Today is March 16, 2019, which marks one month of me landing in Taiwan. I think i am acclimating, getting used to the schedule and the culture. I am definitely getting used to the food and i think its better that i do not have a scale here.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Most of y’all will notice that all this food is being eaten in restaurants, yes i eat a lot of street food here but i do not really have pictures because i am busy eating the food. Taiwan is home to a special type of beef soup noodles and they are alright but it seems Taiwan also specializes in everything else. The amount of cantonese food i eat here rivals what i ate back in Houston and probably rivals the amount my cousin is eating in Hong Kong. Most places do not have a lot of seating area especially in my part of town and night markets are all walking food. For cheap, quick, college student food i doubt anywhere in America rivals the five minute walking radius of my apartment. And the night markets are like a whole new world. I would like to thank my father for the super high levels of pickpocketing paranoia i experienced in the larger night market but they are wild still. My levels of night life have definitely expanded beyond sitting in the parking lot of a Chick Fila for hours waiting for a friend to get off work. Here there is no shortage of things to do and night markets only scratch the surface. The Europeans and Indians here love to drink and go clubbing, many start drinking at around 9pm and many do not stop until the police show up at 5am.

• 

This is the only picture i’ll show due to my general decency. But i have not been out in a while. I have struggled with sleep for a long time, either not getting enough and being tired or getting too much and being tired. When 8 hour nights out mix with a morning class of chinese everyday of the week one has to suffer and many of y’all will be glad to here i am choosing the classes over the clubs. The classes are hard, going from cantonese to mandarin often results in exasperated looks from my teachers as i try to fit the nine tones of a texan accent affected western grown cantonese into the five tones of mandarin. But the classes are doing to very good things, teaching me chinese in a country that speaks chinese and getting me out of bed before 1pm. Being here has definitely been rough for me so far, connecting with the Europeans in my apartment is difficult. While they would like to include you they often struggle telling you when and where they are going to do things. It also does not help that i do not attend the same university or share the same classes as many of the people throughout my apartment. Now the obvious solution is to make friends with other Taiwanese students. Well there is are a couple things that complicate that, one is that due to the nature of my classes there are no natives in my class and the other is that while the people here are extremely nice they don’t really have the vibe of trying to be your friend. It is definitely an experience, all facets of it, and it is not without its difficulties. Guess we’ll see how it is when month two comes around.

Nothing about this blog has any semblance of order or reason, mostly because i write whenever i get the urge. This post will not help the randomness but i hope this short gallery of photos of an experience that words don’t comprehend is enjoyable.

Now this trip happened last Saturday, the day commemorating my first week in Taiwan, and has only taken this long to be released because i am really good at procrastinating.

My Saturday started with two realizations, the french love hiking and Taiwan’s got enough nature for all the crammed together buildings. A short bus ride and half an hour in an uber and 11 international students stood at the bottom of the Dakeng trail. From the bottom it really did not look that bad and what a horrible assumption to make. The first ten or so flights of stairs are concrete and professional (well “professional”). They have a handrail along both sides and only serve to fool you and warm you calves up.

It was a nice little trail that opened up to a small area with a few pavilions for picnics but no real view out past the trees so our group picked a trail and continued to our final destination. Now it was right around this moment in my 20-20 hindsight when i realized i should have asked where we were going. Throughout all of this i had not asked any questions, it all started with someone asking if i wanted to go hiking and now there i was in what looked like a nice trail but no clue where we were planning on ending up. But hiking is hiking and it was nice to be out of the city. Far as i can remember i have never really hiked mountain trials, Enchanted rock is only a glorified rock and most of the time going off the trail is more fun than staying on. Gunnison in Colorado is part of the Rockies but pops and i wondered off the trail as soon as we got on it cause of some cool rocks (it’s inevitable) and most of the time we were not actually hiking it was more of wondering around at our own pace. But here on the Dakeng we were really trekking and in no time we were past the nice concrete steps and on to something i have never seen before. The trail looked like it had been built by boyscouts for an orienteering course with nothing more than some poles that make the worst firewood and aren’t good for much else. And why did it look so vertical and wow did i not sign up for this but mama didn’t raise not quitter among all eleven of us so up we went.

After all of fifteen minutes i had decided that i should have never skipped leg day in all 18 years i have on earth but at least the views were getting better. The way the trail had been built was definitely interesting and some of the scenery peeked out between the thick forest around us and i quickly found myself decently far behind the rest of the group as i stopped every time i thought i had found something worth taking a picture of but the others weren’t very irritated with me seeing as how they got to rest every time i had to catch up. Plus everyone enjoys getting their picture taken.

After an hour or so and all of us soaked with sweat (it ain’t quite Houston in August but it certainly not trying to shirk that challenge) we reached a secondary summit that overlooked a fair amount of the valley that leads from the mountain through Taichung to the sea. The island of Taiwan is basically divided in two by a spine of a mountain that runs through it with most of the cities based on the west coast facing China. Although the haze was pretty thick over the city, the forest valley leading up to it was clear and the media team (consisting of me with my camera and a belgian named Roch with his fanyc drone) set up to capture some of the beauty while the others took some time to sit around, rehydrate and get some food. The actual summit was smack in the middle of dense forest so most of the beauty shots came from this clearing on the lower summit.

After this nice and needed break we started our descent down the farside of the trail. Remember those calf burning logs they used to make the trail? Well going up is alright but going down is deadly. The round poles do not give much surface area that doesn’t encourage swift downward motion and they are spaced apart at just the right interval where a slip will coax you foot in between them and then snap your leg like a tooth pick. This made our descent slow but everybody made it down safely.

Finally we made it to the other side of the trail that spit us out right by a bus station that got us back into Taichung and finished our hike. Maybe when the soreness has died down five weeks from now we’ll find another trail to conquer.

February 23rd marks exactly one week since i stumbled of a plane into Taiwan!!!! So this post will be a short overview of things i have noticed about living in Taiwan and a much longer post about how i spent today with a lot more photos will come next week. My first real day was Sunday and it started at a place called Luce chapel on the Tunghai University campus meeting with some of my contacts in Taiwan. Beautiful building that looks like it is covered in gold pennies and the service was in mandarin so i do not really know what was going on. But i knew what came next, a dim sum restaurant called TimHoWan with some of the most amazing pork buns. Most of the first week as been uneventful as i settle in. Food is cheap and good, most of my apartment and i eat at a nearby fried rice stand where a bowl will run you about $70ntd (or $2). Which gets me into things i miss, the food here is different. The food is good there is no denying that but everything tastes just a little bit off, the cranberry juice is a little sweeter, the scallion pancakes are a little odd. It becomes an almost ominous sense of maybe the food is not all real and this reality is actually a simulation. It’s more likely that the ingredients used over here are different which is were this split in taste comes from. But despite all the good food i find myself missing mostly fast food, Whataburger, Chick-fil-a, any decent french fries and Dr. Pepper. This last year i spent so much time at Chick-fil-a or Whataburger with my friends that i think i have begun to associated the restaurants with the people that i miss. But there are things that i could get used to here. Despite my love for driving i think that the walking around is is great, it is a little of time to myself in between activities. The bustling of people is nice as well, Taichung is a dense city and there is never in quiet and while you may think that that would become annoying so far it is relaxing. It helps knowing there are people around when you are so far from home. The people here are also some of the friendliest people ever, willing to stop and help you with anything at any time. I think that, after this week, i will settle in just fine and be able to enjoy my time here.

At 11:40 on Thursday the 14th I boarded plane for Taiwan. Cool and all except that it is a 16 hour flight with really no hope of sleep. But the flight wasn’t too bad, noise cancelling headphones are a must and the food was kinda weird. i don’t know what i asked for but i ate it. Day one; Saturday morning in Taiwan i stumble of the plane and immediately was confronted by Taiwanese immigration bureaucracy but all was well as i managed to get a bus ticket from Taipei to Taichung. Two hours later and still partially catatonic from my flight i arrived in Taichung! Day one of travelling was yet to be over as I sat outside of my apartment’s office for 3 hours waiting for them to open.

Finally, I stepped into my apartment, my new home for the next few months and immediately felt like sleeping. I had been traveling for over 24 hours by the time i reached my apartment.

But before sleeping i needed a shower and that was when i realized i had not packed soap or shampoo and suddenly it hit me that i was not at home. There was a little bit of panic as i came this realization, and the realization that i really did not know how to buy supplies in taiwan. But with some help from another student in the apartment complex i managed to get what i needed, took a shower and headed to bed. i would call day one a success. i am now settled in Taichung, in a tiny apartment responsible for myself for the first time. Time to grow up.

next blog post will arrive as soon as i get over jetlag, thank you for your patience

In seven days I am leaving for Taiwan to begin a gap semester, an adventure from which i hope to experience things that will increase my maturity, conviction, and wanderlust. But before leaving there are things that have to happen, like packing. Today is Thursday, February 7th, of 2019 and exactly one week from my departure date. Most people who plan on moving across an ocean for extended periods of time start a process of preparation and packing weeks or months before they leave. I, however, have not. There may be several reasons for this none of which are a reasonable excuse. So now I have one week to pack, prepare for my day (well two days) of travel from my old home to my new one, and quell whatever insecurities i may have about leaving home for the first time. Wish me luck!