Today we took the MRT over to the Taipei Main Station. This was a place we had heard we had to go so we wanted to see what it was about! Well, it was HUGE! We got lost so many times. There were about 4 different malls and food stations all within the same building, and all the malls were so different! We got lost so many times. The Taipei Main Station was sooo big we just walked around it for hours looking at all of the different food stations, things for sale, and interesting people. It was nice because it was so cool inside and it was HOT out today. You start sweating after like 2 min. outside. Everyone here has umbrellas for the sudden rainstorms and to protect themselves from the harsh sun. Chris and I both have umbrella's. It is kind of funny to walk around with an umbrella over your head and a dress and sandals on! For lunch we shared Japanese food, just regular chicken yakisoba. It was good. Everything tastes a little different than what we are used to though. The noodles were a little thicker and stickier, but good all the same! Once we started to get too overwhelmed by everything the malls had to offer, we decided to take the MRT back to our temp apt. Once we got back to around that area, about a 10 min MRT ride, we shared a fresh mango snowflake iced. They are famous around here, so we have been dying to try one! They are absolutely HUGE(bigger than the picture looks) so we decided to sit in the seating area and eat. Good thing, because right after we sat a thunderstorm hit and it was pouring out. Everyone ran into the seating area and then it was crammed. But the iced mango dessert is by far the best thing we have had here!! SOOOO GOOD! I'm sure we will be getting plenty more of those over the next year. After we ate, we sprinted with our umbrellas a few blocks back and are now waiting for it to pass so we can go grab some dinner! No one really cooks here everyone grabs dinner out because it is quick and cheap. We don't have an oven in our apartment that we will be moving into tomorrow. But we will buy a plug in kettle so we can boil water! |
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Today was a super productive day! At 11am, two teachers from my school came and picked us up from our temp. apt. and took us out for the day. First, they took us out to a Vietnamese restaurant as a "sorry" for getting the time wrong from picking us up from the airport. So nice! The food was good. They ordered a bunch of different stuff for us to try. The main thing we had was basically just like beef pho but it tasted a little different than back home. After lunch we took a bus to a different area of town and they took us out for some Chinese tea. Chris and I shared an iced oolong tea. After tea, we went and got sim cards for our iPhones. We haven't set up it up yet but when we do we will have a Taiwan number and be able to call each other while here. We then went and looked at three different apartments. It was a way different experience than when Chris and I went apartment shopping back in Seattle. We basically just looked at the apartment while the landlord and our teachers talked back and forth in Chinese and occasionally they would explain something or another. We ended up finding an apartment we liked in a quiet area we liked!!!! Which is super exciting. It will be nice to be able to take our clothes out of suitcases, buy fruit and food to be kept in our place, and feel more comfortable having our own place. We move in on Saturday so I will send pictures once we are in. One of the teachers husbands is going to help us move since he has a car. It will be unique to have a landlord who does not speak English and sign a contract that you cannot read. After we got home, we went to go get some water, food, and fruit for breakfast. We got lucky with food today and found a street restaurant quickly that looked good and we ordered shrimp and pork friend rice and shrimp pot stickers. After we went to 7-11, which 7-11's here are basically like a grocery store back home. There is 7-11's everywhere, one on every block! You can pay bills there, buy fruit, water, groceries, and much more! Chris bought a Taiwan beer there to see how it tastes like (didn't like it), and Doritos chips because he has been craving chips so bad!!!! All the chips we have seen here are like $5 a bag! Which would be $150 in Taiwan dollars. It takes me a while to transfer the amounts from American to Taiwan but Chris is super good and quick at it so I just let him do that part haha. Anyway, today was a success! The teachers at my school are all so nice and helpful, we got our phones and apartment set up, and we are feeling more comfortable everyday that goes on! Oh yeah! One funny difference is that everyone takes their own garbage out to a garbage truck at 9pm 4 days a week. If you miss the truck, then too bad! We are waiting for a teacher from my school to come pick us up and take us to get phones and look at apartments so I thought I would share some more of our pictures from our amazing time in Hawaii! :) Today we woke up feeling a little bit better and well rested. Unfortunately, there was a typhoon and all schools, work and businesses were closed and we were told to stay inside. At around noon the wind was looking a lot calmer and the rain was starting to die down so we decided to take the MRT (metro train) down to the famous Taipei 101. We didn't really prepare for the typhoon like the locals and only had 2 bananas and 2 waters...so we were pretty thirsty and hungry. We walked around there food court three times trying to decipher what foods were and watching people walk away with food to see if it looks like something we would want (who know eating could be so difficult). Its a little overwhelming at first when you see full chickens hanging by their neck and "beef" that looks like honeycombs. We finally decide to share a beef noodle and side of white rice. Our first time using chopsticks probably would have been comical to watch. It probably took us three times longer to eat with them, but in the end we did it (but Chris snuck in shoveling rice in his mouth with the broth spoon before we left haha ;) We felt more comfortable walking in the city today and met a few people who spoke English. Tomorrow we are meeting up with my school so they can show us some apartments around town. Hopefully we can find one so we can start feeling settled! Ahhhh.... where to start. We had a crazy first day here in Taipei starting from when we landed at the airport to when we went to bed at night. We landed in Taipei at around 6am. Two people from the school I will be working at were supposed to be waiting for us to take us to our temporary apartment. We quickly discovered that no one was there to pick us up. Since we couldn't use our own phones to call (they were on airplane mode) we started downloading apps that use wifi to call and tried calling my contact person that way. Well calling international isn't as easy as it seems....country codes, area codes, numbers with different lengths? We tried everything we could to call them using a pay phone, the apps, and emailing. Instead we decide to take a taxi to our temp apt. We get in the taxi and he starts to drive away and asks for the address (which is written in English). Well, turns out our taxi driver doesn't know one word of English! So the taxi driver takes my phone with the address and starts running into different buildings asking people if they know where this address is. Three buildings later and we got the address written in Chinese!
To our surprise, we find out that we will actually be sharing our temp. apt. with another couple! We are a little bummed at first but after carrying 6 heavy bags up three flights of stairs (doesn't anyone know about elevators around here?) with no where else to go...there is not much else you can do! We decide to go wander around and look for some food. We start walking around the main street here and quickly start feeling overwhelmed. There is not one sign written in English, everyone we try talk to has no clue what we are saying, and it is HOT outside. Hawaii's heat was nothing compared to what Taipei's heat feels like. Anyway, so we keep looking for food until we give up because we are not sure if we would be eating chicken or chicken eye balls. In the end, my school feels horrible because they thought we were arriving at 6pm instead of am, we settled on sharing some KFC, prepared for the typhoon that was on its way with some waters and bananas, and went to bed at 6pm! We took a little detour to Hawaii before Taipei for our honeymoon. It was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!! We both wish we would have stayed for longer but there is always next time! The beach water was soo clear and warm and it was sunny out for all 5 days so we were extremely lucky! The first day we were there we got in at about 2pm so we just laid on the beach and wandered around the massive hotel. The second day Chris and I went skydiving (he bought that for me for my birthday :) The only skydiving place was in the North shore on the opposite side of the island so we decided to rent a car for the day and drive around the whole island. The skydiving place was super busy so the 30 minute wait they told us we had quickly turned into 4 hours. Ahhh! We were definitely getting restless by the time they strapped us up. Coming down was worth it though for the view. Beautiful shore and mountain views! We also walked around Waikiki's main town and looked at all the shops and fun things going on, watched a fireworks show on the beach, took paddle boards and floatys out on the water, and went to a luau. Oh yeah, and CHRIS GOT SOO BURNT! He hurt to the touch it was so bad. But we will definitely be going back again. We were sad to leave but excited to see what we had in store.
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