Hello Blog

Well, it's Sunday, and that means the date of departure for my semester abroad is just one week away!  My visa (and with it, passport) arrived in our mailbox in the very nick of time Friday evening, just late enough to keep things interesting without causing any true panic.  My schedule from here on out is as follows:

- Spend the next week stressing out and still packing only at the last minute
Sunday, Feb 12: Get on plane to Taipei, Taiwan!!!!!
Tuesday, Feb 14: Get off plane in Taipei, Taiwan!!!  Yeah.  Not a typo. Two days later.  (Granted, 14 hours can be accounted for by the time difference, but still.) Luckily, after a brief layover in Seattle, I am excited to say I will be boarding EVA airlines!  "Excited?" you say. "I've never even heard of EVA airlines."  Well, neither had I.  So I googled it.  And the results couldn't have been more magnificent.  As it turns out, EVA Air is home of the extraordinary...

Hello Kitty airplanes!  What a treat!  And if you think the outside is impressive, you will be dazzled by what lies within... Hello Kitty seats!  Hello Kitty meals!  Hello Kitty uniforms on the flight attendants! 

Hello Kitty welcomes you

Unfortunately not every plane in the EVA fleet is decorated with such character.  I figure if I do end up on one of the prized Hello Kitty planes, it will be a good omen that my semester will go smoothly and I will adapt to the new and foreign culture with grace, be accepted by my peers despite my blunt, blundering American ways; I will make friends, learn lots, have adventures, make lifetime memories, and never have a down moment.  If I don't get a Hello Kitty plane, I am doomed.  I guess we'll see what fate decides.

A lot of people have been asking me if I'm excited.  The truth is, where I am right now, this whole trip is much more a source of stress and anxiety than excitement.  Part of me is eager to see what wonders the far east has in store, but most of me is convinced I am going to forget to pack THE MOST VITAL THING, or my phone and bank accounts will freeze up because I forgot to activate blah blah whatever, or that I will have forgotten to register for any classes and it'll be too late and the registration period already passed (actually, this one is kind of true.  lollll).  Here are the top five things I am most nervous about:

1.  Packing/Preparations, and my potential failures in those areas.

2.  The Classes.  Hello? They're ALL ASIANS.  THEY WILL ALL BE SETTING THE CURVE.

3.  The Food.  I have spoken to several of my friends who have been to Taiwan about the food options.  I cleverly put on an air of excited curiosity to mask my terror.  

"So, what are, like, the weirdest foods you've seen in Taiwan that I should try or not try?" I smile. SO EXCITED!  And they are so excited to share with me!

Here's what I got:

- Pig's blood stew

- Pig's blood (straight up, aw yeah!)

- Stinky Tofu

- Chicken's feet

- Frog's legs

- Fish heads

- Candied tomatoes on a stick

Um!!!! What??  Truth be told, everyone I talked to raved about the food, and I will definitely try some of the crazy stuff just to say I did.  Still, it's not like I'm going to an exotic restaurant and tomorrow can go back to my normal cuisine.  Every meal I eat for the next however many months will be foreign to me, at least somewhat.  Although I have heard Taipei is chock full of 7-11's, so at least I can wash it all down with a slurpie.

4. The Dorms.  Rice University: Dorms like palaces.  National Chengchi University: Dorms like... well, they're good for building character.  They have a security guard at the door with whom you check in every time you enter.  Single-sex dorms with no co-mingling allowed.  They sleep 4 to a room, as in, I will have 3 roommates, potentially none of whom will speak English.  I am pretty sure I read that the showers only have hot water for a few designated hours a day.  I was actually told by a staff member that the idea is that you go to school to study and so they intentionally make the dorm rooms uncomfortable.  The weirdest thing to me is that the school doesn't provide mattresses!  When one of the resident staff members told me this, she said with a comforting tone, "But don't worry, we use these thin bamboo mats, so they're not that expensive."  Great.  I feel so much better now.

I didn't google image "disciplinary institution".  This is my real dorm. 

Now see that above is a picture of how the room is provided, without the mattress.  Here it is furnished with mattress and full bedding:

Much better!

5.  The Whole Language Thing.  I don't speak Chinese.  What am I doing??  Why on earth did I choose to go to a country that doesn't speak English!!  Right now it feels like my past self was playing a trick on my current self by signing up for this, and is cracking up at my current self's impending fate.  My classes will be taught in English and there was no language pre-rec for the program, but I still can't help but feel like this might be a really key mistake on my part.  I have been using some language tapes from the Austin public library to get a head start.  I can't actually converse with anyone but - after just four 30-minute lessons! - can now at least tell them that I don't speak Chinese.  As if it isn't obvious by my blank stares.  (Also, one of my friends who lived in Taiwan assured me that at least I look so unmistakably white that no one will expect me to speak any Mandarin.  So, that's good, I guess.  Low expectations.)  But seriously, my skills are coming along, and the entirety of my expertise is as follows:

Excuse me, can I ask you something?

Do you speak English?

I don't speak Chinese.

I don't speak very well.

I am American.

Are you Chinese? [not so relevant in Taiwan, but maybe a good conversation starter.  more likely to seem racist/offensive]

Thank you.

I love beer.

You are dumb.

(the last two are not actually from the tapes but lasting remnants from my middle school friends who took Chinese.)

As encouragement in my endeavor, my mom sent me this lovely Chinese poem:

Encouragement?  Or mockery?

I guess if I catch myself in a bind, I will just repeat "shi" a bunch of times and hope that the right ones come out.

Tonight I will leave you with my newest Chinese phrase, from some Taiwan-related wikipedia page:

Can you read that?

Yeah, that's right! I said no sugar, bitch!!! Dietary restrictions ain't nothing to fuck with!  But seriously.  Anyway I'm sorry if this entry (is that what they call them? entries? posts? I am new to this.) seemed snarky, negative and complaint-filled.  Underneath the anxiety I really am optimistic about this semester and I promise once I actually set sail my entries will all be chock full of exclamation points (even more than usual!!), and words like "awesome!" and "breathtaking!" and "Sooooo fun! :P".  And of course they'll all be sarcasm-free, because I don't even think they have invented sarcasm yet in Taiwan, and I certainly don't know how to do it in Mandarin.  

Okay.  How do I end these things?  Taiwan Toni out. (I'll get the hang of it...)