Sunset over Kaohsiung

I could just see it through the opening between the parking garage pillars of the HSR: streaks of orange and magenta transforming the Kaohsiung sky into a bowl of rainbow sherbet. Though I knew that time was of the essence, and that we needed to get downstairs and get my bags taken care of, I couldn't help but pause: this would be my last Kaohsiung sunset.

As I write this, it's still July 11th, and it's still sunset--but I am now waiting for my final flight in SeaTac airport after an 11-hour flight, and it's almost 9pm, not just before 7. Time zones and day-length differences strike again.

I teared up twice on my journey: once, just a few minutes after I saw the sunset in Kaohsiung, as I said goodbye to the world's best host family; and once, about an hour ago, as I caught my first glimpse of American soil. And that pretty much sums it up: tears on both ends, for both reasons. Happy and sad. Good and bad. C'est la vie.

As I am, now, officially in America for good, I am no longer 百合, and so this blog has come to an end. Going forward, I will still blog, but less frequently, and on subjects which have yet to be determined. Nonetheless, though it's empty now, here's a link to my new blog, for whenever I begin posting about my more-mundane life Stateside.

I'll cherish forever my time in Taiwan; I truly cannot imagine where I would be had I not gone; I don't want to think about a version of my life in which I hadn't met all the amazing people and had all the amazing experiences that I have met and had over the past year. But all good things must end; even the most perfect day has a sunset, followed by darkness.

Tired

I'm trying to preemptively force my body into a US time zone. The only problem: it's not working.

It's 10:44am, July 10 right now. That's the time back home, and that's what I keep telling myself. The thing is, here it's 1:44am, July 11, and that's the time my worn out body is screaming at me to pay attention to. I tried to plan for this, trying to sleep between 2pm and 7pm this afternoon (aka 11pm-4am, Stateside), but it just resulted in an odd dream in which I was home and had completely blanked out on my entire journey, and in my waking up early feeling ill-rested.

And, now, I can tell you there is no way I'm staying up another 9 hours or so, until an "appropriate" West-coast bedtime. What's more, that's probably a good thing: if I went to bed in 9 hours, I'd miss my planned breakfast with Fonda and Esther, and I'd end up missing most of my last day in Taiwan AND likely missing my train/flight, in addition to not being ready to go, since my bags are still in need of some re-packing, and I am certainly not capable of finishing it tonight.

So...yeah. I'm going to go to bed now, I think. So much for advance time zone shifting...I leave tomorrow!

Substitutions

I opened my mouth, and shut it again. Recalibrated. Opened it again. "Careful!"

It happened first with the ubiquitous "mmn"; then "thank you," I think, and spread quickly to "really?" and "yeah!": in my mind, they existed first and foremost in Chinese. Someone gives me something? 謝謝 (Xie xie)! Someone says something unbelievable? 真的嗎 (Zhen de ma)? I need to confirm that something is correct? "mmn" or 對阿 (dui aa) will do the job just fine.

小心 (xiao xin) as my go-to word is new for me, though, and it has the advantage (?) over the others of concerning situations in which you really don't have time to translate before speaking. If you're telling someone to be careful, you usually need to do so immediately--and, really, that's the reason why 小心 made its way into my vocabulary in the first place: being an elementary school teacher gives you ample times when you need to caution people quickly, and be sure that they understand you.

We talked in our Fulbright sessions earlier this year about the tenets of language learning; one of the goals towards which we strive as English teachers is for English words to come naturally. This is referred to in the language teaching community as automaticity. And yes, automaticity is great, and yes, I'm more than a little excited that, for some words at least, Chinese has supplanted English in my mind.

But when, as happened in Australia, I found myself about to caution someone in Chinese, I started wondering about the dangers of these substitutions. No wonder second (or third, or whatever) languages are lost so easily if you don't use them! Seems to me like a natural defense mechanism: if you hold a rarely-used language at the forefront of your mind, you run the risk of not being able to communicate with those around you at a moment's notice--and that is, after all, the main purpose for which language was developed.

I'd just like to take this moment to apologize in advance to all my friends in America, for the moments when Chinese will almost certainly slip from my mouth instead of English. Just give me a few months and, I'm sure, I'll recalibrate.

Being Atayal

Fake pearls hung down in strands from her red and purple headband, milky arrows pointing down to the black lines tattooed on her cheeks. Beneath, stripes of red and purple weave intermingled down her torso; then, after a break for a pair of pale knees, down her legs, to the terminal point: a pair of black Converse. I looked in the mirror at the strange, confused apparition looking back, blonde hair strangely camouflaged with the headband that surrounded it; pale complexion not quite meshing with the garishly bright colors of the costume. I was no Atayal. But it was fun to try to look like one.

Today consisted almost entirely in moments like this, moments of fun and cognitive dissonance as I learned about Taiwan's aboriginal cultures and pondered my own mixed colonizer-and-colonized heritage at the Taiwan Indigenous Culture Park in Pingtung.

Heavy historical identity notes aside, though, it was a lot of fun! James, Margaret, Emily and I watched a singing and dancing performance in the style of the Amis people; we wandered around looking at the many traditional architectures of Taiwan (my favorite is that of the Rukai, which features stacked slate, though the Amis' raised bamboo great rooms are pretty cool as well); we (okay, I) swang on a swing designed way back in the day to keep kids from messing up traditional ceremonies; we made music on traditional instruments; we laughed about the fact that every single replica house had a modern fire extinguisher inside and in easy sight; we tried on chime backpacks and danced around with them on; we saw and heard traditional firecrackers be set off; and, yes, we put on temporary tattoos and traditional clothes and took pictures.

Rukai architecture

James and Emily are Seediq (of recent movie fame); Margaret is Saisiat; I'm Atayal; we all have Atayal tattoos.

I AM Atayal. Shut up, I was adopted. ;)

Quite a lovely day, all told. Being Atayal, even if only completely falsely and superficially, is quite a bit of fun!

Notes

Just got back from a lovely evening with Chialing, which featured delicious street food, milk tea, a Starbucks run (which we've been saying we'd do for months and hadn't), a movie, and more tea. The movie, it should be noted, was entirely in French with Chinese subtitles, so that I spent the majority of it debating whether I'd understand more trying to equate the French with Spanish, or trying to read the rapid-fire Chinese. And the food, while delicious, has left me feeling a bit queasy--just too much of it--so that's it from me tonight. Off to bed.

Back "home" and Internet-less

So here's the thing: my apartment no longer has Internet. As I write this, I'm sitting in Brunch across the street, one eye on my battery meter as it drops closer and closer to the point where it will automatically shut down.

The pros of this situation:

• Harder to distract myself while packing;
• Much more likely to spend fewer than 8 hours a day on the computer;
• New time requirements for my blog will mean less late-night typing

The cons of this situation:

• I have no Internet in my apartment. That pretty much sums it up, but if you want more, here:
• I have to buy a coffee/tea whenever I want to check my email;
• I have infinitely fewer opportunities to get in contact with people (internationally and nationally; my phone's almost out of funds, too);
• When I start forcing myself back onto a US time schedule (which I'm thinking of doing starting maybe Monday or Tuesday), I'll be up all night with nothing to do;
• Updates and photos will take longer getting posted.

And that's still the short list. Anyway, since I have yet to finish editing my Australia photos (and my computer's battery is running low), here is, at least, my just-updated "final days in Taiwan" (sniffsniff) album.

As for today, it consisted almost entirely in travel. I was up and out of my hostel by 6am; one local train, one express train, one flight, two buses, an MRT ride and a walk later, at 5:30pm, I arrived back home in Kaohsiung. Along the way, much ado was made about various forms of cash--I was carrying three (AUD, NTD, Japanese yen)--and trying to keep the coolest coins from each. I ended up making a small purchase specifically so I could get more Japanese change--some of their coins, the value of which I haven't been able to determine, have holes in them!

Another, erm, interesting moment came with the appointment of a sign at the entrance of my Osaka-Taipei flight telling me to "enjoy your "safe" and "comfortable" flight"--hardly encouraging.

AND--and if I had more time/wasn't feeling quite so lazy I would have led with this and made it a post of its own--I realized that hearing spoken Chinese and seeing Chinese signs is a comforting, homelike thing for me now. Being in Japan, even for a very short time, made me remember how awkward it is to not know a single word of the language being spoken around you (especially disorienting was the fact that Japan uses some Chinese characters, though mostly of the simplified variety, in its writing), and it let me see how far I've come in this year in Taiwan. The trilingual announcements at the airport (Japanese/Chinese/English) were great for showing me that I can now safely say I'd probably be alright if they had cut out the English--and that was a wonderful realization.

Well, it's about time I pack up and head back to my Internet-free home--and then get to work packing for my return to my other home.

Adventures in Internationalism

This morning, I cuddled a koala in Cairns and chatted with a girl from South Korea. An hour ago, I ordered a full set meal out of a vending machine in Osaka. I then walked to a 7-11 to use the ATM, and came back with a Starbucks drink called "Seattle latte". And then, a few minutes ago, I checked my Facebook and Gmail to see that I had new contacts from new-made friends from Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium and New Zealand waiting for me--and that beside the constant stream of new requests from my Taiwanese students.

I ordered this...

...using this.

Tomorrow morning, I will discover what Japan thinks a Seattle Latte tastes like. Hooray!

This random interlocking of different people, locales and customs might just be my favorite thing about international travel, and, from what I've seen of it, at least, of solo travel specifically. When you're traveling in a group it's easy and natural to stay in that group; when you're traveling alone, you can't help but reach out, see new things, meet new people, and get a much fuller sense of the world as a result.

This is just a short post--it's 11:45pm here in Japan, and I have to leave my hostel by 6am tomorrow if I want to make my flight on time (which I do)--but I thought I'd take advantage of my free Wifi here to make a quick note on my travels, and shed light on why my travels are only just beginning.

Learning to Breathe like Darth Vader

Scuba diving is now officially my new favorite thing, ever. As I type this I'm laying on my bed in my hostel, but I can still feel the boat rocking beneath me (smoothly, too, though erratically better describes how it actually moved), and whenever I close my eyes I can picture, almost immediately, the gorgeous Moorish idol we saw, and the anemone fish, and the two green turtles.

...Well, so much for saving my stories, I suppose. (But wait, there's more...and I have AMAZING photos to prove (some of) it!)

I very nearly had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, from the Kangaroo Explorer at the end of my third day today--there was still so much to see! I don't think I've ever been happier about a decision than I was, and am, in my choice to have stayed a third day, rather than going home at the end of two. Yesterday, when half of our open water course left, and we said goodbye to Natalie, Michael, Jeroen, and Ellen (and Ellen's sister, Freja, whom we'd met on board), the remainder of us were sad to see them go, but so so so glad we didn't have to go with them. Today, as Lars, Jana (Lars's girlfriend, who was already certified but who hung out with us after classes and on later dives), Anja and I boarded the shuttle back, I'm sure my dive buddy/late OW course joiner, Stuart, felt the same. I'm quite envious of him, still out there, still diving, clear until Friday.

On the ride back, I had a nice little chat with a self-described European girl (Greek/German/English/Italian/French) who has been working on board the dive boat for free, in exchange for training up to instructor status. The guy sitting next to me on the ride back (a snorkeller I'd met on board and also the sole other American on board), Haidang, asked me if I could ever see myself living and working on board a ship. I answered honestly: a year ago, no way; now, maybe! I've fallen in love with Cairns, and with boat life, and with the idea and practice of diving, and it would be stupendous to be able to join all those together into one glorious, several-month-long experience.

Don't freak out (Mom), I'm still coming home. One adventure at a time. But.......you never know! Breathing like Darth Vader's pretty freaking cool.

Automated Dive Message

*Beeeep!*

You have reached the automated voice mailbox of BEKAH. The person you're trying to read about is not available at the moment, as she IS OFF ON A DIVE BOAT AND/OR SCUBA DIVING ABOUT THE GREAT BARRIER REEF. If you'd like to leave a message, please do so by posting a comment. If not, please be informed that regular answering and posting services will resume TOMORROW. Thank you!

*Beeeep!*

An Experiment in Single Travel

Bus bay 6 was empty. You've got to be kidding me. My plane had landed an hour earlier, at 5:35am, and I had scheduled a pick up--had they left without me? Sleep deprived from my 14 hours of travel, I couldn't bring myself to ask someone when I didn't even know the name of the shuttle--why hadn't I written that down??--so I ponied up and paid to use the Wifi in the lobby, only to discover that, yep, I'd put the the time down right, and nope, this shuttle bus--unimaginatively named Cairns Airport Shuttle--had no one in the lobby or the bus bay. Time to make the call.

But as I awaited my driver, having been assured over the phone that he would be there in 10 minutes (oddly enough, the same amount of time it takes to get to the airport from the heart of Cairns...), I felt my frustrations slipping away as I looked around and realized: I was in Australia. It was dawn, and as I stood waiting I heard a chorus of songbirds, all calling to each other in trills and tralls I'd never heard before; one, landing in the deserted bay beside me, began a complicated dance, its white-tipped tail swinging from side to side as if unhinged from its black body as it hopped about the concrete, eying me with benign curiosity. The sky was turning orange, turning my bird friends to idealized silhouettes, as the bus finally pulled up and I set off to my hostel.

A bit of a rough start to my first-ever solo vacation, maybe, but the morning proved beautiful, though strange. I couldn't check in right away--it was 7am, after all--so I set off toward the Cairns waterfront, where the sun had just risen to reveal a beautiful bay, flanked by a "Caution: salt-water crocodiles" sign and a surprisingly well-used (for 7am) wooden promenade, where I alternately strolled and sat, just soaking up the view. After 14 hours in transit, it was a lot to handle.

So, somewhat surprisingly, were the people. Having lived in Taiwan for the past 11 months, I had laughingly referred to my resultant uneasiness in large groups of "foreigners," but I didn't really anticipate it actually having a serious impact on me once I was back in a Western country. But it did.

The best way I can describe it is that I felt as I imagine autistic people feel when viewing the world: completely overstimulated to the point that I was slightly freaked out even to talk to the people around me. The very thing I'd most mourned being able to do in my time abroad, share a (potentially meaningless) little conversation with someone, now seemed impossibly difficult.

And then there were the accents. I've always been a lover of foreign accents, be they British, Australian, Kiwi, South African--I'm not picky; as long as it doesn't sound like mine, every accent is fantastic. I've never had much trouble understanding them, either--seemed pretty straightforward. But now, dumped in Australia, I felt myself straining to understand the people I spoke with--we were speaking the same language, I knew, but then why was it taking my brain so long to process? Another instance of my Taiwanese experience conspiring against me: I'd become an expert in understanding "Taiwanese English," but at the apparent cost of understanding every other native English dialect beside my own.

At the end of the promenade, I ate alone at a little cafe from which I could just catch a glimpse of the ocean, sitting with my Kindle version of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (yes, that is my holiday reading of choice at the moment) as I munched on an overpriced ham-and-cheese croissant and pondered how it would be, a week of meals alone with my inner monologue and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Pictured: A WESTERN MEAL! Not pictured (behind the sun flare): the ocean

As it turned out, not all that solitary. By 10:30, I was checked into my room, a gorgeous girls-only dorm with eight beds built into the walls so that there was a dividing wall between two sets of four; mine lay in the back bottom corner, and was a cozy cave double. Absolutely fantastic. So, too, were my roommates. Over the course of the day, I met them all: Kim, a Brit who was living and working in Cairns; Melanie, a Dutch girl finishing her Masters in Adelaide; Heidi, a Swiss girl (yes, really) who had just finished a study abroad; Johanna, a German girl living in Australia; Kat and Laura, two Brits from Liverpool here on holiday; and Katherine, a fellow American who had recently moved to Australia from, of all places, Portland, Oregon.

For all of its solo ventures (meals, grocery shopping, finalizing my dive school registration), my first day was a day with a surprisingly large amount of companionship.

And that, once I got past my reverse culture shock and airplane exhaustion, has been the best story of my so-called solo journey: surprising and wonderful companionship with strangers. The girls in my dorm, the people in my dive class (Michael, a Belgian; Ellen, a Swede; Jeroen, a Dutchman; two Germans, Natalie and Lars; Anja, a German Kiwi; and Amber, an Aussie (13 years old!))--we all got to just chat, even about inconsequential things, and it's been lovely. So far, at least, my experiment in single travel has not been altogether single--and that suits me just fine.

Unemployed Fulbright Alum

As of today, I am no longer a Fulbright grantee. I am, instead, an unemployed Fulbright alumnus. And, well--so far so good.

I am in Australia now, discovering just how much English I've forgotten over the year (example from 10 minutes ago: "doved?" "diven?" *pause to think* WOW okay "dived"), and meeting scads of people from everywhere from the Netherlands to Germany to Belgium to Sweden to the UK...pretty much getting a full-on European tour just by staying in my hostel and talking to people, really. And, so far, my experiment in solo travel has been absolutely lovely--wonderful roommates, wonderful dive class, wonderful blessings coming my way, ranging from having simply wonderful dorm-mates and a great hostel to getting an AMAZING deal on a dive class/trip--I was given a 300-dollar full-day upgrade for free.

One unfortunate downside of blogging, I've come to realize, is that when I write everything that happens to me, I have no new stories to tell people when they ask me how (insert place/event/"life" here) has been. So that, combined with the fact that I don't have a converter to charge my computer here, and that I'll soon be on a dive boat with no Internet access anyway, means I won't be posting every detail of my trip. Besides, my grant is over! I don't remember when I made the decision to post daily, and I definitely never said when that little experiment in prolific writing will end; it would seem logical to be done now that my grant is. But I think I'll keep pegging away at it, probably, until I come home. And I'll be home soon enough (whether "home" in this instance means Taiwan or USA, both are true), and when you ask me now I'll have fresh tales to tell!

In the meantime, this is more of an explanatory post than anything else. I'm going to try to set up postings for the next few days which will publish at a pre-determined time, so I can stick to this one-a-day format until I'm back in the States, but don't expect too much from them. Or from me--after all, I'm now just an unemployed hostel rat chilling out in Australia.