Arrival!

(Now with 100% more Taiwan!)

Hi everyone! I'm in Taiwan now! :-D!

It was a really, really, really long plane trip. Sixteen hours to start, SFO to Hong Kong, a five-hour layover, and another two hours HKG-Taipei. Of course, my plane left from SFO at 11 pm. I spent the day very well with my parents, mostly driving around the long way to San Francisco through Napa Valley. It was a really nice day, and after a tearful goodbye at the security checkpoint I headed off west.

The first leg of the trip, I managed to get about two hours's sleep. The problem with the plane I was on is it's designed for short people. The seat reclines far back, and it's quite nice actually, very comfortable- until the guy in front of you also wants to sleep. At that point it's best to have no legs. So, after two hours I was woken up by sudden sharp pain in my knees as they attempted to merge with my entertainment system, and that was that. I did get some reading done though.

Hong Kong Int'l was nice, just like I remember it from last year. Lots of people going lots of places, pretty good food, and an excellent Starbucks.

You can tell it's Hong Kong because of the characters.

But I was mainly very tired, so I spent the five hours blearily looking around and trying to figure out what time it was.

The second flight, despite being much shorter than the first, had much nicer seats. It passed quickly, and as time wore on I began to get excited. "Taiwan! I'm going to Taiwan! I'm about to land! In Taiwan!" As we were descending, I broke the rules and took this picture of my destination.

Click it to enlarge, I really like this picture. :-)

And then we landed! All my stuff got there in one piece, nothing broken. Immigration was easy enough, all I needed to do was show them my scholarship paperwork and I was brought through.

All of my worldly belongings...

The above picture might not look like I have much stuff, and truthfully I don't. But what I have is really heavy. My initial plan was to catch the bus into the city, figure out where I was, use that knowledge to make it to my hostel and crash. But as I hefted my (no joke) 160lbs of stuff and took a step into the warm humidity of Taiwan, I began to reconsider. I reconsidered even more when I did the math and figured out that a NT$1000 cab ride was only $30 in USD. So I wimped out and called a cab, and actually my cabby was very helpful, so I'm glad I did. He couldn't speak any English, but we talked as much as we could and he told me about the city, places to go, places to avoid after dark, food to try. He told me a little about the history of the place too.

I got to my hostel eventually. It looked really shady at first, I wish I'd gotten a picture of it. Imagine: You've been dropped off in a narrow alley, carrying your aforementioned 160lb burden. The buildings around you drip with humidity, forming pools of moss on the ground. There are three doors before you. On the right is a steel door, closed but with a grille you can see through- inside is something you think may be food, but you can't tell. On the left is a raised patio with a weathered pink door, with the word "Joy" on it. In the middle is a tiled hallway, stained with moisture, leading to a series of steep steps in disrepair. One is your hostel, and you don't know which.

As it turns out, the middle one was, and it led to this door:

I couldn't take pictures inside because it was actually the manager's house, where his family lives.

And it was actually pretty nice! The manager, Tom, was friendly, the bed was comfortable (but after almost 40 hours awake, anything would be), and my room had a door that locked.

I took a brief two-hour nap, which was killer to wake up from, in order to get dressed for meeting. My hostel had wifi, so I used Tim and Nola's phone (thank guys, you're lifesavers!) to figure out how to get to the Kingdom Hall.

On the way to the Hall that night. 

Unfortunately, and of course, I got lost. The Kingdom Hall is in a maze of small alleys and lanes, and the friends know it's easy to miss. Happily, I stumbled across some missionaries coming back from a long day (their home is built on top of the hall) and was able to meet them and follow them back.

Taipei South!

 It's a really cool congregation. About 140 people, about fifteen foreigners like myself attending, and 68 pioneers. I wasn't very coherent that first meeting, but I got to meet many people and make plans to go out with the group the next day.

The Hall in daylight

Service today was great, and very different. I'll explain more in another update, but I learned a lot and managed to place three tracts. (In Taiwan! I can't believe I'm actually here!) I made friends with an Italian brother, GianCarlo, who took me out to lunch and coffee afterwards (Italian coffee is dangerous, man!), then introduced me to Sister Tan. Tan Jiemei can't speak a word of English, but she has a restaurant with three rooms above it that she rents out, usually to Japanese brothers staying for a couple months. Right now one of them is free, and she invited me to stay with her.

My new digs!

It was very generous of her! So I made the long trek back to my hostel, once again lifted my stuff (note to self: own fewer things), and moved in. I can't stay here forever, at the beginning of next month she has a Japanese brother she's already promised the room to, but this gives me some time to find an actual apartment somewhere.

So that's it for now! I didn't die, I'm really enjoying Taiwan, and this is going great!