Small Talk

Small talk. Used daily by everyone, yet spoken of with sneering cynicism: the weather? The local sports team? Who cares! Well, as it turns out, everyone--or, at least, they would if they knew what life without it would be like.

One of the little things you don't think about missing when you move to another country is the ability to have a conversation with the person ringing up your groceries. Yet, as it happens, once you're actually in another country, it's one of the first things you notice, and one of the single largest drivers for you to work harder to learn whatever language it is that the grocery checkers (and, hopefully, everyone else) happen to speak.

It really is amazing, though. After nine and a half months here in Taiwan, being able to have those tiny, meaningless conversations with the random people you see every day is one of the single biggest things I miss. Of course, I learned long ago the questions and answers needed for a basic check-out: numbers, how much, change, rewards card, bagging, etc. Those are just logistics, though; mechanical and automated, they aren't real conversations at all. Those are much harder; those are what I aim for with every Chinese class I attend (we don't follow a book, so it's basically Tiffiany and I asking our teacher to cover whatever topics we want to know). Listening and understanding is one thing--following what the other person is saying is usually the easy part. It's being able to respond that's hard, and that I'm still very intently working on.

All this to say, it's a minor celebration for me whenever I actually can have a little conversation with the people I interact with during the day. Whether they're a cab driver or a mom on a scooter asking me what grade I teach (happened a few weeks ago at Qingshan), it's always so exciting for me if I can talk with them--about anything. And today? I had two conversations.

My first one was at the fruit stand. My roommates and I usually frequent a certain fruit stand down the street: their prices are good, and it's pretty close, both to our apartment, and to a grocery store and the major road that leads to the gym. All factors highly in its favor. Not in its favor, however, is the man who works there. Brittany has dubbed him "Nasty Mouth" because, his age notwithstanding (he's probably in his 30s), he's missing countless teeth, with those remaining emaciated red stubs. Beyond this, he's notoriously hard to talk to (hard to understand him because of his lack of teeth, if nothing else), and yet he insists on holding long conversations with us when we're there, a fact which is made more difficult by his apparent, and very awkward, obsession with us. I've actually started avoiding the stand because I don't like interacting with him.

Today, however, I was thinking with my wallet, so I stopped on over. And, once there, I discovered a wonderful thing: he wasn't working! In his place was a lovely older Taiwanese woman (Rachel later told me she's his mother), with whom I had a nice, if short, conversation about the watermelons I was considering getting--whether they were good; whether they were red or yellow; whether red or yellow watermelons tasted better. It was such a small thing, yet it was so wonderful--besides restoring my estimation of the fruit stand (on Friday afternoons, anyway, since apparently that's when she works), it was a little touch of human contact in Chinese. And I was able to participate.

The second one was at 7-11 tonight. I absolutely love one of the ladies who works there, a middle aged woman who is always so friendly and helpful and who--and this is important--always makes an effort to speak to me, but in a slow, measured way such that I can understand her. Tonight, the topic of discussion was what I was doing here, studying or working. I told her I was an English teacher, and then she asked where. I told her, and she identified the district and we said goodbye. Such a small moment; such small talk.

But it was small talk. In Chinese. And I could participate. Life is good.

Despite

Today featured an odd but lovely mixture of emotions and experiences. Discipline played a key role, yet I felt calm, not stressed. Homesickness made a cameo appearance, yet today I lived thoroughly like a local. I got a lot done, and yet it felt relaxing.

In other words, it was a good day despite and because of itself.

I made my way back to church this morning, and discovered that large groups of foreigners makes me genuinely anxious now--they were pooling on the sidewalk outside the church as I drove up, and it felt so so wrong for absolutely no reason. Also on the way, I realized that the shave ice place I visited last night with my host family is literally just a few blocks from my church.

In church, my love for being there was offset by my longing to be back at City Church, and the (sorry) horrible music during worship made me miss my bass, which I hadn't thought about playing in ages. For some bizarre reason, I also developed an intense craving for a  pulled pork or BBQ beef sandwich, which of course I can't fulfill here.

Post-church was a stream of errands and duties: I stopped by a Starbucks in a (failed) search for a mug, located and scoured the local 小北 store for a cheap lightweight bag (to send back with my oh-so-wonderful brother who's now in Taipei :) ) and vinegar, then making a second stop at a cooking store when I couldn't find food coloring at 小北. (On a side note, between my stops and Rachel's generosity, we're set to dye eggs at school this week!)

Then it was home to research, plan for and design worksheets for my tutoring session tonight. (Special practice tonight: conditional statements like "If I had a million dollars, I would travel more.") And, once tutoring was over (much earlier than usual, since we both happened to be early to the coffee shop), Rachel and I cornered the 7-11 staff into helping us retrieve our train tickets for this week, with some success, and then were cornered ourselves by a Taiwanese photography teacher asking us to be her models!

So yeah, it was a full day, and one in which nothing, neither my emotions nor my physical self, stayed stagnant for long... and apparently, that's the best way to make an average day great!

Theoretically the 29th

Technically, 1:28am in Singapore (and Taiwan), so 12:28am in Thailand, which is still not the 29th, but this is still pretty close to actually blogging all but one day of our stay in Thailand. Hooray!

So, we're currently in the Singapore airport, enduring a 6-hour overnight layover (cheap flights always have downsides...), and discovering that Singapore is the absolute best place ever to have a long layover. Their motto is "The feeling is first class," and it certainly does feel that way: wide open spaces, uber clean glass walls, smooth-running escalators, pristine stretches of (now-empty) carpet, free internet kiosks, an overnight cafe which smells scrumptious...and, as we just discovered, lounge chairs. Those will be our beds tonight.

In the meantime: today. It's been full. And a little crazy, for several reasons and on several occasions. Best of times, worst of times. A Dickensian day, if you will.

It started early, 7am, with a buffet breakfast and a rendezvous with our friend at the tour center, an older guy with so-so English who told us we could get a 2-hour snorkelling trip for two to Bamboo Island and Mosquito Island for 1,000 baht (~30USD). We said sign us up!

Snorkelling was glorious: after a 20 minute longtail boat journey, we started at Bamboo Island, where our driver parked on the beach near the coral; for me, a complete newbie at this whole being-in-the-ocean thing, it was perfect. I got to wade into it, literally, with the deepest spot I found about waist deep, and just float as I saw parrot fish, angelfish, leapord fish (campoflauged beautifully!), dozens of unidentified smaller fish, of course a fair amount of (unfortunately smallish) coral, sea cucumbers, some gorgeous peacock-blue floral-looking things, and, my favorite, a deflated puffer fish. Karina didn't snorkel much there, since she prefers deep water, but I loved it, my bi-minutely shark scans (I read too much for my own good) notwithstanding.

Then, after a brief verbal scuffle with someone trying to charge us to stay at the beach for an hour, we set out for Mosquito Island where, despite the name, I saw not a single mosquito.

What I did see, though, was fish. THOUSANDS of them, all swimming about and above a magnificent reef off the side of a limestone cliff. This one was deeper, and we didn't go to the shore, but just flopped out of the boat into what felt like an aquarium. Here were all the fish I saw before (except the puffer), plus some groupers, a Dory-like fish, some truly rainbow colored fish, and more varieties of others than I could possibly name. It was glorious.

All-in-all, a wonderful first snorkelling experience and, for that matter, first ocean-swimming experience. But I discovered that I love everything about swimming in salt water except the salt water. Despite my best efforts, it would NOT stay out of my mask and mouthpiece, leading to a few moments where I felt like I was drowning--many of which happened, not coincidentally, when I was in the deep water, barred from standing up and a long swim from my boat. Also, Karina delighted in throwing bread at me, upon which hundreds of thousands of fish would then converge--which is, by the way, TERRIFYING to experience inches from your face.

So snorkelling was great. When we got back, we checked out and I checked into the local massage place, where I treated myself to a lovely oil massage (at triple the prices of the mainland, unfortunately, though still four times cheaper than America) while Karina sunbathed. Then it was a rather rushed buffet lunch and just catching our 1pm ferry back to Phuket.

In Phuket, things got...interesting. For some unknown reason, not nearly enough taxis had shown up to service people coming off the ferry and, as all the minibuses were full, too, we decided to foot it to Phuket town (a 15 minute walk, we were told), eat dinner there and spend the rest of our Thai money (I REALLY wanted another hour or two of Thai experience), and then catch a minibus to the airport. A long walk past illegal taxi- and motorbike-hawkers later, we stopped in at a 7-11 and stepped out to find it was raining. And, of course, by then all taxis had disappeared.

At least this time my travel curse waited till we were off the beach.

About an hour, three stops for directions with some-English-speaking locals and several kilometers of walking and watching minibus after minibus speed by without stopping later, we found a wonderful Thai family who spoke decent English and called a taxi for us, which arrived just as it was starting to get dark for the last-minute save.

So we ate in the Phuket airport, bought a few postcards, rearranged our stuff, sat around, got frustrated with line-cutters at immigration, jostled for service with determined, yet non-English or Thai-speaking Chinese tourists with meal vouchers at Dairy Queen, and finally boarded our (delayed) flight for Singapore.

And now we're here, using our free Internet but more than ready to seek out the fabled "snooze chairs" the airport is advertising every time our 15 minute sessions run out. After all, the 29th has been a very long, though wonderful, day.

Empty Streets

Thing 5:
The streets of Kaohsiung are deserted. Truly, truly deserted. As in, I went for a walk at 6pm, and it could have just as easily been 2am--all the shops are closed, the lights are off, and there's next to no one in the streets, either walking or driving.

Let me just put this in perspective: there's no one. On the streets. In downtown Kaohsiung, which, beside being a large city, is one based on a night-market culture. (In a hot climate, it just makes sense.) But all that to say, I've rarely been on the street and seen few people there; I've never been on the street when there was no one there.

Until today. Honestly, the street looked more alive the other day when I got in after midnight; I hadn't realized how much light the various storefronts emitted until tonight, when they were all, unceremoniously, gone.

And why? The answer is simple: 新年快樂! Today is Chinese New Year's Eve, meaning that everyone is home with their families, celebrating. It's odd: it's not a holiday I've ever celebrated before, but it feels much stranger to not be with family today than it did on, say, Thanksgiving. It's amazing what cultural pressure will do.

On the flip side, it's been a pretty nice day for me. Plenty of time to hang out, work on my Fulbright midyear report (ugh), go to the gym, and get ready for my trip to Thailand, which begins in *gasp* a mere two days! So there's that.

But it's odd, looking out at a Kaohsiung in which only the 7-11s of the world are open--a truly deserted place, indeed.

Rain, rain, lovely rain

You know you're a Northwest native when a weather forecast of 24*C and rainy all week not only doesn't dampen your spirits, it lifts them--and that even when you have to drive 20-30 minutes to and from school every day.

So this morning, I donned my full-body 7-11 poncho, covered it with my full-head helmet, hopped aboard my scooter and set out for Siaogang with a smile on my face. It was raining, yes, but it was raining like it rains in Seattle: a slow and constant drizzle. When coupled with pretty decent waterproof gear and a temperature of 75*F, it was actually quite pleasant.

The only real problem was, of course, the back-splash effect; imagine what you have happen with your car on the freeway, then imagine that you're on a scooter. Still, not too terrible an outcome.

When I arrived at school, I couldn't help but think of home as I heard the steady, comforting patter of raindrops on the large plastic cover over Qingshan's central courtyard. It wasn't *quite* cold enough, but I still felt like curling up near a fire somewhere with a book and a big cup of coffee or hot chocolate.

Yet, for some reason, everyone else here is complaining about the rain. It's been going on for a few days now, yes, but it's just drizzling most of the time! Must be the "all the time" part--the very thing that I'm most used to and which few other parts of the country experience. I got a little worried today in the late afternoon, when a thunder-and-lightning storm started up, together with heavier rain, but both finished up before I had to leave, so no harm, no foul. All in all, it's just been a wonderful little reminder of home.

With that reminder, though, comes the recognition of the other little things that should be accompanying rain in the fall--rotting leaves, for instance. Not particularly pleasant things in themselves, but together with frost-bitten nights that leave ice on car windshields in the morning, the cold bite of air when you first inhale outside in the morning, and the welcome comfort of thick hot soups and steaming beverages, they spell fall--a fall we simply miss out on here.

So far, November is my favorite month in Taiwan: a little cooler, and now this wonderfully light and constant misting. It's still not home, but it's something. So, for now, let it rain!

Drenching

It's finally stopped pouring outside right now--but pour it did, for several hours, beginning, of course when I was just getting ready to drive back from Chinese class.

And I discovered several things about the rain:

1. It's absolutely wonderful. It cools you down, the humidity's not as bad, somehow, and overall it just feels like you're sitting in the middle of a perfect waterfall in the middle of the jungle. And of course, given that this is a subtropical region, that's not too far from the truth.

1. It's absolutely inescapable. Remember that waterfall simile? Yeah...that actually applies to force and drop size, it's not just a stereotype of something wonderful. Leaving San-Min, where we have Chinese classes, I wasn't quite insane enough to think I could make it home unprotected, so my first instinct was simple: drive across the street, where there was a 7-11 which, Fonda informed me, would be selling ponchos. Yeah...in the time it took for me to get to my scooter, put on my helmet, stop at the light and drive across the street, I was drenched. As in my white skirt was clinging to my legs, my shoulders were wet through and my sandals were sponging water. Even after I put on my newly-purchased pale yellow all-body poncho, my shoes were under what felt like a running faucet, my face was being constantly smattered with rain, and the small triangle of my shirt left exposed by the poncho was soaked through by the time we made it back to the apartment.

1. When it rains in Taiwan, ponchos emerge out of nowhere like umbrellas in New York or cicadas in their long-awaited season. Everyone expects torrential rain; everyone prepares for it. Everyone, that is, except foreigners. (Well, not quite only foreigners--I was in good company at 7-11, and they had a stash of raincoats by the check-out.)

And, well you know me and my lists. They have 3 items each (a nice round number which happens to be my favorite and into which my thoughts on a subject almost invariably fall naturally), and are usually a sign that I'm tired and/or have been reading too many Cracked.com articles. In this case, both are true. So I'm signing off for now.