The other shoe drops

Well, not really. I mean, I knew when I came over here that there would be extreme highs and extreme lows. That's just the nature of living in a language and culture that's not your own.

Things kind of started to go downhill yesterday when I went to the immigration office in Taipei City to apply for my alien residence card (ARC). I waited for about three hours, give or take, and when I finally got to see a clerk, she rather rudely told me that, since I live in Yonghe City, a suburb of Taipei, I had to go to another office in Banqiao (which is not exactly what you'd call close-by). So first I called Jessie to get her opinion, and she said to go to Banqiao and just ask people there for directions, but I wasn't all that keen on that, so I went to the information desk at the office there in Taipei City. No one there was particularly helpful either, and I got the distinct sense that the friendly people I had encountered in Taipei so far do *not* work in the immigration office.

So I decided to head home after that, and of course, there was an air raid drill scheduled for 2:30, the idea being that if China ever decides to shoot off the myriad missiles it has pointing at this little "renegade province," all the people here will be ready for it. Of course, the actual drill mainly consists of all the cars on the road pulling over, and all the pedestrians basically being stopped in their tracks for half an hour. If you're inside, or not on one of the main roads, you pretty much don't even know the thing is happening. So it's not exactly a big deal, but I didn't really want to be stuck sitting on a bus or standing on the sidewalk in the blazing sun for half an hour, so I did a proverbial sprint across the city, from Xiaonanmen Station to Guting Station to the 214 bus stop near Guting to Yonghe City Hall to home. I think I made it back with about two minutes to spare, and I was unbelievably sweaty.

Last night, a mosquito somehow got into my room and chewed the living daylights out of me. I woke up around 1 AM in absolute misery and with welts the size of quarters all over that itched like crazy. I went out into the living room and sprayed this insecticide the landlord left me with a vengeance, then went back to sleep in a really bad mood. Surprisingly, when I woke up this morning, the welts were completely gone, and they didn't itch at all. Two sides of the coin, I guess.

Today, I had to get over to NTU for class assignments and orientation at 11:30. The good news, I tested into the second-highest level in the program, with two German, and four Japanese students. The bad news, they then proceeded to take us halfway across campus to a restaurant, where a bunch of current language division students introduced themselves and talked about their experiences before lunch was served. I was already anxious because I knew how long I had to wait at the Taipei City immigration office to talk to a clerk, and I figured Banqiao would be the same, so I didn't want to waste too much time with lunch/orientation, especially since the nearest MRT station was a good 15 minute walk away. I sat and talked for awhile with a girl from the Philippines, a girl from Germany, and a guy from Britain, and then I reluctantly departed their company (I really wanted to get to know them better) and did another sprint across the city to Banqiao.

Finding the immigration office in Banqiao was another rather unhappy experience, as I walked up and down Minzhu Road for quite awhile before finally asking a store clerk where the office was. She was kind of grumpy with me, but told me it was right across the street. So I get to the door, and it says 'Push,' so of course, I push. No, wrong 'push.' You have to push the button that says 'Push,' and me, silly foreigner that I am, didn't know that, so the guy behind me huffily pushes it for me.

Once I got inside, the wait for service was about ten times shorter than the wait in Taipei City, probably because there's less foreigners in Taipei County than in the actual city itself. I got my application processed with relative ease, and was back on my way in a fairly short amount of time. Of course, by this time I was starving, having skipped lunch to get to the immigration office in anticipation of a long wait, and so I grabbed a thing of cold noodles at the FamilyMart by Yonghe City Hall, then went home and nearly swallowed the tray of noodles in one gulp.

So, it hasn't been a particularly wonderful couple of days, but it's not all that bad either. I'm just really tired from all the running around and trying to figure stuff out and worrying about this and that. It was kind of nice, tonight, when I went to take the garbage out, this old woman who will take your garbage for you if you're in a hurry, and who greeted me the first day in Taiwan-hua, came over and started talking to me. Of course, I couldn't understand her, and so she sort of mimed what she was saying, then said a few things in heavily accented Mandarin. The only thing I really understood was that she said, "A lot of people don't really understand what I say." I was kind of touched that she made the effort to talk to me, knowing I probably wouldn't really get it or know how to respond.

To be honest, I'm kind of homesick at the moment, and it's amazing how suddenly it hit me. One minute, I was fine, the next, I was in that mindset of "9 months is forever." I think it's largely due to the fatigue and stress of the past week, and maybe, just maybe, it means I'm going through the culture shock stages a bit more quickly. I remember I didn't get really, really homesick until near the end of my tenure in China. So maybe this is my little bout with homesickness this time around, and maybe I'll adjust more quickly here. Who knows?

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On a completely unrelated note, Liverpool drew Marseille, PSV Eindhoven and Atletico Madrid in their CL group. What a match-up. Fernando Torres is going home. He's already said he hopes both Liverpool and Atleti go through to the last 16, and I hope so too. I can imagine it'll be emotional for him, but at the same time, I think it will be a chance for everyone, Atleti and Liverpool supporters alike, to see both what made Torres who he is, and what kind of player he can become. I hope for a Liverpool win, but I also hope for an amazing match with brilliant football.