Hey folks,
I apologize that it's taken me almost a week for my first entry on here, I'm sure you are all curious as to how the adventure is going.
Well, getting here was the easy part.
The first thing that struck me about this country was the smell. As soon as I stepped out of the sliding glass doors into this place of blazing sun and endless humidity, the odor of the place assaulted my nostrils like a German machine gun squad. It wasn't necessarily a bad smell, but nor would I want to bottle it up; it just smelled. I think a lot of it was pollution because it's not so bad anymore and the airport is a good 30 minutes away from downtown Taipei. Then again, maybe I'm just used to it.
My first night in Taiwan I spent in a hostel called the Taipei Backpacker. It was small and quite clean and had a friendly staff. Did I mention it was wicked cheap? One night ran me $16. I shared a room of rickety bunk beds with a few chaps from Hess ( my employer). Steve, who is from South Africa (and whose accent reminds me of Albert for those who knew him), and Brian, a well traveled young man from Seattle, Washington. We stayed up late shooting the shit and comparing how screwed up our comparative countries are. There was also some random guy in glasses and an annoying nerd from California that never shut up.
The next morning we ran into another Hessian and had our photo taken in the main room of the hostel for the photo wall. The new guy's name was Peter and he happened to be my hotel roomy for the duration of training. He's a very pleasant fellow, 27 years of age from New Castle in New South Wales, Australia. He's confirmed to me that two past times of his country are drinking (a lot) and gambling.
Training. How could I sum up that one word? Stressful? Hmm. I feel like a kid who went up to the cockpit to see the pilot and now I have to land the plane in a typhoon before we run out of fuel and the pregnant woman in the lavatory gives birth.
Yea, overwhelmed.
We started with the Kindergarten curriculum and it took two days and then we had to make a lesson plan for 4 different sections because we didn't know which one they were going to have us teach. Doesn't sound too bad?
Try and solve a rubix cube with your feet, and then you'll know what its like. Oh, and you only have 4 hours to figure out how to solve 4 cubes. Goodluck.
Even though I still feel like the trainers are spoon-feeding us our lessons, I'm looking forward to completing training and heading to my branch city. I'll be heading about two hours to the SSW to Taichung City, which is the third largest city on the island with just over a million people. From what I've read and heard here Taichung is less humid than Taipei, cheaper, and less crowded.
Sign me up.
I'll try and get some photos on here as soon as I can, my CDROM is busted so I can't install my camera's software to take the photos off the camera. I hope this entry was at least entertaining, I trained for 9 hours yesterday until about 7pm and then I prepped my lessons until about 1am. Then I got up at 6am and worked on 'em some more and then demoed for an observer and then trained until 6. So yea.
I'm tired.
Next time I'll touch on street life and look, and the beer situation (which is gooood). I'll try and make that one not so rough draft. Until then, many days and pleasant nights, say thankya.
Fun Facts:
-Most people here don't obey traffic laws.
-Scooters are everywhere.
-All crosswalks are on pre-set timers and stop traffic in alternating directions every few minutes
-Chicken hearts are very delicious.
-The tap water is undrinkable.
-I had a cabbage salad with big pieces of tentacles in it.
-Buildings here are made of concrete and most people's balconies type areas are covered with iron bars. I assumed the bars meant "Whoa, bad neighborhood," but in reality it's because of typhoons sending debris into the air. Cozy.
-American Hip-Hop is very popular here, as is Karaoke.
-I can get a big meal from a street vendor for $2 american. Score.
-I can't walk more than 2 blocks in ANY direction from the hotel and not hit a 7/11. They are everywhere.