A Whole New World

It's been two weeks to the day since I arrived in Taiwan and I haven't blogged about it yet. So sorry! I've been really busy with a full social calendar =o) and practical settling in things such as buying a cell phone and finding an apartment t0 rent (both missions were successful, I'm happy to report!).

I realized I wasn't in Kansas anymore as I waited for the plane in San Francisco and looked around to see that I was one of maybe 5 white people (and the only white woman) on the flight. After what felt like barely surviving the 3 plane flights halfway around the world (I didn't sleep as much as I'd hoped to on the 14 hour flight from San Francisco to Taipei), I stumbled into Taoyuan International Airport and tried to remember how to say baggage in Chinese but before I could a sign in English pointed me to the conveyor belt which would hopefully deliver my checked bags to me. That sign also contained the first Chinese characters I (proudly) read in Taiwan- "xing li," baggage. It took me 50 minutes to weave my way through the airport and wait in a long line at customs, where it was almost a problem that I didn't have a Taiwanese address. (I learned a few days later that the custom official raising his voice at me wasn't unusual- sometimes Taiwanese people sound a little harsher than Americans expect.)

I struggled to handle my two large rolling suitcases, duffel, backpack, and purse as I watched the Taiwanese effortlessly push all their luggage past me on little metal carts. I momentarily abandoned my biggest bags while I went in search of these handy-dandy carts, which I found in a logical spot that I had completely overlooked. Pushing my cart, I walked out into the waiting room that looked more like an indoor park complete with benches and potted palm trees. I flopped down on a bench and rested for a few minutes until I saw my friend Amanda, dressed in her usual pink and black, come bouncing towards me. It was amazing to see her after being apart for 8 months! She was an incredible help to me as I got ready to come to Taiwan and she has expertly guided me through what could have been the choppy waters of my first weeks in a foreign country. She helped me buy my first bus ticket into Taipei (the airport is actually an hour away) and she easily directed the taxi driver, in Mandarin, to her apartment. On that first bus ride to Taipei I noticed the lush dark green foliage of the hills and the old highrise apartment buildings, and I decided that Taiwan is sort of like a mix of Guatemala and Hawaii.

I experience everywhere I go in the context of where I've been and so far my Guatemala-meets-Hawaii theory has mostly held true, with the addition of a shiny efficiency and consumerism that I associate with Tokyo. I see Taiwan as a warm and rainy island with aspects of both a third-world and first-world country. Third-world-like is the fact that you can't flush toilet paper down the toilets and that while walking down a crowded street with terribly narrow sidewalks past homeless dogs nicknamed "Little Black" and "Handsome" you sometimes encounter startlingly unpleasant smells that make you wonder if that really is sewage pouring into the gutter behind the nearest deteriorating cement-and-tile apartment building.

However, the metro and bus system (connected by one easy-to-use card) are cleaner, safer, more reliable, and more convenient than any I've ever seen. Walking into a Taiwanese mall is like entering a marble-floored palace filled with Versace and Louis Vuitton boutiques. Everything you see is gorgeous and new. Even the underground food courts found in every mall remind me more of Disney World, with many specialty shops and fast food chains offering their own themed seating: Japanese MOS Burger has a sort of Splash Mountain-inspired country theme while a belgian waffle place has the feel of a little girl's playroom with pink tables and delicate china.

I'm currently sitting comfortably in a cream-colored leather chair on the third floor of a shop called "Ikari Coffee" in which I ordered a bagel and cream cheese for lunch. I sipped a hazelnut caffe latte and then a lychee yogurt smoothie while reading a book about the personal effects of globalization (The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home by Pico Iyer) and enjoying the coffeehouse's soundtrack of wordless, acoustic-guitar-and-piano versions of such songs as Sarah McLachlan's Angel, Fleetwood Mac's Landslide, and Sting's Fields of Gold.

So far my transition has been smooth thanks to God's blessings and Amanda's tireless help (she devoted her two-week-long New Year's break to helping me settle in). The food has, for the most part, lived up to expectations (it really is both cheap and delicious), though I can report that I have tried pig skin, pig intestines, and congealed pig blood and do not like any of them. As far as pig products go, my favorites are still ham and bacon. Some of my favorite foods here include kimchi (Korean spicy cabbage) dumplings (15 US cents each), long wavy noodles with thin beef strips in curry sauce ($2.50 US), and hot oolong tea with milk ($5 US). I am so glad my tastebuds have grown up since I survived on a self-imposed diet of baguettes and CocaCola in France when I was 14.

I didn't suffer from jet lag besides sleeping for about 10 hours each night. The first day I arrived, I crawled in bed at 2:30 pm for a "short nap." When Amanda woke me up an hour and a half later as I had asked her to, I (still half-asleep) asked, "Is it illegal if I sleep until tomorrow?" She laughed and said no, so I slept soundly until a bit before 7 am the next day. I think sleeping for 16 hours is a personal record!

My first two weeks here have been so full of new experiences that it's hard to choose what to write, but I'll end this entry with a brief account of my Chinese New Year celebration. Amanda (and I by gracious extension) was invited to spend Chinese New Year's Eve (Sunday Jan. 25) with a family who are friends of friends. Amanda and I took a bus to their neighborhood, arriving at around 6 pm, and were met by their 23 year-old daughter, Julie. Leaving our shoes at the door and changing into the slippers they had set out for us, we met the mother, Amy, who, along with some help from her aspiring-chef teenage son Jeep, had made over 10 different dishes for us (not including a big pot of sticky white rice): oysters with garlic sauce, shark fin soup, "Lions' Heads" ie meatballs, shrimp with their heads still on, drunken chicken, etc. One traditional New Year's food is fish, which the family doesn't finish because the word for fish in Mandarin, "yu," sounds like the word for abundance, and having left-over fish symbolizes one's hopes for abundance in the year to come. I occasionally fumbled my food because I wasn't terribly skillful with my chopsticks but was saved from any real disaster by the small bowl of rice that I held under my mouth. I am proud to say that I tried everything on the table while managing to save a little room for the traditional dessert of oranges (because they're the color of gold) and the modern dessert of expensive chocolates (presumably because they're delicious).

Our hosts consisted of the mother, daughter, and son already mentioned along with a father, Jim, and an uncle and his son. They were all very nice and welcoming and I loved my first experience conversing in Chinese with Taiwanese people. I especially enjoyed their shock when I told them I'd only arrived in Taiwan the day before. After dinner the father and uncle entertained us with magic tricks before we all put on our shoes and headed out to their apartment's courtyard where the women watched while the men set off fireworks- loud rockets that you can hear before you see and stationary sparklers that are almost as tall as I am. At the end of the evening, Amy gave us each a "hong bao," red envelope, filled with a lottery ticket that she said could make us rich women (unfortunately we weren't so lucky) and the uncle gave us a hong bao with money inside, a traditional New Year's gift given to children by adults. Amy was really nice and gave us a ride home as our festivities had lasted until almost midnight. It was a fun evening filled with laughter and learning about Chinese traditions.

Well, I'm trying to learn how to graciously stand out as a white-skinned, red-haired, tall "waiguoren," foreigner, in a sea of Taiwanese people, but Amanda's taught me that being stared at gives us license to stare back, and I love to people-watch, so it's all good. My spoken Chinese has a long way to go (and I'm largely illiterate) but I like speaking it and I now feel comfortable going out on my own. I'm enjoying Taiwan and I'm looking forward to telling you about night markets, the magic phrase "buhaoyisi!" (how embarrassing!) and the crazy way I found my apartment. Buh-bye (the Taiwanese version of adios) for now!

Inauguration Photos

How it all began... celebrating in the streets of DC on Election Night
after running to the White House

The housemates posing with Obama on Wisconsin Ave. as we walked
to the Treasury on Inauguration Day
(Kathleen, Tina, Sabala, and me)


The girls inside the Treasury in the beautiful "Cash Room"


Obama being sworn in as the 44th President of the United States

First Lady Michelle and President Barack Obama waving as they walked
past us on Pennsylvania Ave. in front of the White House

President Obama saluting a military marching band
from inside the Presidential viewing box

Obama's Inauguration

My visit to DC was wonderful, but Obama’s Inauguration was AMAZING! First things first though: on Friday my housemate Sabala met me at Union Station as I was struggling to maneuver 6 bags off the train and into the station. Sabala was a huge help and a great greeting after an 8 hour train ride in which I ate my requisite peanut butter and (raspberry) jelly sandwich and overdosed on chick flicks. Friday night my housemate Kathleen and I went out to a “Study Abroad Goodbye Dinner” at the Cheesecake Factory with 18 friends, and it was especially nice to see my friend Clara who's now abroad in Sevilla this semester. On Saturday I slept in and sort of wasted the day away...though “time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time,” so it was lovely. I kept finding myself smiling and laughing while I was in DC. It was surreal to be in a place I love with friends I love without the dark cloud of homework looming over my head. Saturday night we hung out at my friend Sarah’s apartment- we watched “Charlie Bartlett” and ate three kinds of dessert: chocolate pudding, chocolate chip cookies, and pineapple cupcakes.

On Sunday I went to my church (National Community Church, NCC for short) with my friends in the morning. The message was about how God can rescue us when we're trapped in the prisons of our good deeds and past mistakes and it resonated with me. The worship times were also amazing- I love the lyrics “Now I’ll sing freedom for all of my days; it’s only by the power of the cross I’m raised; the King of Glory rescued me.” Sunday afternoon “it just so happened” that Donald Miller, one of my favorite authors, was giving a sermon at Georgetown during the 4pm on-campus Protestant service, so I went and heard him talk about how leaders need to have a heart for justice. Then I went to the reception that followed and met him! My friends and I chatted with him (I found out that he cried the day before upon leaving his puppy, Lucy Hussein Miller, for the first time) and he signed my copy of Blue Like Jazz (if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it). Monday included sleeping in again and walking to Safeway with my housemates, as well as scanning some of my negatives from my (35mm black and white film) photo class last semester into the computer to create digital versions of my photos. Because I didn’t have a chance to print the majority of my photos in the darkroom, it was really cool seeing them up close on the computer rather than as a tiny 2-inch rectangle on a contact sheet.

Now to the really exciting part: Inauguration Day- January 20, 2009. The story really begins on Election Night after Obama won when my housemates Kathleen and Sabala and our friend (now housemate) Tina and I ran down to the White House to celebrate with the masses after midnight. The whole city had erupted into non-violent chaos: cars honked and people cheered as they streamed to the White House. We high-fived strangers we passed on the way and hugged basketball players from George Washington University. When we got to the White House we joined a thousand other people in cheers of “si se puede” and “yes we did.” Some people burst into patriotic songs and everyone was smiling. It felt really cool to be part of something so big and so historic and so American. A couple hours later we left and walked home, stopping for Philly P’s pizza (the famous Georgetown pizza place that’s open all night) on the way. This was my first slice of Philly P’s, and most people eat Philly P’s at 3am, so I was pleased to be following tradition. As we ate our slices on the curb outside the hole-in-the-wall pizza place, I knew that I had to be back in DC to go to Inauguration even though I would be studying abroad for the spring semester. Long story short, it actually worked out well: I took a train down to DC on Friday Jan. 16, stayed in my old townhouse for six days over Inauguration (rooming with my now-housemate Tina), said goodbye to my friends, and then flew out of DC to Taipei on Thursday Jan. 22 (arriving early Saturday morning Jan. 24 Taipei time).

So onto Inauguration Day: I woke up at 5:50 to be the first of 6 girls in the bathroom. I left at 6:30 to walk a few blocks to our local Saxby’s coffee shop, hoping they’d be open so I could get a coffee and a bagel. It was cold out but I liked the predawn air- I’m rarely up before the sun unless I have a plane to catch. Saxby’s was wonderfully open so I got my fuel for the morning and headed home. Sabala worked at the Treasury this summer and was able to get tickets for her and five of her friends (including me!) to watch the Inauguration from inside the Treasury. It was the best of both worlds because we walked down to the Treasury from our townhouse, experiencing the huge crowds and atmosphere of excitement along the way, but we were also able to leave at 7:15 in the morning, instead of at 4am like a lot of our friends, and we didn’t have to stand out in the frigid cold for the entire day. On our way to the Treasury building we were stopped by several roadblocks guarded by police so we had to weave our way through Washington and walk against the heavy traffic of people headed to the National Mall. The last time we were stopped it was by an Inauguration volunteer who told us we couldn’t walk past St. John’s Church because the Obamas would be attending a service there in 20 minutes. We waited in a long line at our security checkpoint less than a block from St. John’s Church and once our Treasury escort arrived we showed our bright blue badges with our names printed on them and walked through the metal detector. We entered the Treasury annex building and took the underground tunnels under Pennsylvania Avenue to the Treasury itself. The Treasury is right across the street from the White House, and we saw its north entrance where the Obamas entered to have coffee with the Bushes only a few minutes later.

Our home base for the day was the Office of Emergency Programs, where Sabala worked, which is now housed right next to the Secret Service Command Center (we were warned not to disturb them). We watched President-elect Obama become President Obama and listened to his Inauguration speech with some of Sabala’s coworkers as we munched on a nice assortment of meat, cheese, fruits, and veggies. Then after Obama’s luncheon Sabala’s boss received word that anyone in the Treasury building could go sit outside in the bleachers at the end of the parade route, diagonally across the street from the (bullet-proof) Presidential viewing box, in front of the White House. We all threw on our coats and hurried down through the underground tunnels and outside to the bleachers where we were a stone’s throw away from the parade route (not that, with all the security from every branch and level of the US military as well as police and Secret Service, we would have thrown anything). We waited awhile and saw Rahm Emanuel and Tim Geithner get out of coach buses and walk to the Presidential viewing box.

Then, after a long but well-worth-it wait during which policemen on motorcycles and Secret Service SUVs passed by, Barack and Michelle Obama walked right in front of us, waving and smiling. It was surreal seeing them in person. We hadn’t known for sure whether they would leave their car and walk the last leg of the parade route because of security concerns, so we were really excited to see them and cheered and snapped photos and waved. We were frozen to the bone so when the Obamas were out of sight we started heading back to the Treasury and waved to the Bidens as they walked by. We thawed a bit in the Office of Emergency Programs while watching the parade and then decided to go back to the bleachers once more before walking home (it was about 5pm). We were able to get even closer to the Presidential viewing box this time so that we were almost directly across the street from it. We watched Michelle watch the parade and Barack and Joe Biden talk and wave at the marching bands that were passing by. I liked how they saluted the military bands. The sun had set so after 15 minutes we were cold again and decided to head home, but not before waving to President Obama. There was no marching band in front of the Presidential viewing box and President Obama saw all six of us waving! He made eye contact, smiled, and waved back. We freaked out and started jumping up and down, and when President Obama saw our reaction he smiled bigger and laughed, and then started talking to Biden again. Our interaction with the President of the United States was easily the highlight of our day.

We walked home and stopped for pizza on the way. I liked that Election Night and Inauguration Day were symmetrical: we celebrated in front of the White House and ate Philly P’s on the way home. On Wednesday and Thursday I saw more friends and tried to get ready to leave the country for 7 months! On Thursday, Kathleen was really sweet and accompanied me to the airport after a busy (read: stressful) morning. After some creative re-shuffling of the stuff in my suitcases (I ended up carrying my Bible and two boxes of cereal separately- it’s a useful loophole that a book and “food for immediate consumption” don’t count towards your carry-on limit) with Kathleen’s help, I checked in two bags weighing 49 and 50 lbs. After surviving security I got a Happy Meal and waited at my gate til my plane boarded at 4. Surprisingly, there were a lot of native Alaskans on my flight (7 or 8 tribes were represented, I overheard the guy behind me say proudly) who had come to DC for the Inauguration. As we lifted off, I got a little emotional because I knew it would be a long time before I was in DC again, but I was also excited to start the next chapter of my life.

213 nights, 214 days

When I booked my flights to and from Taiwan, the confirmation email told me to enjoy my trip of 213 nights and 214 days. My first thought was "Wow, that's more than half a year!" But I'm looking forward to spending 7 months in Taipei. My voyage begins soon- I leave this Friday morning (Jan 16th) to take a train to DC. I'll spend 6 days there with my friends, staying in the townhouse that I lived in this past fall and attending Obama's Inauguration! Then on Thursday Jan 22nd I'll spend 24 hours flying to Taipei, with a couple of layovers in the US. I'm trying to look forward to catching up on my movie-watching on the three flights but I'll probably land in Taipei exhausted and a little miserable. I arrive early Saturday morning the 24th, so I'll spend all of January 23rd traveling! My good friend Amanda who's already in Taiwan has graciously offered to meet me at the airport, so it'll be amazing to see a familiar (English-speaking) face!

My classes don't start til March 2nd but I wanted to get to Taipei early to experience Chinese New Year on January 26th. I'm also hoping to do some traveling, get acquainted with the city, and practice my Chinese. I'm thinking of this time as my summer vacation because this is the first summer I'll be away from home and taking classes. I'll be living with Amanda for the first week, then a friend from church in Boston, Likai, generously asked if I'd want to live with his mom in Taipei so I'll be staying with her for a month, and then I'll hopefully move into an apartment within walking distance of my school before classes start. It'll be easier to look for a place once I'm in Taipei so this is my main goal for February. I'll be taking two semesters of Mandarin Chinese classes at the Chinese Language Center of National Chengchi University (the first semester is March, April, May, then ten days of vacation and June, July, August is the second semester). My Chinese teachers at Georgetown recommended this university and Amanda says the classes are small and the teachers are great, so I'm really excited! I'm looking forward to focusing solely on Chinese after juggling 5 classes at Georgetown this past fall.

Well, I better stop writing this and get to packing! Thanks for reading.

Ilha Formosa

One thing I love about studying abroad (or living away from home for that matter) is that the exotic becomes ordinary and the ordinary becomes exotic. When I lived in Italy, stopping at a small cafe to enjoy some cheese and wine after a long day of admiring the Tuscan countryside became ordinary while taking a hot shower became exotic. When I lived in Hawaii, watching heartbreakingly beautiful sunsets through palm trees became ordinary while bug-free bedrooms (moths, spiders, and centipedes oh my, not to mention our “pet” gecko) became exotic. When I lived in Washington, D.C., trick-or-treating at Embassies became ordinary and Patriots fans became exotic. And now as I set off for Taiwan, I can only guess how my world will be turned upside down. I hope to wholeheartedly embrace new experiences while gaining a new appreciation for what I’m (temporarily) leaving behind.

I’ve been told that my time in Taiwan (I’ve decided that I can’t call it a trip when I’ll spend more of 2009 there than in the States) will be life-changing, and I know it will. However, the big question is how my life will be changed, how God will change my life. I realized the other day that “adventure” simply means “coming to” (gratias Latinae). I like the possibility encapsulated in that definition of adventure as a journey with an unknown destination.

In my dreams I don’t hesitate to jump off buildings because I know that I’ll fly before I crash into the ground. I’m going to a foreign country to speak a challenging language with that same confidence thanks to my family and friends who give me courage and especially thanks to my God, who has “plans to prosper [me] and not to harm [me], plans to give [me] hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11) and who has promised “never to leave [me] nor forsake [me]” (Deuteronomy 31:6).

I know that I’ll miss you but hopefully I can let you know about my life through this blog and you can email/fbook/send me a snailmail letter* to keep me in the loop about your goings-on.

*my favorite option

p.s. For those who don’t know, Taiwan was named Ilha Formosa (Beautiful Island) by a passing Portuguese ship in 1544.