little adventures: travels through taiwan

Rainy days and Mondays always get me down...

Ni hao (that means hello... I now know maybe 4 phrases in Chinese) and greetings from the land of unexpected thunderstorms.

Today was the first full day of my experience here in Taipei, and it may prove to be exactly that. To say the least, it will be an interesting adventure.

I woke up bright and early at 5:15am ready for whatever the day would bring. The entire group (all of whom had gotten here from 2 to 5 days before I did) was surprised to see me up and alive in the International Office this morning. They had assumed I'd sleep through the day. The thing is, my body thought it was Sunday afternoon, so there was no sleeping to be done.

Anyhow, my suite-mate, Anita from Canada, and I walked to Starbucks to begin the day. Although I was literally POURING sweat by the time we got there (the humidity here is vicious), I still ordered a hot doppio macchiato. BTW- the partner discount card doesn't work here and they don't open 'til 7:30. Lucky kids.

After returning back to the International Office, Robert paraded us around, making introductions to the students we'll begin teaching tomorrow morning about our "expertise," how we were "specially selected" to be here, etc. My friend Monica and I exchanged furtive glances and surpressed giggles when he told the room that she was quite well known at the University of Texas for her research endeavors. Apparently I am a great scholar with many specialities [I don't think he knows about my terrific door-painting skills or the greatness of my extra-foamy cappuccinos, so I'm not really sure to what he was referring]. By far the greatest quote of the morning (addressed to the students) was:

You have all been selected very carefully [for this program] through a random process.

I had to laugh out loud at that one.

After the first dog and pony show, we had some free time. I walked around the nearby area with Amy (from my FLE program at UT) and Craig (from Enlgand, but lives in Taiwan) who are the other folks besides me teaching the intermediate students. I named us Team Intermediate. Sounds imposing, huh?

We found a place to buy towels, went to the grocery store to buy cleaning supplies (yeah, there's a lot of griping I could do about this, but maybe I'll wait until later. Let's just say that my sink and tub are white now, versus the brown they were before. I'm sure there'll be bigger fish to fry... uh, complain about... later), and then went to lunch. It was a nice outing, lunch was good (although mine was so spicy that I had to stop and literally take a breather for a few minutes in the middle- the waitress didn't bring our drinks until AFTER our meals were gone), and it was nice to visit with Craig about what it's like to teach in Taiwan. During lunch, it began to pour rain outside, and it continued to get heavier (while we waited on our tea to get to us). By the time we left, it was an outright downpour (none of us had thought to bring our umbrellas, naturally), and I found myself running drenched through the streets of Taiwan, laughing at the top of my capacity, grateful I'd work the brown skirt instead of the white one today.

The afternoon was another orientation/introduction session with students, then some "planning" time with our teaching cohorts. I got really tired around 3:30pm (2:30am CDT), and finally made it back to my flat for a nap around 4:30. I was planning on going to dinner with Amy and Jacques (not Cousteau), but slept through their knocking on the door. I visited some with Greg and Monica for a while before deciding to catch this blog up, shower (I figured out how to turn on the gas so we have hot water now), and hit the board bed.

Please e-mail me what's happening with you back home! I love you and miss you (and am trying to figure out how to post videos on-line)! Talk to you soon!

posted by mitsi @ 9:40 PM