Taipei, we are here!

Busy stuff happens.

The long version? It started Monday 2345, and after an eight hour flight, Mr Angel and I landed in Singapore. Terminal III of Changi Airport is massive, the hub of which resembles more a shopping mall than a major airport. I bought a shiny bracelet. It pretty.

Two and a bit hours later, we embarked on the last leg of our journey.

I'm currently in Taipei, capital of Taiwan, and I'm going to be spending at least a year here.

Well, that's the plan, anyway. We're currentlly in a hotel which is mostly free, and on Monday we start training to learn how to Teach English. We'll be assessed after training to confirm acceptance. Until then, we're trying to find our way around a city in which English is not a major language. Its not so much of a culture shock for me, but it's hitting the hubby dude a bit. He's getting by, and it's easing by now. The road naming system is so hideously different from anything either Mark and I have encountered, that we get lost while walking down a straight line over a couple of blocks. The street signs are, thank God, written in both Chinese characters and Pinyin, which is Chinese characters in Romanized form.

The food is fantastic, though. We are getting along by survivng on our Lonely Planet Taiwan book, and the Mandarin Phrasebook of the same publising company. Our accents are horrible enough that we elicit confused expressions and instead point to the phrase in the books. The locals are friendly though, quite willing to point out a good noodle shop and tea bar. Food on the streets is cheap. Foods in restaurants a bit more expensive. We had yamcha (dimsam) for brunch and walked out about A$30 poorer. A similar meal in Brisbane would be about A$10 to A$20 more expensive. We bought a steam pork bun (bao) for less than A$1.00, and from a 7-11 we got two drinks, a small Pringles can, and a box of Pocky for a bit over A$3.00. Two bowls of beef noodle soup was about A$6.50. That price would be doubled in Australia.

Tomorrow we're going to brave the train system to get to the suburb where hubby-guy's going to be posted. Then we'll go meet up with dustthouart(whom I just met on the Catholicism community site) and we'll go explore a nightmarket. I think we'll go visit the zoo on Friday.

~Angel

Taipei local time

Taipei