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