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!