Taipei Ta Da!

The bright lights of the city, and boy oh boy are they bright!

Taipei is everything I expected it to be. Smokey-smelly-tasty-noisey-polluted-beautiful-busy-city.

The smoke is thick above the city. A strange mix of heavy humid hot air and clouds that sit above make for a small hotbox of all the strange smells that humans make when they're living in such close quarters, it should smell bad but it just smells of my own excitement.

The noms are supreme (some of the best noms I have ever had)! and are to be found everywhere from the hotel to small allies between crowded buildings. Dumplings, and fluffy rice, and sticky rice, and rice with unidentified yet beautiful tasting unidentified stuff on it.

The roads are so busy that crossing them is scary even though the pedestrian light is green and 90 seconds is plenty of time the general chaos of what's happening on the other part of the road triggers a natural response of flight 'Go to the sidewalk! just stay there until the cars stop!' but they don't and inevitably I will have to cross the road...

The nightmarkets are so busy that they've grown to be their own small towns. Selling everything from bags, watches, stinky tofu, phones and dogs (puppies...) the place seems to be heaving with the excitement of newly found riches and consumerist pleasure.

I just finished my training today. Beers with my team mates (I should say colleagues now, but I want them to stay my team mates a little while longer) in a barn with a cover band was interesting. I think I may have just heard the only good version of Blue's famous single 'One Love' also, a hot small Asian girl standing on our table and singing is never a bad thing...

Training was intense. After a week of singing, playing, pretending we're an audience of 2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12/13/14/15/16 year olds sure does suck the joy out of you pretty quick and somehow it was okay because other people were doing it. Makes me think about whether or not I'd jump off a building just cos everyone else did it, seems likely.

I had an awesome time in Taipei, and again I only have the people that I met here to thank for it. Taiwanese people could possibly be the kindest people in the world and being on the receiving end of their helpful ways has been fantastic.

Tonight to sleep, tomorrow to Taichung=>find flat=> start teaching.

wish me luck, I'll need it...

D

Did that just happen?

So after an absolutely fantastic few weeks it was inevitable that there would be a little bit of disappointment at the end.

• The first came in the form of a venomous email in my inbox. Spewing with horrid anger and frustration that may, or may not have had anything to do with me.
• The second came when my flight to Taiwan was "Delayed until further notice." It left two hours after it was meant to, had shit movies (there's a Shrek 4?!). I slept one short hour out of thirteen before the lady next to me (who was eating very smelly dried fish sticks) decided to hop over me to get to the bathroom, and failed...
• The third, and most likely the most sever came in the form of the hostel. My job very kindly offered to put me up in the hotel where the training will be held from the moment I arrived, I turned them down and said I'll book a hostel so I could meet some people, perhaps go out, little bit of chat tatata... Who do I meet? A Scottish guy from the Borders that wanted to tell me all about Taiwanese tax law, and a Canadian guy who I overhear telling a Korean guy that before the British formed Pakistan there were no Muslims in India. Okay, so I go to bed, I'm wrecked I haven't slept in abut 36 hours, and this isn't my scene. I'm writing an email, and a little mosquito appears on the bed, hmmm... weird, the air con is on, and there's nets. BED BUGS. Place is crawling with them. So, am currently cradling all my worldly possessions sitting stuck (its 30c) to a faux leather couch in the common room with one 'Walter-the-night-porter" making eyes at me.

Is that three? I counted three there.

Let's hope it really does come in threes otherwise I'm in for some pain, and seriously, I'm waaaaaaaaayyyyyy too tired for any more pain.

Tomorrow I leave this hostel (I say tomorrow, I mean in a few hours, it's 5.44am)

On the upside, I was collected at the airport by a Merc with tinted windows which made me feel like a rockstar, and Taiwanese people are soooo nice and helpful (also tall and handsome which is an unexpected surprise.)

To shower, or not to shower? that is the question.

Below you will find an exact replica of said faux leather couch -- so good, they just had to have two!

couch

Here's hoping that the next post won't be a bad 'un too.

I have not been discouraged, just a little bad luck. Never killed anyone, right??

in out in out and shake it all about

This week has been amazing.

I had the most wonderful company while my folks were away on holiday in the shape of some of the lovely Erasmus ladies plus some of the loveliest from London and Edinburgh.

writing sentences to tell you about how great it was would make this entry too long so here's a few of the highlights in bullet point form:

• All these girls are beautiful. Superficial perhaps, but it sure makes it pleasant.
• It involved just the right amounts of intellectual conversation/silliness/boy chat/bitchy gossip.
• Everyone fitted into the house perfectly, cooking was a pleasure and there was no line for the toilet because of my mum's love of en suites.
• The food, oh the food! Nice to have a bunch of food loving/guzzling girls around. Even if my cheesecake wasn't amazing they still ate it and made nomming sounds while doing it, it made me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside.
• My fantastic friend Farrah showed me how to BBQ making boys completely redundant- well, nearly.
• Nearly everyone made it for this reunion, and the people who didn't will make it for the next one.
• My girlfriends like/love each other, even if they never met before.

Those are just a few of the reasons that my week was awesome. There are loads of others but some of those simply aren't suitable for Internet publication.

Now that I've completely unpacked, I shall start packing again for Taiwan. Yes, argh....

Exciting!

Dx