May 2009

Whew! Best couple of days on the trip so far!

Turns out our family had some friends in Taitung and my parents wanted me to visit them (didn't know who they were!), so I decided to check it out for the weekend. Arrived late Friday night, but before going to bed I had a nice home-cooked meal.
On Saturday, I went to the beach with Milly and Sarnie - it was probably a 20-minute drive from Milly's house, but it was worth it. The beach was essentially deserted, there was nice sand, a great view of the coast and the mountains and there were waves! Usually when I go to the beach there's a small tide and that's about it, but this one had waves you could actually ride. I was told that this was in fact the flat season and there's not much surfing to do at around this time. Mark, who is from South Africa and teaches English, met up with us an hour or so after. He happened to bring along his surfboard and teached me how to surf! Although I sucked of course, I still had a lot of fun. I wish we could've stayed longer (Milly and I had to go to their family friend's for dinner) because Mark's buddy arrived with a Sea-Doo.
After dinner, Milly and I were still hungry so she took me out to a nearby restaurant for some seafood and then we hung out at the nearby city beach. Not a beach for swimming because it's full of rocks, but more for hanging out and enjoying the view. We sat there for an hour or so, just chatting and listening to the waves. It was kind of funny though, there were some sort of spotlights coming from what I think were lighthouses, but it was sort of an erratic spotlight (for some reason it reminded me of the eye of Sauron hahaha).
Afterwards, we headed down to "Blue Bar". It was this cute little outdoor bar/lounge that was just overlooking a small cliff and a view to the beach below. As Sarnie had put it earlier, some day a tsunami will probably take it out. In the mean time, it was an awesome place to just sit and chill to cap off the night. We sat with one of Milly's friends from school and a couple of guys originally from Taitung who work in Kaohsiung and Taipei and are just in town to visit.

Sunday was pretty laid back. We went to a local art gallery to check out some amazing Chinese paintings as well as some Native Taiwanese artifacts. Briefly headed down to the city market and the city beach where I took a lot of photos of some old fishermen. They weren't fishing to make money, but just because they love to fish. Love it. Tried some of the local green onion cake (a bit too greasy, but still good) and shaved ice before departing on my train back to Taipei.

Had a great time. Man, if my exchange were in Taitung, I could just go to the beach and practice surfing every weekend. That would be fantastic. Oh well, Taipei has its perks?

Last Wednesday, when I first arrived I had about 5 minutes of panic. Expecting to have that fun feeling of walking through the gates, seeing your name on a sign, and seeming very important, I found no one there to meet me. I frantically pulled out my laptop to find out the cellphone numbers of my contact persons, but met up with him (Lim) about two minutes later. Phew. We dropped off my luggage in my dorm (with which I'm sharing with a local student), and went out for lunch. I decided to jump off the deep end and asked Lim to take me to somewhere local and authentic. If we're going to continue the metaphorical swimming pool, let's just say I took a few mouthfuls of water when I jumped in. I enjoyed the beef noodles, but as for some of the other appetizers (100-year old egg) I wasn't ready to warm up to that just yet. He and Wei-Yi (other contact person) said I had a small appetite. Ouch.
In a way, I guess I underestimated the immensity of the language barrier. Not only did I not speak the language, but having only Chinese characters everywhere made me feel completely lost. That evening I could only really go to the 7-Eleven and grab a few snacks for dinner because I couldn't read anything else anywhere and nothing was familiar. I wanted out!

On Thursday, we met up with my supervisor for the exchange, Dr. Liu. He showed me around the lab briefly. Lim, Wei-Yi and I got me familiar with the transit route to/from work, and we also stopped at a nearby night market. I tried the stinky tofu, and it didn't taste half bad. Honestly I didn't realize the smell of it until about 3/4 of the way through for some reason.
My roommate is super introverted. He talks maybe a sentence or two to me when I'm in the room, and it's mostly about rules. Oh well, at least I know that I can get peace and quiet when I need it.

Friday was a turning point for me. Went to the hospital on my own, and I did not get lost. The workday was pretty boring until around 3 PM when Dr. Liu took me around to see some patients. He made me put on a white coat, and I looked ridiculous because I was wearing sneakers and shorts. Oh yeah, I'm a tall foreign-looking dude too. Some of the looks I got from the patients and families were pretty funny, but some of them said 'xiexie' to me. Really don't know what they were thanking me for haha...
On the way home, I decided to jump off the deep end again. I attempted to go back to that same place we went to on Wednesday, this time on my own, hopefully ordering the beef noodles. The owners didn't understand me, so they called their daughter, who translated it to them. She also wrote it down in my journal, which was nice! On top of that, while I was enjoying my dinner, they gave me these two dessert candies for free! And when I was leaving, the whole family said bye, it really made my day. So to keep the momentum going, I ventured down the market near TMU, and got myself some $1.25 bubble tea and the best green onion cake I've ever tasted with hand gestures and pointing. I was pretty proud of myself that day.

On Saturday, Wei-Yi, Ronald (her boyfriend) and I went to the National Palace Museum. It was all right... it was mostly just artifacts and pottery art from all the different Chinese dynasties. It was actually kind of neat to see that the art reflected the philosophy/policies of the leaders at the time. Turns out their 'prized' exhibit were these pieces of jade, one carved into the shape of a bokchoy (complete with accompanied louse) and a porkchop slice. The bokchoy was pretty detailed and impressive... and I don't even know how they got the jade to look like porkchop. Honestly, if it were on my plate at a restaurant, I would've eaten it. That's how real it looked. That evening we went to the Shilin. I think we were all pretty tired at this point, so we really didn't stay for that long. It was pretty massive, so I'm sure I'll make at least one more trip back.

Sunday I decided to go on a little adventure on my own. I decided to check out the shopping scene at the Sogo department stores and Taipei 101. In a nutshell, it was kind of disappointing. I've never been a big department store shopper, and the prices were pretty much similar to that in Canada. In the end, I didn't buy anything. Taipei 101 is where all the posh stores are at, so I just speed walked through the first floor. However, when I was downtown, imagine my surprise walking out of the department store, and having the street FLOODED with people. They were wearing bandanas, carrying signs, making noise, blowing horns. I had no idea what was going on. Soon after, they all started marching and chanting. Half intimidated, half fascinated - I had just seen a foreign protest! Cool beans.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have flown by. I visited Xiemen on Tuesday which was definitely the coolest shopping place I've been to so far. Bought a couple shirts for myself, a couple gifts for others... and I'm for sure going back there for a day. It seemed like there was a lot of Japanese influence, so I imagine I'll be breaking the bank when I hit Tokyo...

This leads me up to today, Thursday. I'm currently waiting for the ethidium bromide to settle into my gel before taking some pictures. Shit, I just heard some thunder and I do not have my raincoat.

Off to Taitung tomorrow! Wow, I can't believe I just recapped an entire week.

I know this isn't necessarily me at one of my destinations quite yet, but I'm giving this whole travel blog business a shot. I could easily just stick with my WordPress one, but I thought I'd give this a shot.

It's been pretty uneventful so far. I'm just glad I had my long stop-over at such a nice airport. Fortunately for me BK and Starbucks are both open 24 hours, and the third season of 30 Rock is pretty awesome.

I saw a woman wearing a protective mask again today (N95-grade?). Pretty hilarious.

I was a bit nervous about getting this whole thing going when we were driving to the airpot today, but the minute I set foot on the airport cement, it just all left. Something about airports really gets to me, I never get tired of them (well, not easily at least). I love the airplanes, the glowing signs, walking through the hangars, amongst the crowds of people form all over the world, and feeling like you're going somewhere significant.