Settling in

After a few rather hilarious adventures and a renewed desire to learn Chinese, I have left Taipei, and I am glad for it. In hindsight, I must say that starting my journey to a foreign culture on the other side of the planet alone in a bustling metropolis was not one of my brighter plans. After the obligatory "WHAT am I doing here??" crisis of faith and about 24 hours of wrong train, wrong town, wrong language, and generally the wrong side of the bed, I have arrived and am in a much better place, physically and mentally, for it.

Well, I am in Jhunan now, a "town" in the province of Miaoli, on the western coast of Taiwan. Coast is used freely here, as I have seen no ocean since getting off the train, but a lot of words seem to mean something different here than they do at home.

Take the word town, for instance. At home, a town is like Ashland or Duluth, in GA. Small, ruralish, not a big population. The town of Jhunan is bigger than the city of Richmond. It's bustling and busy and built up, with cows and butterflies inexplicably popping up EVERYWHERE. I should say plastic or metal ones, not the real, respirating variety. Jhudon is beautiful, though, in its own way. Everything is really lit up with bright neon signs, giving it a very Las Vegas quality at night, but during the day, especially a nice day, like today, you can see all the beautiful trees and flowers that line the streets. The family that owns my school is very nice, and they took me to dinner last night after I got off the train and settled into my apartment.

Seriously, the Taiwanese eat SO MUCH. I had a half of a HUGE portion of beef fried rice, two pig ears (which Janait didn't tell me what they were until I had tried them), three shrimp breaded with some kind of amazing bread crumbs and served with a sweet pinapple sauce of some kind, a bowl of fish and tofu soup AND two dumplings and Simon, the husband, chided me for eating so little. No lie. Between the food and the driving (don't even get me started on the scooters), there is a lot for me to get used to here. However, I am in good spirits and I start training today (in about a half an hour, actually) so here's hoping that things will continue to look up.

Love you all, and I'll post more soon!