Jet lag

I boarded my last flight, Taipei to Kaohsiung, 12 hours ago, but it feels like much, much longer. Everything seems longer when your body is screaming at you that it is, in fact, 16 hours before the time you're trying to tell it it is. Right now, for instance: It's 7:48pm here, and I am straining to keep my eyes open till my target time--at least 8pm--because it's currently 5:48am in Seattle, and that is a time of day that I rarely, if ever, see.

Add to that the fact that I haven't slept much this week anyway, and that on the plane I probably managed 4-5 hours total, interrupted by a baby crying, a need to be productive, and a love for several of the movies they were showing, and you get a constant fight just to stay awake.

And since I've been here, the fight has been constant--a fight while wrangling my four bags into our waiting sky-blue tour bus, a fight while waiting for the black coffee they gave us for lunch to kick in (I was beyond ecstatic when we walked into the FSE office and smelled that telltale aroma), a fight while waiting in the 80-degree + humidity weather to go to our apartment, a fight while choosing a new cellphone in a shop with contract prices only listed, not pay-as-you-go like I needed, and a fight not to collapse into my chicken-and-rice dinner, which , as a result of an outdated English menu, turned out to be a kid's meal. And the fight continues now.

It's been a fantastic day, though. It finally hit me as we flew into Kaohsiung that I'm HERE--living on a tropical island in the middle of the south China sea! (I had a good view of the sea the whole flight, actually, though after about 20 minutes I wished I was on the other side of the plane to see the glorious mountains.) It was amazingly beautiful.

Though the next several hours were spent at a table listening to more details about our grant as we all tried not to fall asleep from jet lag, nothing can dampen the fact that I am now in Taiwan on a Fulbright grant, ready to live a year unlike any I've ever lived before or, most likely, will ever live again. Despite the trepidation of some of the details we learned today--for instance, that 5 of the 12 of us will be placed in outlying areas which haven't had ETAs before, and that 1 of us will be living alone in one of those areas. Now we're all praying it won't be us, so we can continue to enjoy our great apartment here in Kaohsiung. We're all a bit anxious that this will erupt into massive drama when we pick straws for our placements.

But nonetheless, WE'RE HERE. No matter where I end up, it will be near this beautiful city on this beautiful island. No need to fight.

And, for now, at least, I think I'll give up the fight against jet lag and go to sleep.