I'm here!!

Just like that! After boarding in San Fran, I fell asleep almost immediately... so quickly that I never got one of the immigration papers you have to fill out. By the end of the flight, I was wondering why nobody had passed them out so when I started going through immigration the Taiwanese lady was like "YOU NEED FILL THIS FORM". Of course, I didn't have a pen, but a really nice American guy let me borrow it. I just woulda thought that being awake or not, they would have figured I wasn't, you know, a Taiwanese national and given me a form anyways to find when I wake - but I digress. Thankfully I was totally konked by the time I got on the place, because I was seriously asleep before we got in the air. Then for whatever reason the airplane crew decided that TWO IN THE MORNING WAS A GREAT TIME FOR DINNER and woke me up for that (but didn't wake me for the immigration form??). Food was disgusting and I was way too tired to eat it, and they took forty million hours coming back around to pick the trays up so I was nodding off trying to stay awake so my face didn't end up in my food.

So yes, sleep came after that, and I slept that uncomfortable airplane sleep where you wake up every thirty minutes because you're sooo uncomfortable. I slept until about halfway through the flight until my brain decided "Haha, it's 12 in the afternoon!" even though it wasn't. I tossed around for awhile, then read my Kindle for a bit, then watched a couple of movies. I got to watch Prince of Persia, Robin Hood, and a freaking Anthony Bourdaine: No Reservations marathon! Who else got to watch THAT on their flight, huh? I'm now a huge fan of Eva Air. Finally, they decided to disturb everyone again for breakfast, where the choice consisted of raw yet surprisingly rubbery scrambled eggs or chicken jook that looked like vomit. I chose the eggs.

Finally, we landed in Taiwan, and I bustled of the plane in search of adventure! The search for adventure turned into the search for my luggage though, when it took 45 minutes for mine to arrive. I was about to have a heart attack too, sure that they'd lost it between my connecting flights. After that, I literally walked through customs (nice old Taiwanese guy told me to have a nice day - didn't search me or even ask me any questions!). Finally, I walked through the doors and immediately spotted my international buddy, a girl named Alan. Seriously though, this girl is a saint - my flight got in at 5:20, which means she had to take a 3:00 am bus ride just to pick me up. Amazing? I think so.

So we loaded onto the bus, and both of us almost immediately feel asleep there too (except for the moment when our bus nearly ran into another bus, and all the passengers were flung forward in a single violent motion that made me wish we had seat belts). Finally we arrived in Taichung, and grabbed the single most terrifying taxi ride of either of our lives. In Chinese, she spent the entire drive telling the driver "There's a car right there!" and he'd reply "我知道，我知道” (I know, I know) which did little to comfort either of us. Finally, we arrived, paid for the SIX DOLLAR super long taxi ride (cheap!) and I found myself standing outside a cosmetics store. I was just as confused as you are, especially when Alan told me there were a few horses that lived nearby and let's go see them.

I'm in a completely bewildered state at this point, dragging all my world possessions down an alley in search for this mystical horse. This old lady accosted us and started speaking rapid fire to Alan, and I was depressed I couldn't understand either of them until I realized they were speaking Taiwanese. So we found the mythical horse stall only to discover that the horse "isn't taking visitors right now". At that, we reversed back down the alley and stopped in front of an apartment building. Alan called her friend Carine who lived there, and we stuck all my bags in Carine's room so I wouldn't have to drag them around in search for an apartment. Alan then decided it was time to get breakfast, so we went down to this little corner shop and got the most delicious noodles ever in a plastic bag, and returned to Carine's room. Buying the noodles as well as tea from Family Mart cost a dollar - seriously. So we trudged back to Carine's room, and I chatter with her as Alan passed out on her bed. After about two hours of this (and watching HBO), they decided it was time to look for apartments and off we went! First place we looked at was in Carine's building, same floor at the end of the hallway. It looked a lot smaller than what I had imagined, but the view was amazing. Rent was a at the higher end of my price range, but it was clean, safe, and again, terrific view. From there, we moved on to two empty rooms in Alan's building, but they were amazingly even smaller than the rooms in Carine's building, and the window view just looked at another window three feet away. The big plus for me there was that it had a mini-fridge, but the size and window just couldn't cut it. Finally, as we were heading back to Carine's building, this old lady accosted us looking for tenants, and we climbed after her up the most ghetto old building on the block. Four flights of stairs later (no elevator) we arrive at a series of rooms with stained mattresses, broken lights, and tons of dead roaches on the floor. As the lady rambled on and on about how much better old buildings were, Alan and Carine looked at me in a way that suggested "Find something wrong with it so we can leave". Muttering something about not having an elevator, we fled.

With all those in place, I decided that the room in Carine's building would actually do me pretty well, having everything I wanted but a mini fridge, and being relatively closer to the school. At that point, I split from Alan because she had to go to work and followed Carine to go shopping with some of the other new students. We met up with them at the dorms, and I was given immediate gratification for not wanting to stay in the dorms. Not only was there no AC, when I went to use the public bathroom, I was greeted with an asian toilet. For those of you that don't know, an asian toilet is basically a porcelain hole in the floor with foot grips to crouch with. Thanks to my previous experience, I didn't do anything buy sigh and roll my eyes. Anyways, we finally met with the rest of the shopping group, which consisted of five Chinese girls and one poor girl from Japan who spoke neither Chinese or English. Thanks to my amazing language skills though, we bonded pretty quickly and mutually not knowing what was going on when the Chinese girls started chatting rapid fire, and I played translator for the rest of the afternoon. Went and bought bedding, trash cans, towels, and things for less that $40, and then went to another store to get more basics for cheap. Got these cute puzzle mat pieces to put on my floor, an idea stolen from Carine's room. I might add at this point, that Carine had been giving me rides on her scooter all morning to and from the school, and we even managed to carry my mattress and a whole bunch of other stuff while driving the thing. Riding the scooter is the most ridiculously fun thing ever, and I totally wish I could buy one myself!

Finally, shopping over, we returned to Carine's suite and she called the landlord to tell him I wanted the room here. I handed over 31,500 NTD (about $990) for six months rent and finally had a few blissful hours to myself. First things first, I set about taking a shower - the most blissful activity one can do after spending ungodly amounts of time on a plane. Sadly for me, turning on the hot water was a bit beyond my comprehension, so an refreshingly ice cold shower had to do. After that, there was a bit of time to wander about putting things away and making a list of what else I had to buy to live for a year. Carine wandered over again, and turned on the invisible hot water switch, and spent 40 minutes helping me set up internet, leaving me forever grateful.

It right about this time that I suddenly became absolutely and irrevocably exhausted, but the day wasn't over yet. Carine had planned to meet the French students out for dinner, and I was invited to come along as well. Dinner was fine, and was a melody of languages - most of which I couldn't even pay attention to because I was about to fall asleep face first in my food. Chinese, French, and English all started sounding like the adults in Peanuts cartoons, but after dinner was over, we waited for a bit then headed over the the French kid's apartment. It was very nice, more like a low end hotel than my building, but they were paying four times as much for the privilege.

Finally, a long time after that, Carine, Alan (who reappeared after dinner), and I headed back, grabbing some kind of desert before returning to my building. I inhaled the desert, excused myself, and promptly dropped dead on my bed