Taiwaneers

So much has happened since my last post. My problem has been that since so much was happening I kept on meaning to post but then I would be overwhelmed by how much there was to talk about so I would put it off only to be faced with a bigger problem as there was even more to talk about. I’m finally biting the bullet but alas I have compromised with myself and it will be an abbreviated bullet.

So after my birthday Emily and I left for vacation. We are trying to save money for a trip home in March for a wedding so this year’s vacation was not a jaunt off to some other east-Asian country but instead a trip around our own Formosa (one of Taiwan’s many names.) After thinking about what we could do we decided upon a moped trip around Taiwan. Setting out with with one other friend Rachel, on her own moped, Emily and I piled our big backpack, our tent, and ourselves onto our moped and fled Taipei. We traveled down the west-side of Taiwan’s mountainous center stopping only one-night to stay with friends near Nantou before completing the journey down to our friend’s house in DongGang, a coastal town south of Kaohsiung (Taiwan’s second-biggest city).

We stayed and hung out with Laura, our DongGang friend, for about a week and camped for a few days on Xiao Liu Chu, a small, coral island not far from DongGang. It was warm and sunny. We camped out on the beach and read and we even went snorkeling in the surf. It was fantastic and a great departure from the much colder north.

Emily celebrated her birthday while we were in DongGang. I took her to Kaohsiung for the day and we hiked and road bikes and had fun together exploring the city. She’s a quarter-century old if you can believe it.

Megan, my sister, joined up with us the day before we left DongGang. Now there were four of us on two mopeds for the trip back to Taipei and oh man were we funny looking all packed on to our tiny, little 125cc scooters.

We took off north and hopped on Hwy 20, Taiwan’s southern cross-island road. There was a ton of road damage from mud-slides and it was very precarious in spots…it’s a very good thing that no mothers were on the trip is probably where I should leave the description. We came across many construction crews repairing damage and were even held up by one that hadn’t completed a little dirt trail to connect each side of the road from where a bridge had collapsed. Emily’s pictures will be invaluable for you all to see and get a better idea of what I’m talking about! We made it through eventually though and camped at LiSong, a natural hot-springs that LonelyPlanet says is Taiwan’s most beautiful hot-spring. It was very beautiful but oh man was it a hike to get down to it at the base of a ravine. I’ll leave that story for Emily to share.

After a few days there we took off up the east coast of Taiwan. The mountains and the east coast of Taiwan are so beautiful; so untamed compared to what we were driving past going south on the west-side.

After a night at Hualien’s Formosa Backpackers Hostel (recommendable) we headed into Taroko Gorge for a few days of camping and hiking. Another great story and another one I’ll leave for Emily.

After leaving Taroko we continued to head west and north through Taiwan’s mountains. It was slow going and very foggy in places. We stayed one night at a place called Wuling Farms and while it was a nice place we arrived too late in the day to truly enjoy it. Plus, we were pretty far north at this point and as we were camping we were less enthused about being outside and “doing stuff” due to the drop in temperature.

Our last day driving from Wuling Farms to Taipei was the most grueling. It was cold, rainy, and foggy and we were way up in the mountains in the middle of these clouds that were causing the rain and the fog…and we were riding on mopeds…brr.

We finally made it back to our house last Friday evening. Since then we’ve been hanging, reading, and enjoying each other’s company. Megan had to leave to head back to her home on Kinmen today. Monday Emily and I start school.

Vacation is over.

We have completed what has been one of our most fun trips between the USA and Taiwan and are now chilling at our home in the good ol’ Jhongjheng District of Taipei City.

Our visit in California proved to be fantastically cultural and extremely enjoyable…you can tell I’ve been in the US for ten weeks ’cause I’ve got such a big vocab to draw on.

We made last Sunday a beach day and our friends took us out to Newport Beach. The sun was great and the waves were awesome. We all did our fair share of body-surfing, sun-bathing, and frisbee. Later we went to the evening service at our friends’ church. Monday we went to The Huntington where I saw a Gutenberg Bible as well as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that had the Gutenberg beat by like 50 or a hundred years. The gardens there are huge and we only made it through a third or so before the place closed. It’s a pretty cool place! Tuesday we went to The Getty. Again we only made it through a small portion of this place because it is stinking huge. Incredible collection as well and thanks to the wishes of its founder, J. Paul Getty, they aren’t allowed to charge admission! I of course liked the French Impressionism section the best but they also had a bronze exhibit that was pretty incredible as well. Actually the whole place was magnificent and I would definitely go back.

Tuesday evening brought a mini-reunion for Emily and I. Some of our friends whom we had met in Taiwan were in Long Beach for various reasons and the three of them came over to Genevieve and Kevin’s house for an excellent meal of spaghetti coupled with lots of talking and catching up! That night definitely ranked high on the most fun of our summer list.

Wednesday was a relax day and that night we were driven to the airport, graciously given exit row seats upon request, and settled in for a long but good (remember my high endorsement from a few months ago?) flight on Malaysia Airlines back to our little island. No joke I even slept for several hours which hardly ever happens!

We lost a day coming over and Friday morning after landing we made our way by bus and MRT back to our home in Taipei. I had planned on being out of commission but I felt fine. I even went to my Friday afternoon class and got to say hi to everyone.

Well, since then we’ve been grocery shopping, cleaning the apartment, and in general settling in for another year.

Today we made it to church at New Hope and had a wonderful time worshiping God and catching up with friends.

Now its back to cleaning…

One of the benefits of living far away from our family is that when we are home there is a fair amount of attention paid to getting quality time with everyone. I have to say that one day in the last few weeks has stood out to me. A few days ago my brother drove over to Lansing for a business meeting I had tried to arrange. Unfortunately the meeting ended up falling through but my brother came anyways to spend one last day with me…side note: Newmind is a fantastic company and you should definitely consider hiring them to fill the CIO role of your small to mid-sized company providing the edge you need to compete! Over the past few years the time my brother and I have spent together has mainly been in the context of full, family gatherings. This day together was different, in a great way, because it gave me a chance to see my brother work his business magic, getting to tag along to his appointments as well as the opportunity to do the whole confide in and be confided in thing. Him driving away that night was one of only two times I’ve felt like having a little cry this time around the goodbye tree.

Yesterday we boarded our flight in Detroit and officially began our journey back to Taiwan for year number three. We had a huge portion of our wonderful family there to see us off. It’s great having people that care so much about us and that we care so much about too! Goodbyes are hard though.

We were again on Frontier Airlines out to LA and I again was not impressed. The pilot on the flight from Detroit to Denver seemed to forget that there were passengers in his plane and decided to fly without so much effort given to making large, graceful, unnoticed turns or being that discriminating when it came to the angles of ascension and its opposite. I also felt a few instances of actual fear about the fact that we were flying on September 11th. Up until the flight I hadn’t really thought about it at all but somehow being in the plane with that less then perfect pilot made me a bit antsy. Out to Denver Emily took the window and I sat between her and Terry. He turned out to be a middle-aged guy from West Bloomfield that now split his time between there and San Diego. Terry told me how he’d been to thirty countries because of business. Flying once a month had made him quite the airline expert and Terry explained to me that Northwest and US Airways were the best money can buy. So there you go folks. Now you know. Towards the end of the flight I learned, because his leg was killing him, that he had a bullet in his hip. My immediate thought was to ask him what it was doing there but for some reason I held my tongue and now I’ll never know. The flight from Denver to LA wasn’t nearly as eventful. Our rowmate was a very elegant, middle-aged woman who read and slept the whole time. We did not speak one word to her nor her to us…that is unless Emily snuck in something that I didn’t hear. Another nice thing about that flight was the pilot seemed more of the nice and easy does it variety.

Upon landing our scrumptrulescent (how can Will Ferrell ever be thanked enough) friend Genevieve was extremely prompt in picking us up and delivering us to Pasadena where we are staying for a long weekend before the transpacific flight.

After unloading and declaring our hunger we were taken to In-N-Out Burger. It was excelente! Our friend Kevin showed me how to take a bite of hot pepper (they are complimentary additions to your meal should you ask for them) and then a bite of burger making an oh so good combination of excelentayness in my mouth.

Today we decided a walk around downtown Pasadena would be fun. During the walk Emily and I bought what we believe is our first jointly purchased piece of art. Wally Pacholka sold us a print of one of his photographs at a wonderful discout for which we are extremely grateful, being the poor students we are. Here it is:
Isn’t it beautiful. Actually the right-side is a little cut-off here but you get the idea. By the way it’s not digitally mastered or anything. It’s the real deal and we think it’s pretty cool. I also picked up a copy of J.B. Phillips’ Your God Is Too Small at Cliff’s Books for a dollar and ten cents off the bargain rack…and it is even a hardcover.

Once all the walking was finished we came back to the pad and watched the tail-end of Michigan’s win against Notre Dame and the entirety of the USC vs. Ohio State match-up which I have to say was one heck of a game. I of course sobbed uncontrollably (not really) and hung my head in shame (it’s just so embarrassing) upon seeing the ESPN ticker’s report of the CMU vs. MSU game…woe is me.

And thus ends the day.

Well we made it home for summer break!

We said goodbye to our flat-mates last week and boarded our Malaysia Airlines flight to California. We sat next to this guy who told us story after story. He was born in Taiwan and had been visiting his mother for two months. However, for the past thirty years he has lived in the USA and currently lives in Lacuna Beach. He’s a millionaire who made his money in one-hour photo shops and real-estate. Paul was definitely an entertaining guy. I love the fact that he was sitting with us in straight-up Economy (not even business class) and talked about how he just bought his daughter a new BMW.

Let me take a minute here to give my full endorsement to Malaysia Airlines. The seats go way far back, lots of leg room (seriously I felt just as good as if I was sitting in an exit row), and….drum roll please….the food was not only edible it was good. Just to rub it in, the dinner they served me was Seafood Ragout! Boom shaka laka! The service was fantastic as well with very nice flight attendants who were always bringing stuff around without any call buttons being hit. Finally I must mention the fact that even though they made Emily check her carry-on because it was too heavy they didn’t charge extra. I’d definitely use their services again!

We landed at LAX in the middle of the day and decided to try our hands at American public transportation after all our experience overseas because the alternative: the shuttle service to Pasadena where we were headed, was $25 a-person. YUCK! Emily and I read up online and discovered we could take the free airport shuttle to Parking Lot C, get on the 439 LA city bus and ride it to Union Station where we could catch the metro to Pasadena. The ride to the parking lot was short but the 439 ride was like 2 and a half to 3 hours long. The metro ride was only about 20 minutes. The bus was like $1.60ish per person and the metro was $1.25 per person so what we might do next time if we are in more of a hurry is take the $5 shuttle from LAX straight to Union Station instead of the city bus. It did feel great to cheat LA out of its reputation for being un-navigable with public transportation…I’m becoming my dad.

Even though it was a long ride its good that we took the 439 this time. 1 because we had plenty of time to kill before our friends got off work and 2 because we had a very nice conversation with a movie star. Carey Westbrook got on the bus not long after we did, came straight to the back of the bus where we were sitting with our bags and before long we were chatting away. He told us all about the movie, Blue Valentine, he just got done shooting with Ryan Gosling which is scheduled for release in 2010 and how he’s juggling his movie career with his two part-time jobs, one at a cemetery and one as a night-watchmen at the newspaper. The newspaper bit launched us into a conversation about where to get real news with Carey advising us that www.democracynow.org is where its at. We found common ground learning that he spent a few weeks in South Korea teaching English but decided to cut it short and instead of sticking around asked his students how to say “I want to go to the airport” in Korean. Before he got off the bus I was also able to squeeze some marriage advice out of him. Even though he’s not married his relationship with his long-time girlfriend has taught him a few things he told me. Carey advised me to remember three things when the woman in my life is talking to me. Every once in a while I should say “ya gotta watch out for that” or “thats what they do” or….sadly it seems the third one has already left me. If my woman then questions me on whether I was really listening or not I should quickly respond “I said thats what they do.” Carey was a really cool guy and thankfully I got a picture with him before he got off so that when he makes it big I can say I knew him when.

After the metro ride from Union Station we walked the 5 or so blocks from the metro station in Pasadena to our friends’ house and had a great few days visiting with them. Afterwards they took us to the airport and we got on our Frontier Airlines flight to Detroit. Nothing that good to say about Frontier other than they are cheap and got us to where we were going. I’d compare them to Spirit Airlines. Basic, cheap travel. One thing to remember though is that Frontier charges $15 for even the first bag so factor that in when you are buying tickets.

It was great to be back in Detroit and see my sister who came and picked us up. I was so revved up we stayed up late eating Taco Bell and watching a movie!

Since then we’ve gone to a July 4th party with friends from church, gone to church, and spent lots of time with our families!

Work should start on Monday!

Hey all, I finally got around to editing a bunch of photos, among them the ones from our Korea trip. New albums up! Enjoy!

Emily