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!