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!
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!