The Arrival.

The night that I arrived I was exhausted. I mean, I had slept on the plane, but a total of about 20 hours on a plane will take its toll, sleep or not. We went to this marvelous little rice porridge shop owned by my counselor. My first host family lived up on a mountain to the slight south of Taipei. I pretty much passed out most of the way there, and upon arrival I stumbled up to the room that would be my new home for many months. Upon awakening, this sight greets me.

It finally hits me right then and there. I’m actually in Taiwan, and this beautiful mountain was to be my home. I sit down at the breakfast table and start munching on some bread left there. Suddenly I see my host father performing taichi across the window in the backyard. Man, is life different. That day my host mom takes me down the mountain riding the local bus. In total it takes about thirty minutes one way to get to the city. Once we arrived at Xindian, in the outskirts of Greater Taipei, we went to the MRT station to get me a subway card to load money on for transport. In Taipei they have one of the most extensive and well maintained public transportation systems in the world, and it would be my main mode of transport my entire year there. I requested that we went to a couple of old places I used to know from my prior one month trip there, seeing some old comforting sites, and feeling less nervous overall in the grand scheme of things. The orientation at which I would meet the other students would be in a few days, and little did I know how much would change in those first days….