James' First Blog!

So we have been living in Taiwan for 7 days now, I guess it's time the world heard from James!

It has been an interesting week for me/us.  Had a rough couple days so far, moving to an extremely foreign land has proven more difficult than I expected.  Not sure if I came in to this with unrealistic expectations or maybe I really had just no idea what to expect.  Either way, I am learning to adjust to my surroundings.  But again, these are my thoughts as of 7 days in to the journey...

Hsinchu City (where we live and have jobs) seems not so pedestrian friendly thus far.  We are learning new ways to get to places of interest - our job locations, the gym/track, 18 peaks nature area, food, etc - that keep us off the super busy roads.  Setting a foundation to make friends with the other teachers at our schools*, meeting and exchanging contact information with one of the students at the University across the street**, and getting linked up with local English speaking Facebook groups*** has been a huge help in making the transition easier.  But the hands-down number one thing that has helped me with these first 7 days has been my wife Rachel.  She reminded me of a HUGE fact I had forgot: we didn't move to Taiwan to live in Hsinchu City because we thought we were going to love Hsinchu City.  We moved to Taiwan for the opportunity to teach English and to explore all the different amazing areas of this incredible country.  That simple statement immediately calmed my nerves and refocused my energy.  Teaching English will begin June 10th (training).  So lets go explore the parts of Taiwan we have been reading about!

*Had dinner with 2 guys from Rachel's school: Chad and Jack.  They explained what our day-to-day job entails as well as showed us around a few streets in Hsinchu.  Ate at a Japanese Hibachi grill.  Not good food for Rock and Ray.
**Found an AMAZING vegan restaurant about a 3 minute walk from our apartment.  Ate a huge buffet style meal and were stuffed.  Spent $290 NT ($9.77) after going back for seconds.  Girl from the University helped us out because we were really confused at first.  Our first Taiwanese Facebook friend!
***Found a Hsinchu Buy & Sell group of all English speaking people.  Also found a Hsinchu Hash Harriers running group.

We took the train from Hsinchu to Kaohsiung on Wednesday.  About a 3.5 hour ride and $23 USD.

Was a super comfortable ride and saw lots of mountainous terrain.  First impression upon stepping off the train: super clean, very modern, and lots of English signage!  We went to the information kiosk and got a map and recommendations of things to do over the next few days.

We then walked to the hotel we selected from our Lonely Planet guidebook: The Happy Hotel.

$850 NT / night ($28.33 USD) and includes tea, coffee, and breakfast in the morning.  Not bad!  Although I still don't understand who thinks these style showers are a good idea.  The entire bathroom gets soaked!

It has been a true Rock and Ray style vacation so far.  Nonstop exercise!  Wednesday we took the super modern, super clean, super efficient MRT (subway system) to Lotus Pond and took the path around the lake, visiting all the different temples and enjoying the beautiful area.  I just cant get over how awesome Kaohsiung seems thus far.  Sidewalks everywhere, parks to enjoy a quieter setting, and a phenomenal public transportation system.

By the time we finished the walk around we were starving.  We are still apprehensive about eating anywhere (due to our historically super strict dietary habits) but are getting better / more flexible.  We ended up going in to the High Speed Rail station (was right next to the MRT station) and found a restaurant with pictures of vegetables.  Turned out to be a vegan restaurant...perfect!  The food was a bit pricier than normal but was well worth it.  I think we paid $19 USD for an immense meal.  Happy.

Thursday morning we took a bus to Monkey Mountain for a trail run.  We got off the bus earlier then we should have, but it resulted in seeing a few temples and shrines, as well as making for a tougher run (hehe).  Monkey Mountain was awesome!  Lots of technical trails with lots of climbing.  And there were really monkeys!  We met a few local cyclists who took pictures with us so they could post on their Facebook pages.  I am finally the celebrity I always new I was meant to be ;-)

After a few hours of sweating our faces off (its like 88 degrees and crazy humid) we found the bus and went back home.  On the way we saw a traditional market about 2 blocks from our home so we immediately went there to buy lunch.  I am sure Rachel has mentioned, the fruit here is incredible.  After lunch and shower, we headed back to the MRT to go see Kaohsiung harbor and Cijin island.  We found a really cool college campus on the way that had a bike rental station.  We saw these all over the city and there is one near our hotel so we decided to bike it the rest of the day.  Visited British Consolate building (kinda lame) then took the ferry over to Cijin island.  We were expecting a quiet, beach getaway island but it turned out to be a crazy busy place with lots of street food.  Not what were expecting but we made the most of it.  Found a place that had veggies then road bikes all over.  Nothing great to report.  We took the ferry back right at sunset then headed toward Love River as we heard it was a cool place to go after dark.  The ride over was really fun.  We found some bike paths that went through all these art districts.  The paths are widely used by other bikers, walkers, runners and we felt right at home.  It was so cool!

Once we got to the river it was very nice looking over the water.  We felt the love at Love River.  By now we were tired and starving again (surprise) so we headed home, keeping our eyes out for veggies.  We found a Subway and had super veggie subs and salads.  Yum.  We dropped the bikes and were walking the few blocks back to our hotel when we saw a juice stand.  I got a watermelon juice and Rachel got a pineapple juice.  Was simply fruit and ice, $1.33 each, and was fantastic.  A good end to a great day.

Today, Friday, I woke earlier than Ray and had a good morning coffee, read, and a quiet time.  I love getting back to a morning routine!  We ate breakfast at the hotel then ran down to Central Park.  Again - super impressed with Kaohsiung.  We had a solid cross-fit workout in the park then ran back to the fruit market we went to yesterday.  Here is what we got today for $260 NT ($8.77 USD):

Showered, ate our fruit lunch (saved a lil bit for later), and are being picked up by a taxi at noon to head down to Kenting National Park (southern tip of Taiwan).  Looking forward to a beach / hiking / surfing / snorkeling next few days.  Will post about that later.

So my conclusion(s) thus far: I miss everybody from the US very much, a few days ago I was not liking Taiwan but today I am liking Taiwan, God didn't bring us this far to drop us now, I am hopeful and confident about the future, writing a blog isn't too bad.  Wo ai Tai wan!

A few random things about an American living in Hsinchu:

1. There is no need for baby seats on a scooter.  You just strap the baby to yourself and have two more kids hang on behind you.  You can also ride your scooter holding a dog.  We'll have to grab some photos of this to post!

2.  Doing dishes while showering is fun and efficient!  James says I need to see the Seinfeld episode where Kramer installs the garbage disposal in his shower.  That would be awesome!

3.  You are always sweaty and coated in road grime.  It reminds me of road cycling around Atlanta.

4.  If someone speaks English, they are immediately your new best friend.  I stare at foreigners too wondering if they will be my new friend.  Our dinner last night with two English teachers (one from Chicago and one from London) was great!

5.  Eating out is way cheaper than buying food at the markets.  Not very healthy but cheap!  We ate at a Japanese hibachi grill last night - $4 each for a full dinner and that was at a sit-down restaurant.

6.  You are always thirsty.  Everyone else drinks hot water even in the summer.  The main cold drinks are bubble teas.

7.  McDonald's has the same menu here as in the US and is the only place with clean restrooms.

8.  You start thinking using chopsticks is easier than using a fork.

We are heading down to the most southern tip of Taiwan tomorrow through at least Friday June 7th.  The area is called the Kenting National Park.  Hopefully we will be able to blog there from our hostels.

Here's a link to a blurb written by a cyclist about Taiwan someone sent me.  I thought the our cyclist friends would enjoy it and be more tempted to come visit us.  The pictures in the slideshow are amazing for anyone to enjoy!  We plan to visit all the places in the photos.  One photo is of Kenting National Park.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-turton/taiwan-cycling-paradise_b_807197.html#s222100title=Taroko_Gorge 

Zai Jain! (See you!)

Whey?

That is how I would spell and pronounce the informal hello in Chinese.  I think I am finally somewhat saying "thank you" so it does not sound like gibberish.

On Saturday, we were excited to get off the crazy busy streets and run around the 18 peaks park.  We believe it has about 8k of paved trails with several dirt trails stemming from the main paved trail.  The park was deliciously green with trees.  The park was busy with people doing Tai Chi, walking and running.  Most of the runners would wave at us and say "hello".  We were quite excited to see other people running here.  The park also has a large amount of stray dogs.  One of the dogs seemed to like us so we named it Molly for Molly Adams!

Molly the dog

The traditional fruit markets....aka paradise market for us!

Once returning to the hotel from the much needed run, we were surprised by an incredible vegetarian spread for breakfast.  Some of the ladies from the hotel stay up all night cooking to create a Taiwanese feast.  They cooked about 8 different vegetarian dishes and serve it with rice.  We thoroughly enjoyed the meal!

                                     

We completed our apartment hunt after looking at several apartments.  The one near 18 peaks and the university gym won our heart over.  It just so happens that two of the English teachers at my school live at the same apartment and walk to work.  The apartment has 12 units and is 6 stories tall.  The roof of the building has a washing machine and racks for drying the clothes.  There are some great views from the roof!

Collecting dry laundry from the roof

The University gym 

18 Peaks Park is the green hills in the background.  There is a much larger mountain range behind it but hard to see in this picture.  

Hsinchu City View

Next my manager, Jessica (her English name), drove us to the RT Mart.  It's basically a Super Wal-Mart.  It was not too hard for us to buy stuff there independently.  I think a lot of people just go there for entertainment and to hang out in the AC.

After one more night and delicious breakfast at the hotel, Jessica picked us up so we could go sign the contract and officially move into our apartment.  Signing the contract was a big ordeal (just as everything seems to be here).  Jessica was a translator and bargainer with the landlord.  James had to use an ink pad and sign the contract with his thumbprint!  Here's a link to the video of our apartment so you can see more...sorry that a rambled a bit in it :)  I could not get the video to upload to blogspot.  Anyone have any hints for this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loiEVTCGl2M

After unpacking our items (which did not take too long), we explored the area and walked around the college campus.  Finally a quiet place in this city!  The campus includes a full sized track for public use, basketball courts and a gym with a weight room and a swimming pool.  I think we picked a good location.  By the way, a lot of young children enjoy staring at us.   Besides the teachers at our schools, we have only seen five other white people in Hsinchu so I understand why.  A bunch of the kids are fascinated and want to come say hello.  I don't know if it makes us feel like celebrities or freaks!

                                     

James need to be in more pictures!  Here's the track at the college with 18 Peaks in the background.  

After making a huge salad for dinner and paying way too much money for our food again, I had a breakdown.  Moving to a foreign country where barely anyone speaks your language and everything is so different is not easy (not that I thought it necessarily would be...).  The change is difficult and a wise friend of James told us this is called being homesick.  I am always amazed how God always lets us know His presence.  We watched the Buckhead Church service online at 9 pm our time (the 9 am service in Atlanta).  It made me quite emotional.  Andy Stanley told a story in the sermon about how he had signed up for classes at seminary school, arrived in Dallas (a city he had never been to and did not know anyone), and nothing was going as he pictured before he had even attended his first day of classes.  He was sitting in his "efficiency" apartment thinking what in the heck have I done!  I felt like screaming at Andy "I can relate!!!!"  God works in un-mysterious ways sometimes.

This morning we awoke and could see a much larger mountain range from our apartment widow.  Things are going to be ok with time, patience, help from others, and learning a LOT (including some Chinese).  We walked across town to the Hsinchu zoo and the surrounding park this morning.  The park was kind of cool but our throats hurt so bad from the pollution we decided to buy masks to wear around the city like the locals.  I feel ridiculous wearing the mask but I better get used to it.  By the way, apparently the wind in Hsinchu keeps the pollution low compared to other large Taiwanese cities so I can't imagine what those are like!  We vowed today to ONLY run to 18 Peaks, on the college campus and track, or exercise at the gym. Either that or we might as well take up smoking because it's the same as exercising here....

We spent the afternoon getting a health check at the hospital as a requirement for obtaining our ARC (Alien Residency Card).  The hospital was absolutely nuts with people and drawing a number at each station.  Picture getting you blood drawn at the DMV and that is the hospital here.  RIDICULOUSLY efficient though.  This would have taken 12 hours at hospital at home if it was that crowded.  Impressive!

Next we went to get our cell phones activated with a Taiwanese number.  I literally don't want to write about it because I was so darn confused by the end of it.  Cindy, James' manager, translated everything.  My old stupid phone (not a smart phone...get it?) is too out-of-date for a sim card.  So we put one in James' iPhone for now but we will need two phones after we start work in mid-June.  Decisions and complications...

Tonight we are meeting with a couple of the teachers from our schools.  They are going to help us out with life here and assist with  planning our trip for the next 10 days or so.  We have to be back by June 8th (easy date for me to remember...my birthday) to attend the Demonstration Day at my school, observe classes during the week, and finish paperwork for our ARCs before heading to Taipei for a week of training.  We are thinking of going to the beaches in southern Taiwan.  We can snorkel, surf, bicycle and ride a rented scooter to check out the national park!

PS  We never figured out what that green fruit is but we have tried several other delicious new green fruits in the process.  Anyone know what this is?  It's not honeydew melon and is like a mix between a mango, avacado, and apple.

                              

Survived the 21 hour trip to Hsinchu

James and I at the Atlanta airport with all of luggage which is pretty much the majority of everything we own now

After a couple of busy days of packing and last minute goodbyes, we left Atlanta on Wednesday May 22nd at 1:45 pm.  Somehow the flight was not as terrible as expected.  After the reading, stretching, eating, watching first half of Oz, stretching, eating, reading, stretching, sleeping about 1 hour, stretching, watching Top Gun while eating, stretching, reading, and James watching the Hobbit while I watched Brave, we arrived in Tokyo.  We had brought a ton of fruit to eat on the plane ride.  We had a 2 hour layover in the airport.  Of course, we walked around the entire time.  There was an entire shop of origami!  There were origami scenes such as Cinderella running away from the ball and Santa putting presents under a Christmas tree.  I will post a picture later but right now James' iPhone can't connect to the internet to send pictures to the computer.

Next we had a 4 hour flight to Taipei.  Somehow, it did not seem bad at all.  We passed out as soon as the plane took off because it was finally dark.  The entire first trip was in daylight.  For some reason they do this weird thing on the plane rides where they create "daytime" and "nighttime."  When "daytime" came, they turned on all the lights and served yet another meal (4th meal served on the trip).  The "Veg Only" meals on a Delta flight to Asia are actually pretty tasty and quite healthy.  We had brought a ton of fruit to eat on the plane ride but actually had to toss the last bit of it before going through customs in Taiwan :(

We finally arrived in Taiwan at 9:30 pm on Thursday which is 9:30 am in Atlanta!  The guy at customs freaked me out because he kept looking at me and took my picture.  He had me get out another form of ID.  Apparently, I don't look like myself in my passport photo after 20 hours of traveling with 2 hours of sleep.

James' great expectation only brought great disappointment.  No one from our school was there holding a sign with our names on it.  We hung out for a while and no one came.  I had the cell phone number of only one of our contacts at the school.  I called her from a pay phone.  Turns out she is the manager of my school and HR in Taipei never told her or the manager at James' school we were arriving today.  She immediately wanted to make the 1 hour drive to pick us up at the airport even though it was close to 11 pm.  James and I decided to take a Taxi instead (we really did not feel like waiting any longer at the airport) so we took a wild taxi ride to a Hotel recommended in our Taiwan Tour Guide Book and arrived after midnight.  We pretty much wrote an email to our contacts at our school and passed out until James' alarm went off at 9 am!  I love sleep.

This morning we walked the streets of Taiwan to find some fruit for breakfast.  It did not take us long...  It was HOT and steamy outside.  Felt great!  The restaurants and buildings are not pumped with AC so I was not cold the entire day.

Our managers picked us up at the hotel and they were awesome!  They are both from the Hsinchu area.  They took us out for an authentic Taiwanese meal.  We both ordered the Taiwanese hot vegetable bowls which are like a fondue pot filled with broth and vegetables.  You have additional items to cook on your plate although they freaked me out.  They took items like tofu, beans, potatoes, mushrooms, and I am not exactly sure what else and made little things that look like pieces of meat.  The plate also included a bowl of rice, a bok choy salad kind-o -thing, a little cup of a jelly dessert, a couple of spicy sauces, and hot red peppers.  James also ordered a cold green tea which was delicious and quite more flavorful than the green tea at home.  James tried everything on his plate. I at least took one bite of all the "fake meats" but only actually ate and cared for only a couple of them and did not even try the sauces or dessert.  No more hot bowls for me! And for those of you who understand, the toilet in the bathroom at the restaurant was a squatter!  Just google it...

After lunch, they took us to an agency to look at apartments.  We viewed three different apartments that fit in our $300 US or less category which is the high cost range for apartments in Hsinchu.  We liked one of them.  We are looking at a few more tomorrow and hope to move into one soon.  Our schools are about a 30 minute walk from one another during the summer since you have to walk slow in order to not sweat.  We hope to find a place near my school (which is also near a large university gym...) so I can walk and James can ride a bike.

Then, we visited our schools.  James' school currently only has one teacher and has only been open for one year.  He was a fun British guy.  James will most likely be the only teacher there when he starts though, but they hope to have a second teacher soon.

My school has four teachers and is the original branch in Hsinchu founded about 11 years ago.  My school is a bit more laid back on dress-code than James' school.  There are probably eight Teacher Assistants which are Taiwanese ladies who speak English well and help out in every class.  The two teachers we meet are very nice.  I am replacing one teacher who has worked there for five years and never returned home to Chicago.  He is taking an extended holiday to return home.  All the kids were staring at us when we got there wondering who we were.  It made me happy and excited to teach!  We were very excited to find out that the teachers in Hsinchu work from like 1:30 pm to 8 or 9 pm Monday through Friday (depending on your class times).  No Saturday work for us!

While driving around in the car, we kept pointing out all of stands filled with fresh fruit and vegetables.  Yum!  We also attempted to learn some Chinese common words from our managers.  James did a much better job than me with pronunciation.  I still can't figure out how to say "Thank  you" correctly.  How in the world would you say "xie xie"?

We were dropped off at our new hotel (the one the teachers normally stay at) around 6 pm.  We went for a longer walk to find some food and experience the night scene in Hsinchu.  The sun sets here at 6:30 pm.  It was fun to see the craziness.  There were people everywhere!  I don't know how the people drive here and don't run over the masses of people on the scooters!  There are seriously no driving laws or something but it all works out great.  I think just no one drives aggressive yet they all pay close attention to everyone else and know when to make their moves.  If Americans were driving in these conditions, there would be accidents non-stop!  Hsinchu is much more of a "city" than we expected.  I don't know how to explain that exactly.  Perhaps, it is larger with a a never-ending amount of street food, shops, people, scooters, and dirtier streets than we imagined.  The smell of Asian food is permanently in the air and I have never seen so much Hello Kitty stuff in my life.  We look forward to escaping to the nearby mountains and coast soon.  We could see the mountains from the high rise apartments we viewed today.

Anyways, we stopped at a fruit stand and bought some pre-sliced watermelon, asian pears (which are just pears here), some unidentified green sliced fruit, and some sliced mango.  The fruit tasted amazing!  We want to know what that green fruit is asap!!!!  Not sure exactly how James communicated the price, but he did well.  Not many people seem to speak English around Hsinchu, however, everyone is very friendly and helpful.  The city seems quite safe. We stopped at a sports store on the way back to the hotel.  The have all the major brand running shoes and Keens!  They stop selling them in a women's Size 9 which just happens to be my size :)  We are surprised that the people here are not as small in size as we expected.  Most of the women seem to be about the size of me but with smaller feet.  The men are not tall but they are not very small either.

Tomorrow, we plan to run to a large park called Eighteen Peaks that should be about 1.5 miles from our hotel.  We look forward to getting some exercise besides walking and stretching on a plane!  My manager is then taking us to see more apartments.  Then we are attending a "Demonstration Day" or what we would call an Open House at James school.  On Sunday we hope to take a bus to the outskirts of town to either the coast or the mountains.

Well...James is sound asleep beside me so I better try to get some rest.

Thanks for all the prayers!  God kept us safe.  We maintained a good attitude although we were weary travelers and we have been blessed with kind managers and fellow teachers.  Hopefully I will have more pictures to post next time.  Love and miss y'all!