she teaches me Korean for an hour! I also started attending a beginner’s Korean class that my friend Shizhen teaches every Friday. Yesterday after class we all went out to a great Korean restaurant for dinner. This week was also my first once-a-week Taiwanese language class. It’ll be cool to learn a little Taiwanese, the mother tongue of many of my Taiwanese friends. Li ho! (That’s “Ni hao!” or “Hello!”) What can I say? I can’t resist learning new languages!

I like settling into student life here, although I don’t have as much time alone as when I was “on vacation.” During my first weeks of class I kind of overdosed on being with people. I do like making new friends and hanging out with them, but I also have an introvert side that craves alone time to read, write, pray, listen to music, cook/bake, and of course watch the first season of Everwood on DVD. So lately I’ve been setting aside time to be by myself and it’s been really good.

I’ll end with the second half of the C.S Lewis quote I used at the beginning of this post: “What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction... the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.” Right now I’m enjoying my routine and looking forward to new thrills!