Arrival at school

Originally written on 8/22/08

Well we made it. It was a long trip, but we are finally getting settled. We stayed in Taipei overnight to get our health exams. We had a chance to see a little of the city. It's pretty cool. We went up to the top of Taipei 101 - the tallest building in the world. It was a really nice view. (Which I suppose is pretty obvious.) We were lucky, because the air was really clear that day. Normally I think it's really smoggy and the visibility isn't too great, but we could see for miles. The entire city is surrounded by mountains. It's really beautiful.

Yesterday (Thursday) we took the high speed rail to a city closer to the school. This thing goes up to 190 mph, but it doesn't seem like it. It's really modern and a very smooth ride. It turns a 2-3 hour drive into a 40 minute ride. Then we were picked up by Jeremy, our Principal, and Donald the Business Manager for a 1 1/2 hour ride to the school. We arrived around 5:00 pm. They gave us a tour of the school then took us to our apartment. We are staying in this place for 2 weeks until our permanent place becomes available.

Our apartment is interesting. The shower is the whole bathroom. In other words, it's not partitioned off with a tub, and curtain. The center of the floor just has a drain in it. We have a fridge, and maybe a stove (I need to investigate more when we have time). The beds feel quite similar to what I would imagine sleeping on a box spring would be like - ridiculously hard. We put a comforter under the sheet which made it a bit better. Still not quite as luxurious as our own bed. But I guess we aren't here for luxury

We've been eating some very interesting food. Last night we ate at the college cafe. We had seaweed, and some other sea plant thing. (which wasn't that great), noodles and a few other assorted items. - Very different from what we're used to! This morning we had sandwiches for breakfast along with chocolate covered bread and some sort of blended rice soup. (thick, smooth, and pretty gross). This afternoon our director took us out to a vegetarian restaurant. The food looked pretty odd, but tasted good. Neither of us has gotten sick yet despite the fact that we are eating raw veggies regularly.

I hitched a ride on a scooter today, which was pretty awesome. (No, this was not random hitchhiking, but from a staff member at the other high school on campus - Taiwan Adventist Academy) Heather and I are going to be buying one within a few days as we are a 10 minute drive from campus. Right now, someone has to cart us around, which is a pain for both us and them.

The landscape here is incredibly beautiful. We are surrounded be lush green mountains that usually have clouds hanging around them. It rains pretty much every afternoon during the rainy season, so there is tons of really green vegetation everywhere. It's hot right now. It gets up to 95 or 100 with high humidity, so it feels pretty uncomfortable sometimes. Luckily, we have AC in our bedroom, so it's much better while we're sleeping.