Double 10

I will never be able to do justice to the fantastic day I just finished living, and I won't even pretend to be able to do so when I begin writing at 11pm and have to work tomorrow morning. I just returned from the swankiest, largest gathering of highly influential people that I have ever attended, or am likely ever to attend.

Let's just take a second here to break it down.

The reception was held at the Taipei Guest House, an official building which looks to be on par for niceness with the White House, though on a much smaller scale. To get there, Karina, Rachel and I (and Tom, who hung out with us for the morning) took the MRT, but we left a full hour early for the 10 minute journey (you never know what holiday traffic could bring! Tom was an hour early to the 6:30am flag raising ceremony and still couldn't get close enough to see), and so got to join the swelling group of fancy-dressed foreigners drawing stares and unasked-for photos every thirty seconds or so. I haven't had that much attention since China!

The entrance is a massive arch guarded by security personnel and set off from another archway covering a road, which they had closed for the event, and decorated like so:

Inside, we walked a red carpet with other dignitaries as black cars guarded by police escorts and adorned with dual flags (one Taiwanese, one from whichever native country the inhabitants were) zoomed past to another entrance. The building itself was gorgeous,

and, once inside the actual door, we shook hands with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and his wife--our hosts for the evening. We crossed through the house and into the park behind (between two lines of waiters holding trays of drinks for you to choose from) to the sound of drums, and found the whole place to be swarming with people and filled with food, drinks, and waitstaff every few feet to take your empty dishes and/or glasses. On the pond, native drummers/dancers were performing; everywhere, people in absurdly high positions mingled, mixed, and sampled a plethora of food dishes, ranging from typical Taiwanese fare like bubble tea to Western food like a Haagen-Dazs ice cream station and foreign foods like a Thai station.

We spent most of the time just wandering, but once we realized the President had entered the building, we dropped our food (pretty much literally) and sprinted to join the throng. Karina and Ari (one of the Yilan ETAs) were by far the most successful of the group, jostling to the front and both shaking the President's hand (three times, in Ari's case) and getting photographic proof that they did; Rachel managed to be in front and shake his hand, too, and I was literally right behind her wondering if there was any way I could leverage my arm over her shoulder to shake his hand without it being obscenely awkward. Well, at least I got photos.

We actually lost Karina and Ari in the press to meet President Ma, and later found out that they'd made the very smart decision to ask Dr. Vocke who we should be on the lookout for in the crowd--and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus were both there; Ari got to meet Rumsfeld, apparently. But we did get to meet some cool people; Brittany got an invitation from a Fijian lady to come visit her in her country (yes please!), we talked for a while to the wife of the diplomat from Swaziland (who also invited Brittany to stay with her in Taipei), and I had a great conversation with a Taiwanese-American guy who works in immigration in California (at first I thought he said he worked at Universal, but must have been San Francisco or something...) and had a friend who was a professor at Oregon State. Small world!


In a very small nutshell, that was my evening. It was fantastic. However, it is now almost 2am, and I teach tomorrow, so I can't do much more on here. I'll be adding more pictures to the album I made for the weekend, though; here's the public link if you're interested.

Happy 100th anniversary, ROC/Taiwan!

The Little Things

Two meanings hidden in the title, there. The first one is quite prosaic: this blog will be a "little thing." The other is more contemplative, though cliche: it's the little things in life that make the difference.

Again, a double meaning: little details are often those that make any given day memorable and special, and little details are often those that cause, for me, a pang of homesickness.

To elaborate briefly on the latter. This weekend in Taipei has been full of little reminders of home, little things which remind me of different features of the Northwest, or of people there whom I love. The rain and clouds, and the cooler temperature: Oregon and Washington. Hiking in the rain: family camping trips with Mom. Hot springs: Belknap, and Dad's inability to overheat.

A pot of hot milk tea: an afternoon in Anna's cottage in Seattle with homemade Chai. A crazy bohemian shop full of tie-die: downtown Eugene with Erin and Sarah. Modern Toilet: Melanie made me promise to eat there while I was here. "Jar of Hearts" on Tom's phone: Elizabeth and Annika. Taken together, it's amazing how a vibrant, bustling Asian metropolis can consist of so many small reminders of life in the Pacific Northwest. I've noticed this phenomena in Kaohsiung, too, but this weekend has had more moments like this than normal. I haven't hit any real culture shock since I've been here, and I haven't hit any homesickness ruts, but I have had a constant smattering of these little moments that remind me of the people and places I've left behind for a while.

But the little things work for the positive, and for the here and now, as well. The smell of waffles haunting our stroll down by the river at 淡水 (Tamsui); Karina's notebook of quotes from the weekend; our awkward foreigners-in-two-piece moments at 新北投 (Xinbeitou Hot Springs); debating when (and where) the sun would set while riding the gondola up 貓空 (Maokong); eavesdropping on the ladies switching between Mandarin and Taiwanese at the table next to us at dinner as we admired the gorgeous night view of Taipei; finally getting our waffles at the tea house on top and almost missing the last gondola down; Tom almost getting caught in the closing MRT doors (his face made it funny, not horrific, I promise); Karina running into a descending metal gate as Rachel and I yelled that it was closing; realizing that, in a mere two days, we'd used up our $400NT EasyPasses by riding the MRT lines from end to end.

And that was my day, in a nutshell. Tomorrow is the National Day, and we have stuff early in the morning, so now it's off to bed for me--since yet another little thing that I treasure is sleep.

Sick and Second-language Shopping

I got to school today to discover that my stomach did not want me to be there. So I promptly came home and laid in bed all day, and took medicine when Rachel got back and gave me some. I really hate to use up a sick day so early, but it was just one of those things that I don't think could have worked any other way--I was in pain, and I'm going to Taipei tomorrow morning for an official reception Monday. I HAVE to be okay.

 So my day was pretty dull. I slept, felt sick, slept, watched TV, read while the TV program was loading (oh, joyously slow Internet), discovered that a new issue of the New Yorker automatically loaded onto my Kindle at some point (hooray! finished the previous one today--loving this), and finally rallied to eat a normal dinner and take a quick exploratory jaunt out to look for shoes for Monday.

Monday, you see, is a big deal. A VERY big deal. The Fulbright scholars are invited to a reception hosted by Taiwan's Minister of Foreign Affairs for 10/10, their "National Day" and, this year, the 100th anniversary of Taiwan (ROC) as an independent country. And, given that the USA does not formally recognize this to be the case, our presence there is, as I said, a VERY BIG DEAL.

So dressing appropriately matters.

I have my traditional silk dress (which I bought, ironically enough, in China) which I am going to wear, but the only the problem with this dress is that it is dark blue with blueish silver accents. Which is beautiful, but astonishingly difficult to match in the shoes-and-purse category.

Hence the shopping trip. But, a longish walk,  four times through the shoe department, five saleswomen, and multiple repetitions of "對不起, 我的中文不好" ("Sorry, my Chinese isn't good") and "有沒有 四十?" "沒有" ("Do you have 40?" "We don't have it") and "我要 藍色的... or...灰色的" ("I need blue...("or" in English)...gray," invariably followed by them showing me ugly shoes in other colors). It was frustrating, to say the least. Shopping often stresses me out, especially when I am required to ask salespeople questions; add a complete inability to talk about anything but size and color when they ask questions like if I want them to order it or if I want a shoe with a heel, and you get chaos.

Long story short, I walked away shoe-less, with a host of slightly bemused, slightly disappointed saleswomen in my wake. I'll try again in Taipei with Rachel and Karina--my allies in this battle for understanding.