First Week in Taipei

Well, we've made it through the first week in Taipei!  The general consensus from everyone in the family is: IT'S HOT!  These Pacific Northwest bodies are not accustomed to heat and humidity of this level.  It's so hot all the time that lukewarm water comes out of the tap...no cold water this time of year.

Here are some snatches of our week:

Monday - Left the hotel, moved into our apartment.  I was pleasantly surprised to realize I liked the apartment better than I remembered.  (Except, of course, for the weird hot dog water smell in Gigi's room).  We had the use of a van and driver for the day, so went to the bank to change money and pay landlord, rental furniture, water guy, internet/cable, telephone, etc.,
Then we hit all the big stores where we were likely to buy things that we couldn't get home in a taxi.  We don't have a car here in Taipei, so after this week, everything is on foot or by taxi. Big shopping at Costco, which is remarkably like home, except crazy crowded.  Imagine Costco on Saturday, then add 30-40% more people.  Had Costco hot dogs for lunch the first day!  Apparently, we haven't actually left America.
Also went to B&Q (Home Depot equivalent), then Hola (home furnishings store).  Piled it all into the car, then Joe headed to our friend Jack's house for two suitcases full of stuff he brought over in June.  No one was up for cooking, so we walked to our favorite Chinese restaurant, Din Tai Fung.  Twenty minute walk in the heat, tired jet-lagged girls, and the wait is 35 minutes.  Can't do it, so we hop in a taxi and go to Chili's (yes, the American chain).  But Gigi is feeling sick and we spend 20 minutes in the bathroom where she feels like she's going to throw up.  Get the food to go, hop in a taxi back home, sit down for dinner at 8:30.  Perhaps we should have waited the 35 minutes at 7:00.  Oops.  Mimi falls asleep at the table after one bite of pizza.

Tuesday - Joe heads to work/Ecosystem Symposium, we stick around the apartment to pay the bottled water guy but he never comes.  No idea what happened there.  We venture upstairs and meet the neighbors that live directly above us, an American family with two sons, ages 5 and 1.  The older son attends Ms. Lam's Montessori School where Mimi will be attending and the mom says it's a great school.  Good to hear, and perhaps there is a possible walk-pool here!

Girls and I take a walk to all three of their schools.  It's HOT and muggy, everybody's got curly hair.  Gigi sees a dumpling restaurant and asks if we can eat lunch there.  Olivia declares she couldn't eat something hot "no matter what!"  Then amends to, "well, if they have the air conditioner on super high and we can sit there for a really long time, then maybe."  We opt for a lunch at air conditioned Subway instead.  The girls beg me to take them to the exercise park.  I'm dumbfounded.  Weren't they just complaining about the heat?  Yes, but we go anyway.  It's a tiny park with exercise equipment for adults.  For some reason they love this place and use the equipment for 20 minutes and get even sweatier and dirtier!

Joe makes it home by 6:00 and we have our first meal together in our new house.  It's less than spectacular.  I had the makings for spaghetti from Costco plus a stash of whole wheat pasta from home (but had to borrow a can opener from the neighbor).  Nothing else to go with the meal as we hadn't been to typical grocery yet.  No vegetables, no salad, nothing.  So everybody had a big plate of spaghetti and then dropped into bed exhausted.

The kids are in bed by 8 every night, and we're about 30 minutes behind them.  Despite the fact that we've done this before, it is mentally exhausting to be in a new place, to keep track of where we are at all times so we don't end up lost, to translate everything in your head before you try to speak....

Wednesday and Thursday - Use of a van again from a co-worker of Joe's, so we run errands until we're all ready to drop.  Our favorite moment is when we're in Carrefour (French supermarket chain, similar to Fred Meyer in that they carry a little of everything).  We're getting groceries and looking at the cheese selection (small & expensive!)  A caucasian women turns to us and says, "Hi, are you new?"  We reply "yes" and make our first new friends in Taipei.  In a nutshell, this is what we love about being ex-pats:  the friendliness, the openness, the willingness to reach out and introduce yourself, the offer of assistance and knowledge if we need anything.  Right now we're the recipients of ex-pat kindness, but we know that next year when we're "veterans" of Taipei, we'll be the ones reaching out and extending that kindness.

Friday - Joe is in China for work (and he's only gone for 36 hours!) and we stay home and wait for IKEA to deliver Olivia's new desk, the water guy to pick up the money, the telephone company to come turn on our service, and the air shipment to arrive.  Turns out the water guy came on Monday, but was intimidated when he figured out we only spoke English, so he left.  Fair enough, I'm intimidated every time I try to speak Mandarin.
Air shipment arrives to much fanfare from the children, only to discover that 90% of it is our kitchen, plus a few books, shoes and bedspreads.  They are disappointed, but for me, Oh Happy Day!  Cheese grater!  Can opener! Measuring Cups! Bowls! Salad spinner!  Although, in putting my kitchen away, I realize for the first time that I have only three drawers in the entire space.  Odd, that. 

It's been a bizarre week for me, so many things feel familiar because of our time in Shanghai, and yet this is an entirely new place and I'm starting over with very little knowledge.  Some random thoughts:

Smells - you never know how much comfort smells bring to you and make you feel at home until all the smells around you are just "wrong."  I'm certain visitors coming to America feel the same way...there is just something about the way home smells and everything else is strange.  And big cities have really gross street smells, there's just no getting around it.  We're teaching the kids to breath through their mouths...life lesson there.

Cities are dirty - we walk around a lot and every night we have to wash everybody's feet before we get into bed.  Our feet are filthy.  Having said that, Taiwan is much cleaner than Shanghai was, we are not afraid to wear flip-flops here, we never wore them in Shanghai.  On a positive note, we haven't seen a single person peeing in the street, yet.

Public transportation - It's easy, it's fast, it's affordable.  Why can we not do this in the US????  I love public transportation.  And it's organized and very civil in Taipei!  No shoving to get on or off, people wait politely for passengers to get off before getting on themselves. We are not in Shanghai anymore Toto.

We saw our first (and only?) Taiwanese transvestite while at a shopping complex.  Never saw that in China.

Kids in the city - Last time we lived in an urban environment, one kid was in a stroller and the other one very obedient.  Now we have three who walk everywhere with us, and two who pay no attention to anything going on around them.  It's nerve-racking!

Language - I suck at it.  I forgot how much I suck at Mandarin.  I try at every opportunity, but at one point I asked Gigi for some help on a phrase and she said, "well, I'm trying not to make you feel bad by correcting you all the time, but you really don't say anything right."  Thank you my darling.  Now, if you could just tell me the correct phrase, I'll continue on my sucky way.

Big Feet - I needed some indoor flip-flops, can't walk on wood and tile all day on bare feet.  Had to buy mens flip flops to get something that fit.  Joe suggested that I might be able to find something more girly at the "Big Ladies Foot Shop" which is near our house.

Old phones - We can't get a phone and contract until we have our ARC (Alien Resident Card).  So the relocation consultant kindly let me borrow her old phone...it's not a smartphone.  It is soooo incredibly painful to try texting on an old phone after you've owned a smartphone for years.  How did we send those long texts on those old phones???

Water - You can't drink what comes out of the faucet.  And sometimes it smells funny (read that as horrible odor emerges) when you turn the tap on.  And sometimes when you fill a white bathtub, the water is a funny color.  People in Portland, revel in the beauty of your clean tap water.

Taping drains - Kitchens and bathrooms all have drains so that when you clean the floors the water just goes right down the drain.  And everyone also tapes those same drains shut for two reasons:  odor and cockroaches.  Can everybody just say a big "EWWW" with me and have a good shudder?  I taped my drains shut the first day we were here!  I was warned about the cockroaches and I'm not taking any chances.  On our walk home tonight we saw our first cockroach, and of course like the crazy idiot I am I squealed and jumped out of its way on the sidewalk, which made all the rest of the girls freak out.  Mimi kept twitching and freaking out every time her balloon tied to her wrist brushed up against her.  At bedtime Olivia wanted me to check her bed for cockroaches.  Sigh.  Must try to be better example for kids.

OCD - Being OCD on an ex-pat assignment in Asia is really not allowed.  :)  But it takes a while for me to let it go, and right now, the fact that every single thing in my brand new kitchen is bright shiny white, EXCEPT the cream colored fridge, is driving me crazy.

So, that's the first week.  And I must say, I'm quite proud of myself for staying up until 11:00 to actually write it.  I've been in bed by 9:00 every night this week.  Jet-lag must be waning, real-life must be settling in.  I expect to write shorter, more frequent blogs after this.  So if you're eyes crossed from reading so long, sorry about that!  Will try for short and pithy in the future!

Cheers,
Steph