I know the heart of life is good.

It’s the New Year, how weird. I can honestly say as I was watching the fireworks in Taiwan taking gulps from the champagne being passed around that I did not have any particular feeling about 2009. Usually, I have some sort of feeling…the year will be exciting, different, a transitioning year, sad, good, bad, whatever. This year, nothing. I just felt…hm…slightly nauseous from drinking champagne too fast? Yeah, that’s really the only emotion I had going on and that’s more a physical reaction than an emotion, really. Maybe that means I get to make this year whatever I want and I until I decide it’s just a blank slate. Maybe I need to make some decisions. I’ve been feeling that for awhile.
I got back from Taiwan Sunday night and it was quite the adventure. I’m really bad at retelling detailed stories of events that impacted me, but let me try a little bit. First, let me say that I planned little to none of this trip. I bought plane tickets (for me and my friend), know what cities we were going to, and looked up some things to do in said cities, but I didn’t book hotels or even look to see where hotels were, did not download maps, didn’t check any sort of transportation provided within cities….nothing like that. I went in pretty blind, just to see what would happen. And events happened. The first full day in Taipei was rainy, but we had managed to get a sweet tourist map from the airport (should have thought to ask for one of those for every city since it was in ENGLISH) so we easily found our way around a city full of food stands, motorbikes, and shrines/temples. It was a good time, a bit wet, but great. Then, we ventured onto Tainan. We were in the MRT station looking a bit confused for no longer than 20 seconds when we hear , “I can help, how can I help?” coming from behind us. What do we find but the friendliest 5-language speaking Indonesian University student ever. He was beyond wonderful leading us to the train station and teaching us how to ask for tickets in Chinese all but 2 minutes before HIS train pulled away. It made my heart swell. I did actually forget how to say that Chinese sentence but realized that if you say “two (insert city name here)” the ticket person knows what you mean. One thing I overlooked when thinking about this trip…it was the New Years holiday. The high speed rail tickets were sold out and we had to get standby slow bus tickets. We couldn’t get on the first bus, so we had to wait about an hour or a bit more to get on a bus for the 4-4 ½ hour ride to Tainan. Awesome anyways because we basically bused all the way down Taiwan (that’s what she said?). Tainan provided entertainment in the form of seeing a college acquaintance, watching a worship dvd in a christian café and feeling the longing for a great church, trying bubble tea for the first time, New Year‘s fireworks, a ride on a motorbike, and the kindness of a man at a 7 eleven who knew me and Lauren were cold so he gave us weird meat broth. The broth was actually tasty and more importantly, hot. It was warmer in Taiwan than Korea, but that night was chilled. After Tainan we went to Taichung. LAME. It’s an up and coming city in Taiwan and it has….things it could offer a traveler who plans ahead. I am not that traveler. Taichung woulda been a bust had I not gotten the best phone call ever. It went something like this: *ring* (Lauren: should we answer that? Who would call us here? No one knows we’re here…) Me: Hello? Then I hang up because person couldn’t hear me. 30 secnds later *ring* Me: “Yobosayo? (Korean hello) Oh, oh! HI! Yeah, okay, definitely, sounds great…..okay, yeah, we’ll be down in just a minute! Okay! Bye!” And who was on the other end but a friend of the hotel owner who had heard we wanted to go to the night market, so he wanted to take us. Turned out to be a great guy named Wesley. Great English speaker, made Taichung much better than it would have been. Lauren was a bit freaked that a random man had called our room to take us somewhere in a country where we didn’t speak the language and had never been before…but I figured it was harmless. I could have been wrong, but I wasn’t so it’s fine. The major snag that made me want to set things on fire happened on our last day in Taipei. I needed to change money into NTD that I didn’t change in the airport when I got in (HUGE mistake) and found that I could not. I was a very unhappy girl when I realized through the tireless labor of a random network marketing journalism University student that they changed Yen, USD, Canadian, HK, and Euro….but not Won. Kinda doesn’t make sense since Korea is so close, but they were not fans of the Won in Taiwan. Sucked for me…but my Visa card found a way around that. And that student? Yeah, he went around with us for probably an hour trying to find a place to change our money before we FORCED him to stop after he tried a chain of jewelry stores in a desperate attempt to get my money changed. The Taiwanese are probably the most helpful and kindest people I have ever encountered overseas.
Longest. Blog. Ever. Sorry about that, I just know that I had mentioned to some people that I was going to Taiwan and I didn’t want to leave everyone hanging with no stories since we all know when I travel weird things happen. I do feel as if I went through an amazing process in Taiwan that I really didn’t expect. I feel more motivated, grounded, sure of who I am…it’s hard to describe. It’s as if before I was just going through the motions of life, unsure of everything around me, unsure of what would happen next. In Taiwan I got a sense of security, a sense that who I was before was still there, I could and should accomplish things just as I would was I back in the states. It’s so hard to describe in words and the words I just used are not doing what happened justice in any way, but just know that I feel more confident that my future is not dark in any way but bright because I can accomplish things I had forgotten I was capable of just a couple of months ago.
Today I joined a gym, learned how to ask for a discount in Korea, and had my students yell at me for going off on a tangent about math (since numbers are universal, they’d rather read English than long division as it turns out….over achievers). I also had my boss tell me the most awesome thing ever. My hot water has been funky for around a month not. I told him before I left for Taiwan that my shower was not getting hot, just lukewarm and he even came over to make sure I wasn’t lying before leaving and saying, “Well, I am not a handyman I cannot fix that.” Duh, that’s why I told you to call someone…. Anyways, he said he would fix it while I was gone but he didn’t. I had one lukewarm shower before I made the decision to join a gym and take advantage of their reliable steamy showers. He asked me today if it was any better (even though no one had done anything to fix it) to which I said, “I don’t know, I’ve been going to the gym.” His reply? “Oh, you should just go to the gym everyday and wash up.” Yah. Seriously?! Really? That’s how you’re fixing this problem? When he came by to check it the first time he tried to tell me it wasn’t worth fixing because I would only be there another month or so. I informed him very quickly that I would be wanting a hot shower within that month. No worries though, someone is coming by tomorrow to fix it. Thank God he knew I would not actually settle for the solution of making the gym my pseudo home.
And that is my novel.