Well, as I write this, I'm sitting at my desk in my bedroom of the apartment Lauren and I are renting. I'm drinking a Coke (to try and keep myself awake past seven o'clock), and I can tell someone in the next building over is cooking dinner (smells like fish, LOTS of garlic, jasmine rice and...basil?). Despite the heat and humidity, there's a really nice cross-breeze through the enclosed back balcony next to my window, so I'm pretty comfortable. The overriding thought on my mind is that this is going to be home for the next 9 months.
Wow.
The past few days since I arrived here in Taipei have been an absolute whirlwind. I met up with this friend of a family friend's parents, named Jessie, who lives here in Taipei, and she's just been an absolutely amazing person to have with me. She helped me with the apartment hunt, with the lease, with finding things in the city, with figuring out how things work, even with how to get to my school. I know I would have eventually figured things out on my own (I arrived here ready and willing to go it alone), but it's been so much easier with someone there whom I can ask questions of and who knows how things really work (as opposed to how the guidebooks say they should).
Our apartment is a three-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a medium-rise building in Yonghe, a suburb of Taipei. This area is supposed to be very 热闹, which basically means it's a very lively, very active place, with lots of markets and street stands. We're actually right across the river from National Taiwan University's campus (Tai Da), but because of the location of our language center, we actually have to do a bit of walking once we take the bus there. I'm not particularly averse to walking--I don't think it's too bad of a walk, and once the weather cools down, it looks to be quite nice. The apartment itself has a kitchen, an enclosed balcony in the front and the back, a washing machine, TV, internet, and a really nice living room. The landlord (an amazingly helpful man as well) also bought all the cleaning supplies and such before he left, so we won't have to spend any money on those things.
I should dedicate at least a paragraph to the landlord and his wife, the Zhang couple. I found their ad for this apartment on Kijiji, a classified ad service online. Our initial contact was very formal, but once I told them we were American students, Zhang xian sheng went out of his way to help us out. We exchanged numerous e-mails about facilities, location and rents, and when it started to look like we might not be able to rent the place because of financial constraints, he suggested a number of solutions, from finding a roommate to renegotiating the rent. I was initially a bit wary, because of course you don't know anyone from Adam on the internet. But when I arrived and came with Jessie to look at the apartment, we met the Zhangs and found that they were genuinely good people. We found out that the Zhangs had had visits from over 50 people who were interested in the apartment, but hadn't rented to any of them because they felt the other people wouldn't be good tenants. They complimented me repeatedly on my Chinese (because we had been e-mailing exclusively in Chinese), and bent over backwards to make sure that living here would be the best possible experience for us. They even showed me around the neighborhood, pointed out good (and bad) places to eat, the post office, convenience stores, introduced me to a locksmith and a handyman (in case I needed either of those services), and were just unbelievably kind. At the end of the night, they treated me and Jessie to ice cream (well, shaved ice with toppings, ice cream of a sort) and I was just blown away by how much trouble they were willing to go to for us.
I registered for classes on Monday, and took the placement exam then as well. The speaking went really well, the written test went alright, and the only part where I really stumbled was the character recognition, where the interviewer asked me to recognize and define random characters from a list. Part of my problem was simply nerves and the fact that I haven't studied as much vocabulary as I probably should have after four years. The other part was that I'm not as familiar with traditional characters, and so was seeing all these lines and thinking, "Oh crap, does that change the pronunciation, the meaning, or both? Oh crap." So you can imagine why that didn't go so well. But the interviewer encouraged me that if I want to switch classes in the first week, that's totally alright, and I can also move up a level in the next term if I want to.
The program itself seems very international, which was what I had been told before. I heard a lot of Korean and Japanese from other students, as well as some Spanish (which the interviewer was quite impressed to learn that I spoke), and a lot of accented English. The really fun thing was, there were some Taiwanese students on hand to help out with registration, and their English was pretty much perfect, better than mine probably. In any event, we have an orientation on Friday, so hopefully I will get to know my classmates better then.
I met up with Spencer today, and it was really good to see him. Unfortunately it was kind of a hassle for him to get to my place, but he did finally make it, and I think it was nice for both of us to see a friendly face and just be able to talk freely in English. His plans hit a major bump earlier because of the typhoon in Hong Kong, which prevented him from arriving to Taipei on time. Then his bank went haywire on him and wouldn't let him withdraw money from his account. Plus he's still looking for a place to live. He seemed about as stressed as I've ever seen him, and that's saying a lot, because Spencer is one of the most laid-back people I know, especially when it comes to travel. He really rolls with the punches and doesn't worry easily, and I wish I could be more like him in that regard. He seemed okay though, and hopefully we can get together again soon.
On Sunday night, I got together with a friend from Nanjing, a guy from Sheffield, UK, named Ramon. We met through football in Nanjing, and were okay friends there. Meeting up on Sunday was perhaps only the third or fourth time we really hung out together, but it was really good to see him and hang out and chat. It's kind of sad that he's leaving so soon (next Monday), but hopefully we can spend some quality time together before that. At least we have some time, as opposed to none at all. I've found that friendships aren't necessarily based on the amount of time you spend together, as much as the quality of that time.
I still have myriad things to do--get to the immigration office for my resident card, figure out the bus system, explore my own neighborhood, get myself to the first day of classes--but at the moment, I'm feeling really good about the next nine months, and I know I didn't feel like this on my first couple of days in China, so hopefully this is a good sign.
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