Pictures at last!

This weekend my jetlag began to wear off and I was able to get out to explore a bit more! On Friday the girls and I ventured to TESCO, this large half walmart-ish half giant grocery store. When I moved to Montreal I remember that some of the times I felt most like I was in another country was at a grocery store, with their lack of American variety, French labels and cheese curds near the checkout. Walking through the TESCO in Taiwan was like walking through another world! Firstly, there was the most bizarre dream-like elevator music. In the fruit and vegetable sections I recognized about half of all the produce laying out and tried to stay away from anything with spikes or in any neon color. There were a lot of subtle differences like squid nuggets next to chicken nuggets and fish balls instead of meat balls. Another thing I found interesting was that you have to pay for the plastic bags to put your groceries and all store purchases into.
On Saturday we decided to go to the Jianguo Flower and Jade Markets. The flowers were absolutely gorgeous, mostly different kinds of orchids, roses and water lillies. I couldn't resist buying an orchid for my room and am hoping I don't kill it before I can go back and get another one next weekend. The Jade Market was gigantic and had really beautiful pieces of jade, coral and other beaded jewelry. I resisted buying anything but promised myself I would go back when I know just enough Chinese to attempt to bargain instead of an English sucker paying too much (which is still pretty inexpensive!).
Saturday night I was determined to go out for my first time. Kathleen, Julia and I went to the local expat bar for a few drinks before heading to the pretty swanky Room 18 club for a night of dancing. We just may have stuck out like sore thumbs. For one, we were the only Western women in the entire place (never mind the Western guys who had about 4 Taiwanese girls on each arm!) , and second of all, it was was "Uniform night" so we were a tad over dressed wearing actual pants and shirts instead of strategically placed pom-poms. I'll admit the music was great but I can see how going out here will never feel too comfortable!
Finally, last night was best of all. Another teacher and her boyfriend decided to take us out for dinner. The place? The Jurassic-- a dinosaur and Native American themed restaurant. I had no idea that the two lived during the same period, but apparently they did! Naturally in accordance with the theme, the food was super spicy Chinese and there was a keyboard and vocal performance throughout the dinner straight out of the movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It was really the most bizarre and unbelievable restaurant I have ever been to, so I snapped a few pictures to show the rest of you! I've also included some pics from the past week that I finally figured out how to upload. Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Louise, Julia and the other Kathleen

Louise, me, Kathleen, Julia, Tara, Bonnie and Mike at the Jurassic

Please note the dino bone and neon headress backdrop for the musical performance.

Street between the Flower and Jade Markets.

National Palace Museum

Me in front of one of the side buildings of the Museum

Louise and I

Front view of the school I'll be teaching at in the Fall.

View from school balcony of Taipei 101, currently the tallest building in the world

So I survived the 4am washroom wakeup and forced myself to stay in bed until 6:30 this morning. It feels like a slight victory! I have been trying my best to stay up late but it is impossible. Around 9:30ish I start slurring my speech because I'm so tired and have to give up and go to bed. Last night I was especially disappointed with my bodyclock since I missed dinner with Louise and couldn't bring myself to go out on the town with friends she made last month at her hostel. Can anyone imagine me saying no to going out??!! I haven't seen the city after 8pm yet! What kind of adventurous 22 year old am I?
As I write this I'm eating my breakfast of yogurt and cereal... just like home! Except here the yoplait I bought is called "Beauty Yogurt" (who wouldn't want to eat that?) and has these interesting jello-ish cubes in it that remind me of something you would find in a buffett dessert bar...gewww. When I picked up the cereal I noticed they had the cereal, "Oh's", there too... Gina, apparently Taipei is more Americanized than Montreal!
Yesterday was my first of hopefully little to no more visits to the hospital. I had someone from the company meet me to help translate during the medical exam process. The hospital had a whole seperate area for foreigners and I moved around this circle of different stations that checked all the basics like height, weight, eyes, blood pressure, chest X-ray and blood test. The nurse and my aide were astonished with my eyesight and kept asking whether or not I had had corrective eye surgery... Eagle Eyes might have to be my new nickname because having two Kathleens in the apartment is becoming confusing, and seeing as I arrived later, I have to give up rights to the name. Anyone with any suggestions feel free to pass them on.
The rest of the afternoon was spent on an excursion to the National Palace Museum with Louise. The place was absolutely gorgeous outside and some of the best stuff inside included the jade collections and a Buddhism exhibition. On our way home we stopped at a vegetarian soup and noodle shop that was awesome but no Lola Rosa's like on Lorne! I spotted a few small cockroaches dangerously close to us and tried to eat the remainder of the soup without looking up.
On the walk back from the MRT (metro) we saw a man wipe out on his scooter. Louise immediate ran out into the road to help him yelling "poor dear" in her cute Australian accent, while I was terrified that SHE would be run over seeing the hundreds of scooters rounding the corner. I, of course, was racked with guilt for not following her out into the road and knowing that I must have appeared to be an uncaring American compared to her. Still I reasoned that 2 flattened ESL teachers might be hard to explain and that the business man already probably felt enough embarrasment falling that 2 foreign females helping him might be far too damaging to his ego.
My boss is supposed to be getting back from vacation in Canada tomorrow so I'm hoping to know what my schedule for August will look like soon. My friend Felicia from McGill is in Shanghai and gave me a call last night to suggest a rendezvous in Hong Kong in the next few weeks. Hopefully when I know what I have on my plate this month I can see how feasible a trip might be.


I'd also like if any of you could send me your addresses so that I can send treats from here. Really, if you are reading these long entries you deserve something for your time! So don't be shy.... send them along, please!!

I can't get no sleep...

So I've been up since about 4:30 this morning completely unable to sleep. During the day because it's so hot I'm constantly carrying a gigantic water bottle around in hopes that I don't pass out . So naturally I can't sleep through the night without several washroom interruptions. However, although I have yet to see one, I've heard maannyy horror stories about the cockroaches in Taipei. Apparently they are 3 inches long, can fly, have red bellies and like dark places. So I can't just hop out of bed and run to the washroom. I have to turn on the light, inspect my room, slowly open the door, pop my head out first, scan the hallway, tiptoe to the washroom, check underneath the sink etc. The whole process takes about 10minutes for which I must be completely alert and cautious. There is no chance of me falling back to sleep immediately! As I was lying there trying however, I heard the strangest and scariest moaning noise coming from the alley behind my room. It kept getting louder and louder and finally I recognized one of the noises as a rabid cat fighting some unknown but equally as angry creature. It made me a little regretful that I didn't speak up when the roommates asked me if a friend's cat can stay with us for the month of August... I can handle the culture shock in Taipei, but the "wildlife" shock I do not know.

Yesterday was my first full day here! Once again it was hazy out which was disappointing but I am told quite better than sunny days when it gets considerably hotter. In the afternoon we all went to lunch and then stopped by the school we will be teaching at in September. Oh my goodness.. the school is insane! Apparently it's the most prestigious private school in Taipei (how they hired a 1st time non-teacher is beyond me) and from the looks of it I would believe it. I took a few pictures of the school but this super slow and old laptop in the dorm won't recognize digital cameras made after the year 1999. I didn't know digital cameras even existed that long ago! I may be able to upload some on one of the other girl's computers and transfer them on to here sometime soon hopefully.

My favorite part of yesterday was going to dinner with my roommate Louise. The other girls seem to prefer to eat Western food most of the time, so we decided to set out and find some local and cheap place in the neighborhood. We ended up just down the block and selected a place based on the crowd which usually means less risk of getting sick from the food! Of course neither of us could read a word on the menu and had to pick from the limited pictures of each page. We took our chances and ended up with some sort of fried fish on top of a sweet onion rice, miso soup, sweet brown sugar beef maki, tea, and 2 veerry large Taiwanese beers.. all for 205NT! That's a little over $6USD for the both of us! We made a pact to try to be as adventurous as possible and try as many of these little places as we can.

Anyways I am off to get ready for my day. I have my health check at the hospital and then plan on getting lost in the city for a couple hours since I think I see the sun peaking out!

First Post

Hey everyone!

I had promised quite a few a people that I would keep a blog so that those who want to follow my happenings and share in the inevitable social and cultural faux pas I commit this next year in Taipei can do so. Those who know me well know that I have a tendency to be quite longwinded and detail-oriented when I tell a story, so I might have a book, rather than a blog, by the end of this year.

As I write this it is Wednesday morning at 10am here in Taipei, meaning it is 10pm on Tuesday night in Philly and Montreal. I arrived here yesterday around 8am after having a 19 1/2 hour plane ride of which I slept maybe 4 hours?! I flew out of Newark, NJ on EVA airlines and was impressed with the airline despite the length of the flight. The flight attendants were amazing-- all were these gorgeous Taiwanese and Chinese women who were dressed really sharp, were so efficient and poised and could switch between Mandarin and English in a second. There I was looking like a sloppy Westerner (1 of 4 on a plane of 300+) wearing comfy clothes and a hat to hide the fact that I had been crying so hard when I said bye to Mom and Dad. People must have thought I was going off to war and never returning! BTW Thanks to everyone who gave me a little something to open or read on the plane-- it made the 19 hours seem more like... 18?? Another highlight of the flight was the food. There was this seafood soup (everyone knows how much I like fish?? ) that I was given chop sticks to eat. I tried staring at people out of the corner of my eye to get an idea how I was supposed to shovel it in. I ended up giving up after 2 bites! I made friends with the older man sitting beside me, who obviously saw my awkward ways and looked at me with pity, and learned quickly that the Taiwanese are truly as friendly as I had heard. We made one stop in Seattle to refuel and got to get off the plane to stretch. I bought Nyquil and tried to drug myself for the second flight since it was pretty torturous watching everyone around you sleep and not being able to! In Seattle other people found more holistic ways of relaxing and organized themselves by the windows doing breathing and stretching exercises that I assumed were some sort of Tai Chi.

In Taipei I had a driver meet me at the airport who spoke no English whatsoever and who I nearly missed after not being able to recongize my name as
KNL BTCJ
EHN LOER
on his sign card. I did a couple laps around the pickup area before deciding to take my chances and try to gesture " I think that's me??"
The ride back to the dorm was my first look at the city. Unfortunately a typhoon was supposed to be coming that night so the sky was already pretty grey and all I could see of the mountains that are surrounding the city were hazy shadows. The roads were extremely crowded as it was rush hour and as soon as we pulled off the highway we were surrounded by thousands of people of scooters. Everyone from men in suits to women dressed in skirts were riding on them. I even saw a small girl reading a book on the back of a scooter going at least 50 miles per hour. How she managed to not fall off I couldn't figure.

After I arrived at the dorm, and carried 3 suuuper heavy suitcases up 3 flights of stairs I met my new roommates. I'm living in a apartment with 3 other girls at the moment all of which will work with me at the private school I'll be teaching at in the city. There's another Kathleen, who's from Toronto and who has lived in Taipei and taught here for the past year and half. Then there is Julia who is from southern Maryland. I had never met anymore from Maryland with a strong southern accent, which she has and she also calls everything about Maryland "down home." It makes me think of how we all say "down the shore" and how weird it must sound to people outside of Jersey and Philly. She's been here for month or two working the summer English camps that I'm hoping to start before the school year in September. Lastly, there is Louise, who just moved into the dorm the day before me and is from Sydney, Australia. She is incredibly upbeat and energetic.. perfect for working with all the little kids in 100 degree weather hah. All three of them seem really nice and really different from one another. Hopefully my good luck with roommates in the past will continue here!

Last night all 4 of us ventured out to find something to eat before Kathleen went to the big Black Eyed Peas concert, the biggest one in Taipei for the summer. It was my first time out on the streets of my neighborhood and I quickly realized I'm living in a pretty affluent neightborhood. The stores around here are all Gucci, Prada etc and a lot of the restaurants seem to be Western. After a walk around we ended up at TGIFridays! Somewhere I could have found just in Warrington PA. I think the menu was even exactly the same minus maybe different beers on the drink list. We all had a few beers and chatted before walking home through some underground mall and avoiding the rain. I don't think the typhoon ever did hit last night, although it does look like it rained quite a bit this morning.

I passed out by 8pm and slept all the way until 7:30 this morning. Hopefully it won't take long for my body to get used to this schedule, since it had so much practice with all-nighters and late night partying in Montreal! Which speaking of..I'm missing the old roommates in Montreal big time!

I'm hoping to venture out today a bit, even though it's still raining slightly, and maybe take some pictures I can post on here. I'll most likely get my medical examination at the hospital for my working permit today and maybe meet some people from the company that placed me with the school I'll be teaching at. In any case I'll keep everyone posted with what I find myself doing these first days here. Hopefully my next posts won't be so lengthy or boring but I can't make any promises! Hope everything is going well wherever the rest of you are. Please keep me updated on what all of you are up to and feel free to comment!

Love you and miss you guys!!