Day 5/30 (we'll catch 1-4 later maybe)

With thanks to NaPoWriMo for the prompt:

This country is a child with a grandfather’s history

and here, I am a newborn.

So the light blinds, life’s soundtrack deafens, each new smell becomes

an instant shared taste while phantom electrics prickle my flesh.

I feel the smells. I taste the lights and the sounds

dance in the air.

In Táiwān, my name is Freedom. Zìyóu. from the motto of Clan Wallace,

and here, I am a grandmother.

Who on this earth loves their chains?

My whip is only three or four horses;

because of this I am always outdoors.

“Nǐ hǎo,” they say, or if they really mean it, “Lí hé.”

The genuine greeting of a people mixplaced.

Snaking roads take you straight to where you should be

and I fly with my horses to every home I find.

Zìyóu and her tiny team of horses

will never tire of traveling here,

this raucous country, these patient beaches, these smoking hills.

Born 150 degrees from here but this is my home.

Lí chia̍h pá bōe? Chia̍h pá-ah!

My three horses together are one humble scooter, carrying me like a newborn,

a grandmother, feeling the language on electric skin.

你為什麼要離開台灣？

Content Warning: discussion of mental health, emotional health, suicide and sexual abuse

1991:

I am in fourth grade. I still believe in prayer. I still believe in magic. I read a magazine that says girls should write a list of the things they wish for in a boyfriend. I make my list. I believe it is magic. I pray.

1992.05: 

I graduate fourth grade. I have been at the school for four years. It is the longest I have stayed in one place all my life. For the rest of my life, I will never stay anywhere longer than three years. Not until I move to Taiwan.

2002.08:

I get married. I'm too young. I get married because he wants to get married. If I say no, are we not allowed to be in love anymore? I know I'm not ready, but I love him. I want to give him what he wants. We've been together two years, and we've always said we would get married someday eventually. This is what people in love do, right?

2004.08: 

I get divorced. 

2009: 

A man I've never met moves to Korea. His name is Matt. He lands in a work culture that almost forces you to become an alcoholic. He becomes an alcoholic. He is still a good man, and smart. After nine months, he leaves. I know nothing about this at this time.

2011.05: 

I finally graduate university with a bachelor's degree. It's been a rocky life, never staying in one place, and I still haven't gotten over that marriage. It feels like I've finally won something. I stayed at that university for three years, and that's the longest I've stayed anywhere. Maybe I'm a grownup now.

2011.07-08:

I go to Taiwan, to a city in the south called Pingtung. I don't have any experience with East Asian cultures. My only knowledge of them is limited to the white boys in school who never fit in, and talked about Japan and China as the perfect place for them to go, be nerdy, and find girlfriends. I hate that kind of talk, so it made me uninterested in East Asia. But my friend told me about a scholarship program to study in Taiwan, and I applied. I got the scholarship. I have no reason not to go. I've traveled ten countries by now, but they've all been in Europe or North/Central America. Why not? I fall accidentally in love with the country. I want to stay. But I'm now in a long term relationship again. It's rocky but I believe it's worth fighting for. We've been together two years, and I believe we could go the distance if we work on it. I go back to the US, and move into his house in Tucson.

2013.05:

Only one of us is working on the relationship, and it isn't my partner. On mother's day, always a difficult day for me, I am heartbroken after another failed attempt to work on things. I am wandering the streets at dark, deciding which car to throw myself in front of. The fact that I have my dog with me stops me. I go home. Home? To his house with my things inside where I no longer feel safe. I put my poetry books and my dog in the car and drive two days from Tucson to my father's house in Arkansas without calling him in advance. I wouldn't want him to worry. I pull up in his driveway at midnight and ask, "Can I stay here for a while?" For two weeks I eat soup or nothing. I lose twenty pounds in those two weeks. I lose a lot, actually. My partner is still trying to get me to kill myself from afar. It's really hard not to give in.

2013.06: 

The man I haven't met, the man called Matt, moves to a town in southern Taiwan. The town is called Pingtung. He starts working. The drinking culture there isn't nearly as bad as Korea, but it's still there. He quickly becomes a darling of the scene. He is still able to hold down his job, and his students and their parents love him. I still know nothing about him.

2013.07:

I go back to Tucson. My partner is not in the house. He is currently on deployment somewhere beautiful, like Portugal or southern Italy. How he must be suffering, I feel, as I sort through the belongings he threw into a giant mess. I try to sell them but he's still harassing me. He wants me out faster than I can possibly manage to pack up my life. I have to abandon most of it. But in the packing, I go through my journals. They go back more than thirteen years. I find a pattern in my relationships. The two four-year relationships as well as other flings of different lengths. Any time I date a man, he is inattentive to my needs, he doesn't value me. I have to hide parts of myself. He thinks my interests are silly. Most notably, not a one of them can hold their liquor. I am grateful for this opportunity to see so clearly, so objectively, cycles in my life. I feel certain that vision this clear is rare. I promise myself not to forget. I swear on my own heart that this will not happen again.

2013.08:

Talk about kicking someone while they're down, or rubbing salt in a wound. While I'm nursing my emotional health, I go on a date with someone I shouldn't have trusted. He rapes me. When I tell my ex-partner, he simply says "I hope you went to the police." It's perfect.

2013.09.06: 

It is my thirty-first birthday. My father drives me to the airport. I have two full suitcases and two big carry-ons. The woman at the ticket counter jokes, "Wow, are you moving?" Yes ma'am, I reply, I'm moving to Taiwan for two years. I'm going back to Pingtung.

2013.11:

It is Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. I have learned that a man on an internet forum I frequent is also an American living in southern Taiwan, in my city of Pingtung. I invite him to Thanksgiving dinner. He declines. I later learn that he didn't want to meet a girl from the internet. She would probably turn out to be weird.

2014:

About a year later, I finally get this man to hang out with me. His name is Matt. He is funny. He is a truly caring friend. He remembers things I forget that I've even told him. He pays attention. I hang out with him more and more. He's positively dreamy, but it's so rare to have a friend here. It's easy to have acquaintances, but rare to find someone with whom you share a first language and cultural experience. Then once you find that, do you even get along? We get along. He's perfectly sweet. I hope he finds a good girlfriend. He deserves one.

2015.08:

I've always had community in the US. No, communities. Many different groups of friends, some overlapping, that I can interact with as often as I like. Most of my friends are cuddlers. We have slumber parties. I miss human contact. I convince Matt to become a cuddling friend. But it turns out, we've both always been interested in trying something more than just friendship with one another. Physical closeness leads to more physical closeness. Before I know it, we're being physically close pretty often. But my heart is still broken. I'm not looking for love. I know he is, and I don't want to get in the way of that for him. I don't want to change him, either, but he spontaneously stops smoking cigarettes. I tell him I love him, but I'm not in love with him. He tells me in all things, I'm the boss. He'll never push me. I believe him. I trust him.

2015.10:

I want to share my favorite magical place with this special friend of mine. I convince him to spend a weekend on a nearby mountain with me. It's an aboriginal area, and the woman who I call doesn't have any vacancies in her room. But she hears my accent on the phone and asks if I'm foreign. When I tell her I am, she offers her ancestral home for me and my "boyfriend" (her word not mine) to stay in. When we go there, it's amazing. Slate house, porch on the roof, all windows open and we sleep next to one on a slab, listening to running water and chirping frogs. The name of the mountain is WuTai, meaning fog platform. We sit on the roof porch and watch the sun set and the fog platform roll in beneath us. We sleep above the clouds. We make love on our slab next to the open window while the frogs and falling water sing to us. Damn, I think. I'm in love with this bastard. I'm done for. There's no going back.

2016.02.25:

Matt and a friend go out drinking. Matt, as he often does, has far too much. He gets blackout drunk. How did he end up on a naval base? Was their perimeter not secure and he just found a back way in? Did he actually go through the front gate and no one cared to stop him? We may never know. But he is arrested for drunk driving on the military base. He is taken to court, where he is counseled to plead guilty. The judge asks if he wants to remain in Taiwan, and he says yes, more than anything, he loves Taiwan. It's true, we both do at this point. We don't want to go back to the USA. The judge accepts his guilty plea and charges him a fine for drunk driving and espionage. The fee is equivalent to about $3,000USD. He pays.

2016:

He never pushes me. He never asks for more than I have to give at any time. He never does anything without my consent. He listens, pays attention, and remembers. I don't have to hide any parts of myself. He loves my ugliness, my brokenness, my scars. He accepts me and celebrates me as I am. I allow myself to be vulnerable with him, and I've never felt more safe.

When I am depressed, he instinctively knows exactly what to do. I've always had to hide my clinical depression from my past partners. They either didn't care or actively said they didn't like it. But this man knows what to do. He knows if I need to be left alone, he knows if I need cuddles, he knows if I need pillows and blankets and children's movies. One night, before we move in together, I send him a message. I feel silly. I've been too depressed to take a shower and I'm starting to smell bad. He comes over. He takes off his clothes but keeps his underwear on. He tells me he doesn't want this to feel sexual. He carries me to the bathroom and puts me on a stool in the shower. He washes my hair for me and scrubs my skin. Another night my anxiety is so bad I'm trapped on the couch. I cannot get to bed to go to sleep. It's getting late. Again I send him a message. Again he comes over and saves the day.

At some point, I have a talk with Matt about his drinking. I've never been so cared for, so respected in any relationship. Truly everything is perfect except this. I tell him about the journals and what I promised myself. He promises, too. He promises to cut back. He drinks only at home. No more driving anymore. He buys a certain amount, and doesn't drink more than that. But the amounts he brings home get bigger. But he keeps his word.

2017.02.12:

We go out with some friends. We ride together on his ride to get there, so he can't get too drunk to get us home. The first drink he orders is a bathtub of a margarita with two beers turned upside down in it. He says this way, he only needs to buy one drink for the night. Then he buys a second drink. I ask him to stop. He starts drinking water. But when we go to the next bar, I can see his eyes getting glassy. He orders a rum and coke. Then a second. He talks with the bartender about how much rum goes in, and it's fully three quarters of the glass. I can see the Matt I know has gone away from behind those glassy eyes. It is another man who picks up that drink and puts it to his lips. As I see him do it, I know that I am less important than a glass of rum and coke. I know he is already blackout drunk. I call a cab and take him home. On the drive he becomes less and less lucid. By the time we arrive I'm barely able to get him into our home. I get him undressed and in the shower with the water running. I bring him water. He starts to throw up. I'm dying from the heart out. I'm trying to tend to him without shattering into a million pieces. I go to the kitchen to get more water and when I come back, he's climbed out of the bathroom and into the hallway where he's thrown up a lake. I start hysterically sobbing and wailing. I lock myself in the bedroom. I sleep until it's time to go to work.

2017.02.13:

When I leave the bedroom to go to work, I find a puddle of vomit-infused water in the floor. I have to put plastic bags over my feet so I can walk through it to get to the door. I realize my relationship is over. I made a promise to myself that I intend to keep. We spend the week separated. We live in the same apartment but sleep in different rooms. I'm trying to fight for us to stay friends. He has quit drinking for good. He has started exercising. But he says it will hurt him too much to stay friends. The worst is happening and I can't stop it.

2017.02.18:

Matt brings home a cigar - one of our favorite pastimes is to sit on our 5th-floor balcony together with no electronics and share a cigar and conversation in the breeze. Over the course of this conversation, we realize we both want to continue fighting for this relationship, the best either of us have ever had. We've always been good at communication and working together. He asks me if I remember him giving up cigarettes shortly after we started dating. I do, he quit cold turkey. He tells me, the most difficult part of change for him is to commit to the decision. Once he's done that, he says, it's finished. I believe him, but I'm scared to trust him. We decide to work together to save it. He lets me set the pace. He never tries to rush things. We slowly move forward, then back into the same bedroom. We continue to have weekend adventures all over Taiwan. We spoil one another on each other's birthdays. He writes me poetry and loves everything I cook. When we talk about the future, our plans always include one another. There is no future without him. My home is where his heart is.

2017.04.27:

A Taiwanese author named Lin YiHan kills herself. She had recently published a story about a girl who is raped and abused by her teacher. People speculated that it was auto-biographical although she denied it.

2017.05.12:

A new law is passed in Taiwan requiring background checks for teachers. People hope it will keep children safe from predators, and so do Matt and I. When our bosses ask for our information to do background checks, we happily provide it. No one should have to fear abuse from their superiors, and no children should go through what the protagonist in Lin's novel did.

2018.05.12:

Matt and I board a plane together. We've taken many short trips but this will be our first long journey. We're going first to visit his family so I can meet everyone, then to mine so they can meet him. I will be able to stay longer in the USA than Matt can, and I look forward to spending time with my father.

2018.05.27:

Matt flies home. His journey is just awful. One flight is fourteen hours and the woman behind him is digging her feet into his chair, hitting an area where he has a surgical wound we've been tending for ages. Upon his exhausted arrival, he learns from his boss that his work permit has been revoked. His background check turned up the DUI. It doesn't matter that he paid his fine. It doesn't matter that he's been sober for a year and a half. The permit has been revoked. I am in denial. He believes he will have to leave Taiwan, but I beg him to fight it. He never hurt any children. His students and their parents love him. His bosses make every call possible.

2018.06.04:

I am on a road-trip around my part of the USA. It is about 9PM and I still have about 5 hours drive left before I get to my destination. I get a message from Matt that he is being deported. There is never a moment where I consider staying in Taiwan. My home is where his heart is. They aren't deporting one man, they're deporting us both, because I cannot stay without him. I pull into a roadside strip motel because I don't trust myself to keep driving. When I explain my situation at the front desk, they give me rum. I drink it and go to my room to shower and cry.

2018.06.06:

Matt checks the mail and finds a letter from the government. The letter says he must leave Taiwan. The deportation date is June 5th. Yes, you read that right. The official letter arrived on the 6th and said he had to leave the country on the 5th. He calls the office. He tells them his girlfriend will return to Taiwan on the 18th. Could he please stay until the 20th? Could he please see her for one day before he has to leave? They make him promise that he will leave the country on the 20th. When he hangs up, he sees on the bottom where he can call to appeal the decision. But everyone has been called, and at this point, we're through. We're exhausted. They win. We'll leave.

The Future:

I will go back to work in Taiwan. I will probably work until late August, early September. Early September is when I first moved to Taiwan in 2013. That means I've lived there for five years, after my original plan was for just two years. I fell in love with the land, the mountains, the beaches, the plains. I fell in love with the people, the families, the friends, the shopkeepers. I fell in love with the food, the god parades, the night markets. It's the longest I've ever stayed in one place my entire life. I wanted to keep staying.

I don't know where we go next. But we will go there together. This is the man I wrote about in my notebook in fourth grade, the last time I ever stayed somewhere more than three years. He is my spell, he is my prayer, he is where my heart is. I will follow him to any country. I will follow him to the moon.

Trip Home 04

There is a pallet in my father's van.  There is a lake in southwest Arkansas.  What more does anyone need to know?

I've been sharing with some friends: coins I brought and munchie treats, but the real trick comes at my reunion.  I've brought back a bottle of gaoliang to share with my classmates.  If you know what gaoliang is, that's all you need to know.  If not... c'mere, let me show you!  It's so delicious!  Really, you won't cry at all, I promise!  Um, how much enamel do you need for the rest of your life?

I've been eating like a queen.  Today we baked potatoes and took the leftover porterhouse and sliced up inside with blue cheese on top.  Even our leftovers are magical.

I forgot to bring a swimsuit.  What?  Like I haven't been looking forward to Lake Ouachita since I left? Dad's loaning me some swimming shorts and I guess I'll wear a tank or something.  Can't be bothered to spend the money I just brought over from Taiwan and deposited in my account for student loans. Felt really good to deposit that.

I've been sleeping a lot too.  Lost a whole day when I got here.  I wonder how much of it is due to what.  Mental illness? Jet lag which I've never had a problem with before?  The simple fact that I've returned to my childhood home, a place that has always represented healing and nurturing for me?

My perfect sweet baby doggie!  Man his coat had not been touched since I left. First I tried to trim it down but it came out really patchy because it was so thick and even a little matted in some places in the under coat.  As we trimmed him down we could see all the dandruff.  Dad was helping me and I think he saw how much the coat really does need attention every few months.  Brought Loki in and took him in to the bath where I scrubbed away with some gentle Aloe skin shampoo that we still had and he's a completely different dog today.  His haircut is less than beautiful, but I'll touch him up before I go.

Well, it's time to pack and get in the van; I've got a haircut scheduled pretty soon I need to get to with my old hairdresser who understands curly frizzy Western hair!

Trip Home 03

The place does not feel foreign. The place feels like home.  The place feels like I never left.

Actions seem foreign.

Why are people wearing shoes inside the house?

What are these big clunky things in my drink?

Why do we just throw trash away?  Shouldn't we be rinsing and separating it all out?

Where's the potty-side trash can? Wait, I just put the paper in the potty and flush?

So far every meal has been a treat.  Tonight I ate four different kinds of cheese on French bread.  What decadence!  One afternoon I ate cold guacamole with a fork.  Marvelous.

Tomorrow I head to Hot Springs, what I consider my home town. I'll see Lake Ouachita and if it isn't too cold I'll climb down in it.  I'll go to my high school 15 year reunion.  I'll get a haircut. I'll hug old friends and sleep in a van.  Then to Little Rock for more friends and chosen family.

Trip Home 02

I was on my way home, on schedule, ticking off my to-do list, making great time, everything was fine, until I found.....

So that set me back several hours, going to the vet and getting supplies and giving her medicine and a bath and... etcetera.  I made the trip up to Taoyuan to my friend's house, where we had some nibbles and some sips, and then it was two hours until I needed to wake up, so we bedded down and I dozed while her cats went crazy all around us.

In the Taipei airport I bought a few treats at the duty-free to share with people when I got home.  On the first flight I kinda dozed for about an hour on and off.

Free wi-fi was too awesome to sleep through, so no sleep in Tokyo.

Then on the loooong flight across the Atlantic I kinda lost it.  I was trying to figure out how the time changes worked and could only figure it had to be because we were traveling with the day, staying in the sunlight of the day the whole time and I watched a movie about time travel and looked out the window and it was dark and I was going crazy about how time wasn't even real and maybe I could manipulate it and...

I just wanted to nap.

When I landed, my sister met me at baggage by pinching my butt.  I'm not sure why but my butt had been some kind of magnet the whole trip where people were bumping into it and hitting it and I was like WHAT but when I spun around it was her.  When I hugged my daddy for the first time in so long we both cried.  Headed down to Beale Street Blues City Cafe for a bunch of tamales and chili and marinated salad and porterhouse steaks and steak fries and beans and slaw and and and and hugs and my aunt and uncle and my cousins' kids and it was great.

I am prescribed Xanax for my anxiety and I'm to take a half a pill each morning and evening.  That evening I looked at the pill and thought, what if I didn't break this one in half?  I was still in my haze the next morning when my father came to knock on my door and said, your friend Christopher is here.  What?  Christopher.  I'm trying to swim through the medicine to being aware.  Come outside, he says.  As I'm coming around the corner it hits me and I say, "With a K?"  And there he was, my beloved long time friend from Virginia, who'd just finished a conference in Atlanta and had driven west for hugs.

The torta was so amazing.  

We thought we'd take a little food coma nap after our late lunch and we ended up sleeping until 1:30AM, at which point we decided it would be better to sleep on until morning and be on the right schedule than wake up and have fun etc.

I sure missed my baby doggie <3 p="">

Trip Home 01

Tomorrow morning I'm flying home

from home

and after three weeks at home

I'll go back home

.

I've been living in Taiwan for a year, eight months, and nine days.  This is home now.  This is my normal.  This is my every day.  Signs with Chinese characters in front of every store.  Overhearing Mandarin and Taiwanese everywhere I go. Speaking it with people.  Everyone is Asian around me.  Chinese, Hakka, Aboriginal, some Korean and Japanese, and of course – TAIWANESE.  I can't blend in.  I'm too tall.  People take my photos not-so-candidly.  People force their children to speak broken English to me.

I buy lunch on the street and dinner too.  I pay for things mostly in coins, some paper, never plastic.  I don't drink the tap water.  I don't put my trash in a dumpster, I wait for the truck playing cute music to come by and take it down (or more often than not my roommate does because I'm at work).

I alter my mother tongue.  I slow it down, enunciate more. I don't use my native accent, nor any of my many “isms” or affectations.  I speak Mandarin poorly, but better every day.

I drive a scooter everywhere and am surrounded by scooters.  I pay my bills at the 7-11 which is just down the road from the Family Mart and across from the OK Mart.  I buy drinks at any of the five tea shops per block and hang the bag they come in from my scooter and drive on.

Rice lunch boxes.  Steamed buns.  Cold noodles.  Ramen.  Beef noodles.  Coffee shops on every corner selling too-sweet too-white coffee in tall cups, no walls at the shop, lots of shops with no walls actually and just tables around.

Last month I went to eat at a western restaurant.  UK style, British fare with a Welsh chef. They gave me a knife and fork.  They felt heavy and awkward in my hands.  I dropped them loudly on the floor.  I asked for chopsticks.

What happens when I go “home” now?

I'll be experiencing my native land but it will feel foreign.  It is not my normal anymore.  It is not my every day.

There will be white people everywhere.  There will be black and brown people, too.  They will be much larger than the people I see here.  I will understand every word said around me all the time.  No one will stare at me nor try to force a photo with their kids.  I will not be special or different.  I will get inside a car and be surrounded by other cars and we will all park them in … parking LOTS?  There will be signs that say “parking for xxxxx customers only” and they may even be enforced.

When I read a price, that is not what I will pay.  I will pay a nontrivial percentage of tax.  I will pay an even less trivial percentage of tip.

I won't happen upon a random circle of locals sitting roadside sipping tea and eating fresh local seasonal fruit, chewing betel nut and spitting the thick red juice in streams on the asphalt.  In fact, people won't be outside too much at all.  All inside in their central heat and air fortresses.  Rushing to jobs to pay bills multiple times more expensive than my own.

What else will be different?  What will surprise me, astound me, frighten me, offend me?  What if it's so foreign in fact that it's at the level where I'm going to catch a wee cold or something when I first get there from foreign bacteria?

I'm nervous to go home.  I'm afraid to learn I miss it too much and must return quickly; I'm afraid to learn I miss it none and never want to move back.

The first thing that happens is I go to my father's home.  After a few days of down time there, I'll go to my high school 15 year reunion in a town I consider my hometown.  I'll swim in the second cleanest lake in North America, which also happens to be one of my favorite places on the globe I've been to in my life.  I may go up to the NY/NJ area.  I may also just spend the whole time hugging my dog and talking with my beloved father.

I'm not sure what this trip will bring or even feel like. I know this and feel it in a way I never have before any other trip.

What happens when home becomes foreign?

Let's see.

4/40: foreign / black

The stars aren't going
anywhere.  Look down.  Look where your feet
are going place one, two, left and then right, keep
going.
Today another stranger took your photo just
for being a foreign face in a rural place remember
when you used to smile for them? Now
you just get angry, get thirsty for a fist, one and one
half short years and people wonder why black men
get angry even as they call them “thugs.”
Look down.
The stars are going nowhere, your anger
is spreading like wildfire, you swore the man thought
you were going to steal his bicycle, locked eyes with you
and shook his finger no but everyone
at the table was deaf, did you just catch him mid
conversation? Remember how your teeth
tasted the blood?  How your fists curled up
like nightmares?  Last night in the market
buying dumplings a three year old called a stranger
AMERICAN.  Rather than correct
his politics (USAian) you said in his tongue
some of us are Canadian, Australian, English,
Scottish, South African and he said no Africans
are black. What would you face here if your face
were black.  If your fists curled up
black nightmares if your teeth tasted
black blood, remember how
just a few weeks ago the police
let you go, remember how you woke up
the next morning, right here, on this earth,
not anywhere near
the stars.

29/30: Last Kiss Rehearsal

Lights up, low, on a stage.
Long benches, some people seated
here and there, some with bags.
No talking.  Enter, stage left,
the couple, young
but not too young, race
unimportant, but he
should be bearded and her hair
should be long.  Make them
the same height.  Make them stand
too close while she negotiates the purchase
of a one-way ticket in a foreign language, but he's
the one with the backpack.  She hands him
the ticket and they move to a bench.

They have not spoken to each other yet.

She opens
a small plastic shopping bag,
pulls out leftover pizza.
They eat in silence
but hold hands
on top of his knee.  They are

conspicuous in the way
that they are avoiding
looking anywhere else
but those hands.  Like they know
what it means.  Off stage we hear
a long bell, an announcement, and the hands
fall apart.  The couple stands.  The onlookers
look on as we remember

the gun in the first act, when she declared
her categorical opposition
to public displays and we watch as
without hesitation her arms are now
around his neck and she's kissing him kissing
him kissing him like those kisses could speak
every word she just chased
with the pizza.
She pushes the rest of it in the shopping bag
into his hands.  As he goes to board,
we watch in awe, wondering
how long one person
can go without blinking.  He rounds
the corner.
Lights down.

22/30: instructions for moving to the other side of the world

First, get rid
of every
piece
of furniture.
The bed you shared
with your now ex-spouse.
The pressboard DIY bookshelves
that have survived seven moves
and long term outdoor storage.
Your grandmother's piano.
The coffee table you and your friends
glued naked women to, cut
from nudie magazines.
You can only take two suitcases.
All Furniture Must Go.
Then the books.  Oh, You,
librarian's daughter, don't let
me hear it.
Well, okay.
But you can't keep more
than five boxes, alright?
OKAY FINE, ex-chef,
and five boxes of kitchen stuff,
but those clothes?  C'mon.  After you try,
unsuccessfully to make a buck
two separate consignment shops,
stop by the thrift store and let it all go
free.  Now it's time to pack
two suitcases, neither of which
may outweigh fifty pounds.
Shoes.  At a lady's size twelve,
Taiwan will not help you.  Clothes.
At five foot eleven inches, you'll be shit
out of luck over there.  Only books
on writing poetry, teaching English,
or learning Mandarin.  No more than twelve.
Okay, thirteen.  The bear you've slept with
since you were two weeks old.  Your
fifth international journey will be
his first.  Make it gentle.  Your e-book
will hold a library as well.  The camera
is necessary, as is the vibrator and the anti-
depressants.  Take one thing you know
you will leave behind.  Take one thing
that reminds you of home.  Take
yourself
to the airport and take inventory
of everything you're leaving behind.

12/30: After Jan Beatty's "Shooter"

Poem Removed because Wicked Banshee Press is going to publish it!  Link up when it happens.

10/30: Gospel of La Poderosa

Praise the scooter.

Praise the little motorcycle that wasn’t,

praise learning to think in kilometers

where you once reasoned in miles, praise

filling up a tank for less than five US dollars

and it lasts for weeks.

Unless

you decide it’s time to go kissing the wind again,

praise the rushing wind, the way it feels

like no other home you’ve known, praise

learning to lean into turns, praise the zigs

and the zags and 125CCs, praise travel that keeps you as

in and of the land, praise the banana groves,

the bin lang groves, the roadside shrines,

the corner temples, praise the stink

of fermenting tofu and the savory steam

of mutton.  Praise the rains

when they come and soak through to the bone.

Praise pushing your limits, and the machine’s

limits, and feeling freedom and glory, praise wanting

nothing more than to rip off the helmet and lean

headfirst into the atoms as they race past your face

except to arrive alive so you don’t.  Praise

the full coverage helmet, praise every single

involuntary time you imagine what would happen

if you leaned just a little too far.  Praise the wreckage

you see that keeps you from leaning too far.

Praise parking on the beach.  Praise breathing in

the smog.  Praise driving on the sidewalk.  Praise knowing

every inch of this island is now within reach.

6/30: the rooster photo

Yesterday I took a photo of a rooster in the street.

I live in Taiwan now.  Things happen like that here.

When I show the photo to my friend, he says,

“Did you ask him why he crossed the road?”  No,

I say, but I did watch an old woman try to catch him.

When I asked if he was hers, she said no and grinned.

I liked that grin.  I understood it entirely, in the way

that anyone who has tried to catch something not hers

can understand.  So crow, rooster, and puff up

your pretty white feathers, and strut, and scratch,

and preen all you like, because I got my eyes

on you and I've been practicing moving

with the precision of a wise hungry crone, and one day

soon

I will get my hands on you.

Linguistics.

I never have a plan, but I do have loose ideas about the future now and then. Right now my loose plan is to head back to the states, spend a year with my partner moving around and preparing for graduate school, then getting my major's degree in linguistics.

I stumbled into linguistics accidentally. While studying in Mexico, we were offered classes outside of the normal grammar and conversation if we wanted, and I did, and one was a double class of Linguistics and Phonetics. I was fascinated by the stuff. I've always enjoyed languages, but learning how speech patterns follow and give clues to a culture's thought patterns as well...

For example. One thing I don't like about Spanish and Mandarin is the response to "Thank you." In English, we acknowledge gratitude. We say "You're welcome." In Spanish and Mandarin, the response is equivalent to "It's nothing."

Gratitude is one of the themes in my life. I have many, but gratitude is a big one, and when I feel it it's genuine and intense. Being told not to worry about it, no need for thanks, hurts a little. No, friend. I mean this. I need you to know that I'm grateful. Acknowledge that, please, so we can share in my joy. Shrugging it off, saying, "it's nothing," that's not good for me.

But let's talk about goodbyes. I don't like them. Dogs don't say goodbye. They say very emphatic hellos, even getting all up in each other's buttholes, but there is no goodbye. They just run off, happy, and will say an emphatic hello again later.

But we are humans, and every language I've studied so far (which is a rather lot, even if I'm not even conversational in most) has a "Goodbye." But here is where English fails me, and Mandarin wins.

French does this too. They have a "Goodbye," but they prefer to use their "See you later." Mandarin, too, says "See you later." I simply do not like goodbye. I've said so many in my life. I have this habit of moving every, at most, three years and often much more frequently.

I have genuinely fallen in love with Taiwan. I've been too busy to post as properly as I should, between classes and trying to have amazing adventures in our little free times, and if the two predicted typhoons don't stop me I will fly home in three days.

I have seen more beautiful sights than I could have imagined. I spent three out of three days last weekend neck deep in some of the clearest water on some of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen. People have been incredibly friendly and helpful everywhere I've gone. This program has been such an awesome opportunity, and I'm more thankful for the experience than I can begin to convey.

And I will say to Taiwan THANK YOU in English, because I need this gratitude acknowledged. But I will say 再見　in Mandarin, because I am simply not done with this magical place.

Beach!

When I was in Mexico, I wasn't updating because I was in a bad place. Here, things are a little too awesome to update often. I'm super busy all the time, so there's that. I had a homestay with a Hakka family, an old ethnicity that came over from China around 5-600 years ago, I'm told, and got along fine with the Aboriginals. They were so great - I felt the warmth and hospitality from the first minute I got into the car - a mother, a father, and triplet daughters sixth-grade age. I hope to post about that soon, but now I have to talk about the beach.

The last time I saw the ocean was pretty perilous. I was really cautious about getting back in the water again. This isn't the calm, clear Lake Ouachita water I know so well, this is tides and waves and currents trying to pull people away. I mean, that last experience was a Lesson Learned, and learned well. I desperately wanted to be in water but I was scared, too.

But the intoxicating beauty there... This island is so gorgeous - the Portuguese called it "Formosa," beautiful, and rightfully so. It reminds me of home, only MORE. More green, more mountains, more heat and humidity, and then of course there's the fact that there's ocean to be found everywhere. My study program had an excursion planned to take us to the southernmost beach on a Friday - I planned to stay as long as I could. Booked a room for 10 for Friday night, but everyone was full Saturday. I figured I'd play it by ear.

The school's tour took us first to a sort of museum about what-all could be found in the area. It was fun, but it wasn't beach. Then we were taken to the farthest-south tip of the whole island, which had a lighthouse, and lots of trees, and shops... but it wasn't beach. Then they took us to a spot where we had the single best vegetarian meal yet which was delicious but still not beach. Then we were given some time to stroll around and look in shops which were also not the beach and then they took us...

...TO THE BEACH! Oh...

I mean it was just lovely. A little bay, called "South Bay," and it had some silly music blaring like many beaches do but we went far enough away from it and I slathered up in sunscreen, and we negotiated an umbrella rental from some women who were covered head to toe like mummies because you have to stay white here or you aren't beautiful, and then I jumped in. Even though I was very careful I was caught in something of a weak current at first, but many others were as well, and we worked our way out of it right away. From there I would stand in a shallow part - there was something of a sandbar that went out a good ways - anywhere from knee to neck deep, letting the waves move me around. After a couple hours the buses left, and those of us staying... stayed!

Night markets are awesome here and every town has a few, so once the sun had long set we showered up and headed to drop our bags off in the hostel and check it out. It was great! I ate everything... Stinky tofu, big-sausage-with-little-sausage, fried mushrooms, some japanese gooey rice thing I don't even know what it was with black sugar on it, grilled corn, fried pineapple, mango ice, .... and more I'm struggling to remember. Went back to the awesome room and laughed with 9 friends well into the night, pillow fights, silly jokes, then passed out.

Woke up in time the next morning to check out, left our bags there and headed out for adventure. After breakfast we went to rent bicycles because there is a national forest park that sounded wicked awesome.

Yeah. The map was flat.

After I don't even know how long of biking it felt like an hour but was probably only 15 minutes at an angle that felt like straight up I backed out. I had been going slow because my roommate had too, and I didn't want to leave her behind. Then I realized I had actually been going slow because my back tire was dragging inside the wheel cover, and I was having to fight the friction to get anywhere! Of course this is Taiwan, so it was crazy hot and crazy humid and this was tougher than Monkey Mountain, the sweat was dripping off of me. Turned it around, took it back, turned it in, got my refund, and headed to the beach! I was pretty frustrated because the long version of this story involves a lot of awkwardness due to the size of the group, a lot of "What do you want to do" and "Well what about this" and "What if we" and "Well let's go" and "Are you ready" and "Where's so-and-so" and then even when I got to the beach we were waiting on people and it was getting on toward about 4PM and I had hoped to go snorkeling and I was starting to go crazy from all the waiting and not-doing-anything...

Finally the people we were waiting on showed up, but we'd been waiting to get on their scooters, and they'd gotten too few and didn't have helmets. So they headed off to another beach (Why? The one we were at was fine?) and we had to taxi to get there. More frustration! We started walking and finally caught one and finally got to the other beach and finally spotted our friends (easier than most places - just look for the tall white folk) and then FINALLY I was in the water and oh!

Just wonderful. Again.

That night most of the group that had stayed headed back. I couldn't go back yet. I felt like the day had been wasted and I still wanted to snorkel. We perused the night market again...

...oh! I forgot to say how the night before we met the princess of Taiwan! Yes! She told us so herself! Well, she told us in Mandarin, then a boy told us in English, but he also said, "But this is bullshit!" But then she pointed to a sign (presumably, that she had made) and chattered in Mandarin, and the boy told us that the sign said, Princess of Taiwan, and she laughed hysterically and then showed us that she had been sampling her own wares, which was flavors of millet wine and liquor that I bought a bottle of and she had been forcing us to take shots of. What a great lady! Of course I took a photo with her...

...and as I had failed to find a place to crash and as my friends had crashed on the beach the night before, the one boy who'd stayed behind and I headed to the beach. We had a tent someone had lent us, and we set it up, and promptly strolled around the beautiful night beach. What a drastic difference from the night market! The market was crowded, packed with people, you could hardly move - we stopped at one spot to inquire about foot massages (only to find there had been a price increase over the price our friends had paid the night before - weekend price hike I guess) and ended up just sitting at the table there to avoid the madness for a bit until we had enough energy (and our full bellies had relaxed a bit) to head to the beach and set up.

It was so quiet there, almost no people except for some random fishermen with ten foot long poles with lights on the end, and the occasional bunch of kids come to set off fireworks. Fireworks are pretty popular here; they go off all the time and due to some sort of language disconnect, whenever we ask why there are fireworks, we receive not an answer but another question: "Do you not like fireworks?" No, I think they're swell, I'm just wondering what the reason is. We found a mat someone had left behind and set it up as our front yard and laid upon it, laughing our butts off as we swapped stories about our experiences and interactions in Taiwan thus far. We decided it was just too damn nice sleeping under the stars to climb into the tent so we didn't. We just passed out on that mat under the stars.

While I woke up several times during the night because of how uncomfortable the sand was, I woke up at one point because I was freezing! I remember being crazy excited to feel cold for once. I crawled into the tent and passed back out. I woke up once because the sun was coming up, and we'd talked about watching the sunrise the night before, but having had such a crappy sleep, I couldn't move. Later I woke up again because I heard a pack of wild dogs talking trash outside the tent... and I still couldn't move.

Woke up later and felt tired, sore, and stinky... but then, when I woke up, my front yard was THE OCEAN, so yeah I didn't complain. I jumped in for a swim and a rinse and then we packed up the tent and headed up to the 7/11 for breakfast for three reasons. 1) Money's running out. 2) We had more than enough local cuisine at the night market the previous two nights and 3) They have air conditioning. Anyway, no matter what we get there, it ain't gonna be like home. We must have looked a sight, but we loaded up with a bottle of water, a bottle of Pocari Sweat (the local answer to gatorade), a slurpee, and a mess of food each, paid, and set up in the window seats. Oh how we laughed at our situation and the whole unlikeliness and wonder of it all.

At that moment, I felt perfect. I didn't need snorkeling. I told him so. I had discovered I had twice as much money as I thought I had the previous night so I said I'd like to try to go and find the things I wanted to buy at the night market the night before but didn't. We walked up the road but none of it was anywhere to be found. It's literally a completely different street at day and at night. So we turned around, found a random shop to go potty, and hitched a bus back to Kaohsiung so we could train it on into Pingtung. In the train station, we sat down on a bench next to a woman with a tiny precious dog... and promptly fell to cooing over the dog. She loved us, she kept taking pictures and texting them to her friends, so we took one with her on my camera, and then the train came, and we got back to campus and shook the sand out of our bags just as the rain was beginning to fall...

And that was just two and a half days! Can you imagine? So sorry I haven't been updating, but man it's awesome here! And there's still homestay weekend to talk about! This weekend I'm staying here. We're free, no excursions or plans or anything, but the program switches our study companions and roommates halfway through. That's a whole blog post itself there, the reason I think they do it, but at any rate I love my roommate so much and I will be crazy sad for her to go. We're going to spend the weekend having adventures here and next weekend I'm going to visit her in her hometown.

Things Happening

Chinese food is delicious. Chinese food for every meal of every day... starts to get a little old. Only 6.5 weeks to go.

It's been raining a rather lot here. No real typhoons yet, but it does make it tough to explore and bike around.

Speaking of biking around, I went back to the magical pool/spa wonderland again, and took a group of students with me. I think that place is going to have to be a once-a-week outing at the least.

Sometimes in Taiwan, you hear an ice cream truck. And you get all psyched, thinking, hey, ice cream! But the truck is not here to bring you ice cream. The truck is here to collect your trash. That's a little disappointing.

I'm getting a lot better at Chinese. I can form several sentences now. Today in class, our teacher worked us through a typical menu, and then recommended a spot for us, challenging us to find it on our own and order something, then come back and tell her about it. A huge group was heading out from school, and everyone was all slow and waiting and... individualistic-traveler-me just decided to start hoofing it. Asked the guard at the gate for directions, asked a girl on a bike for directions, stopped and bought a dong gua niu nai and they told me it was just on the other side of the light. I got there and was torn between hot and sour soup and dumpling soup... until I found hot and sour dumpling soup on the menu. I had just put in my order when the rest of the group appeared. Good times and great success.

Speaking of class, that's been fun. It was really overwhelming at first. I landed one class up from beginning-from-scratch, and thought about going back with the beginners because after class my brain would literally physically hurt from all the exercise and new connections formed. But then I heard they were working on the damned alphabet so I figured I'd tough it out. It's been a good decision. My classmates are real sweethearts, and we help each other out a lot. My teacher is an absolute angel. She brings us treats and rewards us and gives us no homework on days when study companion time is canceled. Class is really hard but really fun.

The first day was a sort of welcoming ceremony. After taking my entrance exam (and doing piss poor) we had a campus tour before the ceremony. There were some local elementary school kids who played some local music on local instruments, a group of ethnic Hakkas who did some Hakka song and dance, some aboriginal high schoolers who did aboriginal dance, some kids who dressed up as giant baby gods and did some dance to techno music, and three dudes dressed up with painted faces who came in to scare out the evil demons to some drumming... lemme tell you, if I had been an evil demon, I'd have run from these scary dudes!

Since then my days have mostly been sleeping until the last minute possible, making it to class at 9 and getting out at 12, lunch, "culture class" which will either be general info on Taiwan, learning to play mah jong, how to make dumplings, or something similar, then study companion time until 4:30 at which point we all head back to the dorms and split off into groups with plans for fun. Last Friday instead of class, exchange students and their study companions all were taken to Gaoxiung, or "Kaohsiung," the second largest city in Taiwan which is between 30 min to an hour away. We were taken to a huge Buddhist monastery complex where we spent a few hours exploring, meditating, and practicing calligraphy. We were given a decadent vegetarian lunch, then headed off to climb a mountain. We were told it was a "quick hike" to the top. We spent at least 30 minutes literally not stopping, heading up these wooden paths with tons of stairs until we arrived at the place where the monkeys chill. We paused for photos then headed up at least another 15. My shirt was completely soaked through, with sweat dripping off the hem. This is Taiwan, yo. The temp is around 30 or more Centigrade at all times, and the humidity is at its nicest when it's below 90%. When we made it back down to the bottom, there was a small temple with a public bathroom where I stripped my shirt off and rinsed it out in the sink. I felt like a new woman, but I think I scared one of our study companions. Sorry for the transgression, yo, but damn it was hot. After that we checked out a market near the beach then drove back.

There have been other great moments. Exploring night markets, organizing volleyball games, eating shaved ice with locals, having some amazing duck for dinner with my roommate, her boyfriend, and his roommate, getting together with a group of students to go see the Harry Potter flick a solid 16 hours before my US friends, getting drunk on red wine, splashing home through the rain, then continuing to play in the rain once back on campus, tons of mah jong games that last long into the night...

The race issue is still in front of my face at all times. Just the other day I rolled up on a Murrikan kid surrounded by three locals and he was laughing, but their faces were quite serious and inquisitive. I asked him what was up. He said, "They just asked me why black people rap all the time." All the time. They never speak normally. All black people rap all the time. They genuinely were wondering about this, and couldn't understand his laughter nor why I simply walked away. There are no black kids in our group of students. I can't imagine what it would be like. I already hate it when people occasionally ask to touch my hair; I hear black folks get it all the time. There are a handful of kids in the program who aren't white, but all are pretty light skinned. There is such a preoccupation with whiteness here, and we all had to submit a photo with our application, I can't help but wonder if any African-Americans applied, and whether their dark skin hurt their applications? My roommate puts a skin-whitening lotion on before she goes to bed every night. People carry umbrellas here - for the sun. You'll see people riding their scooters with their jackets on in this heat, only the jackets are on backward, and it's just to cover their arms from the evil, darkening sun.

The good news is, we can access the rooftop of our dorms. The two things that keep my head right are swimming distances and chilling on rooftops. I have this strange, petrifying fear of heights, and yet I love them. I'm not sure what that's all about, but between the gluttonous water decadence wonderland up the street and the rooftop above me, I think my sanity is in the bank.

Tomorrow morning I get picked up for my weekend homestay. I met the father of the family at the opening ceremony. He seemed like a complete sweetheart, and told me about how his triplet sixth-grade daughters can't wait to meet me. I'm looking forward to a weekend of bonding.

On my personal experience as a minority.

Because it's just that: My personal experience. I cannot speak for all people who live/have lived as minorities, I cannot speak even to the general experience of all tall white girls in Taiwan. I can only speak about what I personally am experiencing. So this is not a manifesto, just a personal meditation.

When I last wrote about getting stares, I was still in Taipei. North of the island, biggest city in Taiwan, etc etc etc. I wrote that they were minimal, that they were more curious than lecherous, just interested passing glances. Now I'm in a small town in the south. Now the stares are unabashed and lingering. Now I feel like I'm in a zoo, except I'm the animal. And I'm the only one. And they're all here to see me. I wish they'd at least bring food.

I know I'm tall. I know I'm white. I know my eyes are blue. I know I have tattoos and curly hair. Most of these things have been a lifelong thing for me - even the tattoos started eleven years ago. None of this is new for me.

It's pretty new to most of the folks in Pingdong, apparently.

Today some friends were going to go swimming. They asked if I wanted to go. DUH YES. I mean... yeah, if you know me, you know how I feel about swimming. Just what I need, I thought. Especially after last night, drinking with other students in the program and getting into a pretty intense discussion about trans* people and how they aren't unnatural or gross with a bigot in the group.

The place was really magical. For a water-junkie like me, it was a literal heaven on earth. There was a 50-meter long pool for swimming (only one real lap lane that had several people in it, but laps were do-able), and next to it in the corner was this wall about hip-high. Climb over this wall and you find two big soaking pits, one is just warm with these three crazy jets shooting down from the short ceiling you can stand under for a massage, and the other is super hot for soaking, next to some small windows that open into this jungle-looking area with a nice breeze passing by.

And if that wasn't water-heaven enough, downstairs with the dressing rooms (which have both a sauna and a steam room) is this thing called the SPA. Walk down the hallway and you again have to climb over a short wall which puts you in another water pit. This one is kinda lukewarm too, and there are different jet-things everywhere. You can scoot back into a u-shaped cave area where jets will come at you from different angles, you can stand under more of the crazy shower-jets, you can scoot through a maze of little cube-posts that shoot jets out from different heights, you can lay back on the bed-chairs that have jets shooting up at you from underneath... water decadence! It was wonderful! It would have been perfect...

... if I hadn't been the zoo animal.

One girl came around the corner in the dressing room, and when she saw me, drew a sharp intake gasp of breath, her face went all shocked, and she literally jumped back. Yo, .... what? I'm just another human. I'm not some crazy devil monster who's going to attack you. I mean, ... except ...

...that we are literally referred to as "white ghost" here. We were taught this by the program director on a slide in her powerpoint presentation on Taiwanese culture. The slide was titled "How are Americans perceived?" There were bulletin points with racial slurs. White ghost is a little outdated, though. These days, apparently, the popular one is something to do with what freakishly long noses we have. How is that appropriate to teach as a class?

I go through this and I think about my friends of color back home. The thing is, I really don't have it that bad. Sure, I look over in the pool and realize that this old dude is going underwater so he can stare at my body underneath the water's surface, and that's really creepy and weird, but it's not like he's denying me any rights, or spitting on me or anything.

And that's my experience. That I am a novelty, a freak, something to be exoticised, and I don't like it, and I want to complain, and I stare right back now at those who stare at me. And when the little girl who keeps bumping into me in the pool to say, in English, "Oh sorry sorry" finally decides that she's tired of me ignoring her and actually grabs me while I'm swimming and pulls me under so that she can say "Oh sorry sorry" again and surely I'll respond this time, I do, and I look her right in the eyes, and I say, in Chinese, "What? What do you want? What would you like? What?" and she swims away but her friends keep staring and saying, in English, "HALLO HALLOOOO!" and Jesus Christ I just came here to swim people, to get my zen on, to knock out a thousand yards until my body feels completely exhausted and like a million bucks at the same time. I love how my body moves in the water, but I don't want some creepy old man going under to love it too.

And yet I can't have these experiences without thinking about how I really don't have it that bad as a minority here. Yeah, when I complain to a friend who went with me to the pool, he says, in English, "But it is because in Taiwan, we think foreigners are so beautiful!" And I realize he means it as a compliment, genuinely, and so does the creepy old man, but that doesn't make it not racist.

The other night I took a train with a few friends (two Taiwanese, one Vietnamese-American) to Kaohsiung, the second biggest city in Taiwan which is just a half hour up the road. When the conductor passed, he said something in Chinese, and the two locals started laughing. They explained it to the Vietnamese-American, whose Chinese is way better than mine, and he explained it to me. The guy said what he always says, but this time, he said it "like an American would say it." Once he saw me, he decided, I guess, he should do his best American accent. And they all thought it was hilarious and dissolved into laughter.

And I think, well, but I'm still allowed to ride the train. It's not like there's a "White Ghosts Only" car in the back or anything. But I can't help getting pissed.

This has really been a busy and interesting week. There was an opening ceremony, a few days of classes, and a school-led trip to Kaohsiung with a huge Buddhist monastery, a mountain climb with monkeys, and a harbor visit. It was all rad, and I know I should have written about it by now... but I've been kindof confused about how to write about those awesome things and also this prevailing weirdness. So here's this post dedicated to weirdness, and hopefully tomorrow I can write about awesome things only. In the meantime, hopefully, I will just learn and grow.

Welcome to Pingdong

See, because that's the first thing. The spelling I was taught, Pingtung, is the old spelling from when whitefolk were more concerned with their own pronunciation than the correct one, it seems. Today's correct pinyin spelling is Pingdong. So there's that.

I met a really great girl in the hostel who was also headed to Ping(tu/do)ng for the same study program as I was, so we decided to travel down together. She talked me down from using the High Speed Rail, and thankfully, because it was less than half the cost to just sit on a bus for about five hours instead. It was great, too, to look out the windows and witness things passing by. English on less and less of the signs, until it was only pinyin on some of the road signs telling you what exit was coming up. One of my favorite things to do anywhere is to look out the window and see people going about their lives and think about how that's a slice of someone's whole existence, and just witness it and take it in for a moment. So that was just glorious and fun for me.

Jennifer (the girl from the hostel, and I'll always change people's names when I blog about them to be fair and respectful) is a much better speaker than I am, or at least more confident and I think her vocabulary is bigger, too. So she told the driver we would need to step off at the National Pingtung University of Education, and when we arrived he let us do just that. There were some kids waiting at the gate with cameras, and they walked us to the dorms where our roommates were waiting with cute signs they'd made for us with our names. I gave high fives all around (because, in my experience, it's impossible to give a high five and not smile) and headed up to the room.

Let's talk for a minute about how sweet my roommate is. So so sweet, y'all. She asked whether I was hungry, and I found that I was a little peckish so she put me on the back of her scooter (ERRBODY be driving scooters over here, y'all) and we headed out with a friend of hers. First they took me to a tea spot so I could speak English to a friend of theirs who's apparently been studying it. Poor boy looked so frightened! He just stepped back and another girl stepped up and said HALLO HALLOOOOO! Which is apparently how all Taiwanese people greet Murrikans, and it's really endearing.

From there we went to this little place where they will fry up all sorts of vegetarian goodies for you. I had these mushrooms... holy jesus, y'all, so amazing. They asked did I want spicy, I said yes, middle spicy, and it was .... like my mouth can still remember how good it was and it makes me salivate to think about. I'm going to have to eat that at least once a week.

I shouldn't have talked shit about the food before I came! My roommate took me back out today (after ordering breakfast in, an omelette with tuna and corn, strange but tasty) for some noodles that were ridiculous. RIDICULOUS. NT$35 gets you a serving of noodles, free soup and free sweet black tea. That's like a buck and a quarter, y'all! I killed it. Thick noodles in some kind of bean sauce with sprouts and green onions and heavy sesame flavor. I ordered more to go, it was so good. It was also right next to a tea shop where they had the kind of tea the lady who worked at the hostel in Taipei got the night she took us out to the night market. Some kind of Chinese watermelon that we don't have a name for, dong hua or don gua or something... SO GOOOOOD. Got back and passed out and took a HUGE nap. I had the longest most complicated dream I can remember having in a long time. Which means, the mattress I bought when we went out was a good idea. Last night the mattress they gave me felt like a flat hard tabletop held up by springs, knives, death and hatred. I got this thin thing to put on top for about US$20 and a much flatter pillow and boy howdy it was glorious. I almost flew in the dream, which I haven't done in a looong time.

Guess what's not illegal in Taiwan? Montecristo #4. Pardon me while I step outside for a long and glorious smoke.

In Which the Traveler Addresses Her Father Directly

Dear Dad:

I *know* you told me you didn't want me to go exploring off on my own, but then you knew when you told me not to that I have before and would again, right?

I was smart about it! I used the directions in my Lonely Planet guide to get across town to the National Palace Something Museum because it's supposed to be this like treasure trove of history and antiquities and stuff.

Dad, I saw statues of Buddha from the fourth century. I saw pottery from the year 1 Billion BCE or something. But even more importantly, I ran into a Mucha exhibit.

Mucha, you know, Alfons Mucha? The Czech painter who had that art nouveau style with all the pretty flowing ladies? He was also something of a politico in his later years, and I got to see this image of his I've had a crush on since I was a little girl called Zodiac. I also got introduced to a new painting that made me cry. It was called something like Spring Awakens Earth or Spring Awakening the Earth or something. This really big painting, a burst of spring colors, all spring green and light blue, and in the middle, one woman leans in to wake up the other with this tender sweet love care all over her face...

I negotiated the MRT too, the public subway-type transit here. The guide book told me which stop to get at, and the kids in the hostel told me how to get to the one to get on here. On the way I passed a cigar shop. Guess what isn't illegal in Taiwan? Montecristo #4s. YUMMMMM. Got to the rail and kinda stood back and did my Monkey-see trick before jumping in to Monkey-do after observing enough people. Figured out my route, bought my pass, headed there.

Here's what's fun: looking out windows. WOW.

I got off at my stop and it was super cute and looked like a nice area. I bought some sushi bites and some hazelnut milk tea and sat in the middle of the area and watched for a while. Just as I was finishing up, a bus I needed pulled up so I ran over and hopped on. Monkey didn't see anyone pay the driver so monkey didn't do it herself. They paid when they got to their stop though. I said, "How much money?" He said "15." I gave him 15 and got off the bus and looked around like where's this palace museum... OH THERE. THE HUGE FRIGGIN THING ON THE MOUNTAIN.

Dad it was really cool. I took a lot of photos. I found, though, that rather than removing my driver's licence from my wallet, I had removed my student ID! So no fatty discount for me, whoops. I did, however, act confused and very sad when I found that the ticket that got me into the antiquities would not get me into the Mucha. The folks at the door got nice and, since it was closing time, let me get in for free anyway. Oh man I get choked up just thinking about that beautiful painting!

Then there was a garden outside, and I strolled around and... man what gives? I'm still in my twenties! But ugh how my feet hurt and oh how the small of my back hurt! Just uncool.

I bussed it back to the MRT stop, and strolled around and poked in stores and stuff some more. Here's where I'm a stupid American: people cut in lines a lot here, and step in your personal-space-bubble and don't give a crap and it makes me fume a little. But otherwise they are really strict about following the rules. Like, the sign says no food or drink on any of the public transits - SO NO ONE EATS OR DRINKS. I mean, there are signs like that everywhere back home but don't nobody pay no mind. Here's a mystery: I can't ever find a trashcan, but neither can I find any litter. How does that work? When I could never find a trashcan in Mexico, I understood why there was litter all over the place. But here there's neither. Really strange. So I end up carrying my trash around with me until I find one.

MRT back, and went the wrong way about four stops on the last leg, so I had to swap and take like 7 or 8 stops to get back, at which point I wasn't sure exactly which road on the roundabout I'd come in on so I just headed the direction I figured the hostel was in and bam, once again, good old sense of direction took me right back! Sweet.

I didn't go out last night. I just couldn't do it. I took a shower and was in bed by 9:30. I have a roommate from Ohio who's a really cool cat, and we stayed up talking for a while before another roommate came in hungry and the two of them went out. I thought about it, a quick night stroll before passing out, but I was so comfy and the idea of putting on shoes again did not appeal at all.

Today I think I'll head on down to Pingtung (or Pingdong, depending on who you ask). I'm ready to quit living out of bags and unpack. I couldn't find my toothbrush last night so I scrubbed my teeth with my washrag and then flossed and rinsed some water around for a bit. This aggression will not stand.

And so, I went against your wishes, but how about this concession: I will always be careful when I continue to go off on my own and keep my wits about me and not follow creepy Disney villains down dark alleyways so they won't turn me into a genie and stuff me in a bottle.

All my love,
your crazy daughter.

Last night.

I can't even begin to fully explain all the awesome that happened last night.

Suffice to say:
1) It's good to be backpacking in foreign countries again.
2) TAIPEI KNOWS HOW TO PARTY.

That is all.
<3

After exploring locally my first day in Taipei

Oh mah lawd my feets is hurtin.

There’s a building here, really near the hostel, that was the tallest building in the world for a while (but must now settle for being second-tallest) called the 101 Building. I don’t know much about anything around here, so I figured that would be as good a first-day trip as any: walk around near the hostel, explore but not lose my sense of direction, maybe eat something local, try making purchases, then get back to the hostel to rest a while before going out to explore the night market.

The streets are laid out interestingly here. Some have numbers, I think? Some have names but then you’re in an alley off the lane off that street… I’m still figuring out how it works. Anyway I went up my alley to the lane to the street and headed toward the giant tower. I hear it was designed to look like bamboo, but I ain’t seein’ it. I explored some convention center next to it first. I was getting hungry, so I ate, and I tried to ask whether the food was vegetarian in the way that my phrase book suggested, but I guess I failed. It was interesting… When I got to the tower, apparently the bottom five floors are taken up by the swankest mall I ever seen in my whole life, and the basement is solid food, most of which looked better than what I ate. Also most had plastic examples of their food out, and naturally I took pictures. In fact, I took pictures of everything. My lunch, the convention center, my walk to the tower (which passed several 7-Elevens)… I intend to load them up to Picasa the way I did my Mexico photos, but can’t seem to get Picasa to work for me just yet. If it doesn’t work by the time I get to the university, I’ll figure something else out. In the meantime, they’re on my Facebook, but I’m kindof a snob about who I’ll add, so if we aren’t already friends you’ll have to wait.

Apparently 101 can still boast the world’s fastest elevator! That was interesting. When I made my way back down it was raining (note to self: don’t wear a white shirt anymore ever) so I decided to hang out inside and explore for a while. While poking around the convention center, this information/guard/porter-type person kinda waved me back to give me fruit. One was a banana, which he was trying to explain to me that it was a banana, and I was like, yes I love banana okay, then he gave me this other thing that looked like a pear that took too many steroids and got big and warty. It was crunchy and kinda potato-textured with something of a piney scent to it and weird seeds inside. I ate it while I sat in the food court and people-watched for a while. There was also this market, I think it was called “Jason’s”? They had free samples EVERYWHERE. I hope there’s one of those in Pingtung. I ate some weird stuff, and drank some too, and I’m not sure what it all was, but I’m still alive so far.

Eventually it had slacked off to a patter enough that I could get back and maintain my dignity in my white shirt. I’ve noticed this weird thing that I might be able to say more about later. For now it goes, I don’t get stared at like I did in Mexico. The stares there were pretty much 100% from men (with women for the most part ignoring me altogether, in a somehow noticeable way?) and they were lecherous. I just felt dirty, even when I was dressed completely modestly. Today I had on a skirt and a tank (yo, it’s hot and humid here, even moreso than Arkansas) and there was none of that. I did get some stares, but they felt more like curiosity stares. Like, damn, look at this tall female with freckles and round blue eyeballs kind of stares. One girl in the tower, I looked up and I couldn’t figure out what she was taking a picture of, because I was pretty sure there wasn’t anything on the wall I was leaning up against, so I turned to look and sure enough, wadn’t nuthin there… except me… oh my goodness this tween is taking a photograph of me leaning up against a wall? There’s another phenomenon that I have yet to figure out, which is, what to do when you run into another cracker. There’s this weirdness like, do we look at each other? Do we ignore each other noticeably? There’s this moment in passing where it’s like, we both know we’re passing each other, and we both know we’re having this shared experience of being this extreme minority, but other than that we share literally nothing, so how do you acknowledge that or do you or ? This one guy today I passed, he handled it perfect. He had this smile on his face that somehow acknowledged all that and more, just this chill Mona Lisa smile as he passed me with his umbrella, so I gave him a halfsmile back, and then bam, we’re gone, the end.

Y’all, I realized on the walk back that while I knew what direction I was going, I had not paid attention to landmarks nor street names nor nuthin. I figured I’d just hope for the best and keep walking… and made it back with literally no problems! No wrong turns, no doubling back to make a turn I missed, my little feet led me right back to the door of the hostel. Rest, wash face, upload photos, write, go to night market, wash body, sleep, explore tomorrow…