November 2, 2003

I think I got on the wrong flight, cause I dont think I am in Taiwan, I am in Heaven. Cheesy? Yes, maybe a little. But I can not remember a time when things have fallen into place like the past couple of weeks have. Let me explain.

About a week into the month of October I got word that the company I was working for in San Francisco on a temporary basis had made a job offer to someone permanent for my position. So the job that I thought would last til December or so was ending sooner. Whew! I was glad. Dont get me wrong, the people I worked with were great, but the job was a bit tedious, and the travel bug was itching like never before. But I am loyal and had promised that I would stay until they found someone. But with this news of it ending, I was free to peruse the international job boards and start looking for my next overseas expereince.

I spent most of this time looking for work on Dave's ESL cafe, www.eslcafe.com, looking for a job teaching English. I already found an ESL teacher certification course in Thailand that I was interested in, but leaving sooner than January meant that I would not have the funds for this, and I just didnt have it in me to look for another temp job and housing situation. SO, I went looking for work.

The first day I applied to about 5 schools, mostly in Asia, but I think one was in Egypt as well. Day 2 I applied to about 3 more, and then I waited. A few days later I got an email from one of the more appealing schools requesting an interview. Yippie. We arranged for an interview the following sunday.

The interview came and went, and I thought went well. But I really could not tell. I knew then that I really wanted the job: it was part-time, paid almost as much hourly as I was making in San Francisco, provided training, health insurance and more. Most importantly I got a really fuzzy warm vibe from the owner of the school, who was the one I interviewed with. I just got the sense that he wasnt out to just make a buck or two, he really liked what he was doing and started the school cause he wanted to teach the way he thought would work best for the kids. Not to mention the fact that he started out just 7 years ago doing the same thing then what I was trying to do now.

He said in the interview that if the job was offered to be I would know within 3 days. Day one went by-nothing. Day two mostly went by-nothing. Then finally there was an email, "Job Offer" was in the subject line. I nearly fell out of my seat. I pranced around the office bursting with energy. I just had to tell a few people the good news. So, I little over a week later, here I am in Tainan, Taiwan.

Good weird things have been happening since I took this job. When I went to apply for my 60 day Taiwan Visa I got a multiple entry visa. This is supposidly hard to do, and I did not even request one. A multiple entry visa is one where you can leave and enter the country as many times during the time period of the visa. Then, when I went to the BART (train) station in San Francisco to go the airport, I got to the train area with the train already there and the doors open. I made it inside with no wait time at all. I got to the airport with little effort, and made it there with 3 hours to spare. Nice.

On the first of two planes I would take to get to Tainan, I met a very nice man American businessman who was on his way to Indonesia, Walter. Apparently they double booked my seat so I was waiting in one of the stewardess seats when Walter took the seat in front of me. He asked if I was on a business trip, which I thought was really rather funny. I look about as un-business like in my too baggy khakis and ripped upjacket. But I was carrying a laptop bag, so I guess that was his clue.

I decided that the culture shock in Taiwan was going to be so great, that I just had to do something different on this trip than on the others, so I bough some Dramamin, motion sickness pills, that I knew usually made me drowsy as hell. And it did.I slept most of the flight. Which was easy enough to do, because after they figured out where to seat me, they were kind enough to do so in a two seat row by the window, with no one sitting next to me. I was able to curl up into a ball and sleep with relative comfort. How often does that happen in Economy class. Never, if you're me!

By the time I woke up it was about an hour to go and Walter was making a round to see if I was up to chatting. He gave me some pointers on told me some gross bug eating stories, and I was able to help him with ideas about working in hostels in Germany. It was a highly pleasant conversation. I never have a hard time meeting people in hostels, but I rarely meet them on planes, but during this trip that was just not the case.

The first part of the flight was from San Francisco to Taipai, the second from Taipai south down to Kaoshung. I thought that I would go through customs/immigration when landing in Taipai, so I was nervous. Although I agreed to a 13 month contract with this school, there was a round about way that we needed to approach me getting residency. It goes something like this: I enter the country on a 60 day tourist visa, and once I arrive we start work on my ARC (Alien Resident Card). It takes about 6 weeks to get this card, which is why the 60 day visa is needed. Once that is in place I can open a bank account, get health insurance, and even a Taiwan drivers license.

To be honest, if I had known this detail before talking with the owner, I would not have agreed to the interview in the first place. I have spent enough time flying around with one-way tickets lieing to customs folks in the past two years. And one of the appeals of getting a legit English teaching job is that I fly in with no glitches or possibility of any. But I didnt know this, and by the time he told me I was hooked.

So there I was in Taipei approacing what I thought was the customs officer with yet another one way ticket. Growl.

But, it was merely a tease, he was just the transfer flight man. As I clutched onto my fake forward ticket plans to Japan and my bank account information (proof that I was not intending on outstaying my 60 days in Taiwan) he just pointed me to the gate where my flight to Tainan would be. Wow. Ok, so I would at least get to Tainan before anything bad would happen.

I had heard so many stories about customs officials sending people back home for a variety of reasons, and sometimes with no reason at all. I dodged a few flights into London by buying a cheap flight through Ryanair and just not using the flight. But I went through London so much last year that they started to think that I was living there and just leaving the country to extend my stay (which, by the way, I would have if I found work!). My American boss in Rome got sent back to Rome when she was going from there to Italy to do this exact same thing to extend her time in Italy. So you can understand why I was nervous as hell that my time passing through customs was over. I could have bought a round trip (return) ticket and spared myself this grief, but no company would let me extend the ticket at a later time for more than 12 months. So no matter what I did I would be throwing 1/2 the ticket down the drain, a sum of at least $300USD. This was enough for month of rent in Taiwan, if not more. And I am stubbornly cheap, so I bought the one-way ticket and held my breath.

So I got on the plane to Jaoshung and hoped for the best. I met another businessman on this plane, name Bill (English name, that is), he was from China. He had been living in the US for about 8 years. He too was on a business trip to a few locations in Asia, and was all too happy to give me more advice and let me know that he thought I would have the best time in Taiwan, and he wouldnt mind switching places with me. haha. ok, that was cool. But the flight was only 45 minutes, and there I was again facing customs.

(Lots of random notes from here on down)

Customs man, onward ticket, phone number of contact in Taiwan, raised eyebrows and huffy, and asked if my Taiwan contact was picking me up (he was). I didnt think he was going to let me in, but he did. By the hair of my chiny chin chin. (these are notes, more details later)And our baggage came quickly, maybe about 5 minutes waiting time after going through customs. wow.

met T. and A. want to find an apt today. everyone mopping floors. small of mold everywhere. borrow scooter, borrow cell phone, gift box: cell phone, phrase book, toilet paper pack, keys to scooter. (more notes)

we stopped for breakfast, chinese dessert and amazing beef noodle dish. then an iced tea with A. tesco for sheets (the pillowcase did not in fact come with the fitted sheet even though it said it did), a rain poncho, scooter helmet, amazing rice snack, and veggies.

back to apt to make arrangements for rent payment and drop my stuff off. sleep and watch "While you were sleeping." shower. you can clean your whole bathroom with this kind of shower, downfall....your floor is wet for a long time. kinda like it, but it is day one.

describe the apt. remote control for TV (free cable) and air conditioning. there is also free DSL, but I dont have my computer set up for it yet, soon enough! electricity is free to a certain point, and it is furnished. desk, tv, closet, nightstand, chair for desk, and small refrigerator (a very loud one at that). the total rent cost is $206 US per month. wow.

then scooter lesson.

Still day one. T. and A. just took me for a scooter lesson. It was really amazing. I owned a scooter back in Harrisburg, PA when I went away to college for the first time. But it only lasted for a few months, then it was stolen from our porch. Found days later by the police-completely wrecked. Have not had one since. But as I was riding tonight memories of falling on the other one during the rain flooded back to me. Weird. I didnt even remember that part until then. I just remembered loving riding one. I did really well tonight though. At first I was riding with my feet on the ground like Fred Flintstone to stop and make turns and everything. But then I just stopped doing that. Was kinda automatic. Maybe I am more adaptable than I think I am.

The other scooter drivers are a bit mad while driving. It really does appear that the rule of the road is to just drive and see what happens. Kind of like playing chicken back home, where you speed into each other and wait for the weaker person to turn away before something dangerous really happens. Think I will stick to the less crowded streets for now. It's really hard to see anything while you are driving that fast, even though when I looked at my speedometer I was only going about 20 kilometers per hour, it felt fastish. But I have gotten (and prefer really) so used to walking.

The one thing that is really different in driving a scooter is making left turns. In the US you would creep up on the left lane and kinda wait to be hit or successfully turn, whichever happened first. Here you cross the street that you want to turn left onto, then turn 90 degrees, and then go straight. There are even boxes there with scooter symbols letting you know that this is where you should be to go that way. Very interesting. I bet this method is much safer than ours. But then again, that may be the only safer thing driving wise here. Hahah. They really put New Yorker drivers to shame. Also, you will see whole families on one scooter. Like tonight, we saw this woman on a scooter with her two children between her and the handle bars. Wow. I am sure that if you grow up with it you are good at the balancing thing, but this same woman would get thrown n jail for doing that in the states, something about neglect or abuse or something.

During part of the lesson we went to a night market. It was amazing how many people were awake at just 9 and 10pm. Whole families were sitting around eating yummy food, shopping, and playing games at the market. The prices seemed pretty cheap, but I am just starting to get used to the exchange rate. I am tempted to buy, buy, buy but I want to hold off until I find what I really want and need. Need to get this computer hooked up the internet first of all. Then some real shoes and then some shirts. I think I may have only about 6 or 7 shirts with me,which means doing laundry once a week, no way! There is a laundry room in the building that I am in, but I dont want to spend that much time and energy when there were shirts we saw tonight for $3 and $6 USD. It is weird becuase the currency is called "New Taiwan Dollars" but then it can also be refered to as dollars and just "NT." So I left a country where people would say "only one dollar" only to come to another place where people say "only one dollar."

And do they really speak that much Enlgish here. Yes and no. Granted I have not even been here 24 hours yet, but so far a young guy at 7-11 spoke perfect English to me, and loads of vendors at the night market knew enough English to try and entice me to buy their goods. Even the man in the electronics store knew enough to argue with me (I am so bad really!) about bringing my purse into thier store. Apparently my mini-backback of a purse is too big to be considered a purse here. He wanted me to put it in a locker if I wanted to "shop in their store." I waited outside for A. and T. Sorry, but my purse and all my money and ID do NOT leave my site, secure locker or not.

The weather is not that bad yet. It rained a bit today, and was fairly to very humid. Sticky as hell when riding the scooter. But it reminded me of the end of summer at the New Jersey or Maryland shore growing up. Ahhh, how it seems to nice and fuzzy now, but truth be told I could not wait to leave the east coast. I am also happy with the type of clothing that is available here. I live near a big University, so there are lots of cheaper places to buy clothes around there. I dont know if I will fit into anything yet, seeing how the Taiwanese are significantly smaller than my Italian American body, but I will find out soon enough. Now that I know that cute shoes and skirts are easy to wear with the scooter, I want some cute clothes. I have been feeling so asexual and drab looking lately. I cant get too crazy though, I am getting looks becuase I am a foreigner, and I dont want to attract anymore attention than that.

I start work tomorrow. I am glad really. I was going to ask T. when I start, but then I wanted to see how the jet lag was. It's pretty bad. I have felt pretty dizzy a lot of the day, and I feel like I have not slept in a week. But I think once I can tear myself away from this compueter I will have a good nights sleep. Glad I am tired, cause I dont have a comforter yet, and sleeping without anything always feels weird. I am very glad this place is furnished, but I will probably buy a bunch of small things to personalize it anyway. Lots of plants, must buy plants.

The food is amazing here. It all looks so fresh and yummy. I had some sort of almost fried rice balls with some sweetener for dinner. From 7-11. Starting easy, with places that have set prices and pictures on the food. Haha. Well, they said that J., the other native English teacher, goes to McDonalds a lot cause he has a hard time ordering anywhere else. I have to use my LP food glossary tomorrow and see how hard it is. It was pretty intimidating today when we went for breakfast, but I think once I get it, it will stick. I definately dont want to go to a place where they speak English. There is enough English around this city already. All the street names are in Chinese and English. And a lot of adverts and signs are in both too. Some are just in English. I think it is trendy and cool to use English here in ads. I guess we do the same with French and Italian back home, dont we.

More later, right now I have to play with my US bank account so I can get money from an ATM today, this is an extremely cash based society and I might as well hang my travelers cheques on the wall, they are that useless. (I wont do that of course!)