What Have I Done? What Am I Doing Here?

Look at that ham face, I look like Easter dinner.

So it’s 8:30 am in Taipei; I arrived just a few hours ago.  I’ve been walking around my neighborhood and have already found espresso, some Japanese restaurants, a Vietnamese restaurant, all kinds of things a Seattlite needs to survive in the world.  I just need to find a fish-and-chips karaoke bar and I’ll be set.

So the 2am flight on EVA air from Seatac to Taipei was fine.  I slept a little, watched a horrifically bad in-flight movie (don’t watch it), and as the plane was landing I started getting cold feet, thinking “what the hell am I doing here, I can’t believe I chose to do this with my summer.”  Week after week of culture shock and being a second language chump.  In the cab ride to my hotel I was trying to remember if I can call the cab driver “shifu” or not, trying to remember if Taiwan was a tipping culture…

I found my hotel at 8am and left my stuff there; check in isn’t until 3pm, so I’m kind of forced to walk my jetlag off.  I went around a couple of big city blocks, wandered through one of the lanes… sampled  a wonder bread breakfast sandwich with some kind of delicious black meat paste, and a rice burrito with pork AND fish powder and some spicy pickled veggies.

It’s almost 9am now; I’m cooling out in a coffee shop with free wifi.  Not sure what to do with the rest of my day.  Be a tourist?  Skritter?  Anyway, I do feel better about being here now.  Staying home in Seattle would have been awesome too, but I’ve already done enough of that in my life.  Having minor adventures in civilized countries will make me a more interesting person.  I hope.

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