Whiplash

Today I returned to the chaos that was our apartment in transition mode--Karina moved out, Analicia moved in, and I faced finishing unpacking amidst the piles of stuff I'd bought from Ikea minutes before I left for Taipei and home. And then, to top it all off, this evening our shower decided it would no longer be turned off.

So yeah, that was fun.

We kicked off the excitement today with helping Karina hurriedly shove things into whatever bags we could find--she hadn't really finished packing--and then carrying said items, in the rain, down to the waiting van. When we'd finished that, we moved on to Analicia's previous apartment, picking up her stuff and transporting it over to ours--itself a lengthy process--interspersed with determining what other items could be taken from the old apartment to ours and apartment C, and which came with it and had to stay. Then, after watching Esther and Karina drive away to their new apartment in the van--Esther was sitting in a desk chair trapped between a pile of stuff and a table in the back, since they ran out of room--we returned to our own place.

As a side note, it turns out that Esther and Karina will actually be living in the city! Hooray! They'll be in Zuoying, which is fantastic because it's on the edge of the city (so easy for them); but still inside it (so easy for us); and the biggest bonus of all is that it's RIGHT next to the HSR/train/MRT station! Which is great for them and for us--easy transport anywhere, inside or outside of the city. Makes visiting much easier. :)

But back to today--the rest of the day, Analicia was bustling back and forth between the living room where we'd set her stuff and her new room, which she was deep cleaning and rearranging. All this inspired/shamed me into finally delving into my own stuff a couple of hours later, and now, I'm proud to say, all my bags are unpacked. (Though I still have cleaning and a bit of rearranging to do, and yet another Ikea/Carrefour trip to make--partly for returns and partly for a few things I couldn't/didn't get last time I went, like a comforter and bed risers.)

So around 11pm, Analicia goes to take a shower. A few minutes later, I hear her calling my name, and then she appears in my doorway.

"So, this is kind of embarrassing, but how do you turn the shower off?"

It wouldn't turn off. Not for her, not for me, not for Brittany--the dang thing was STUCK! We called Fonda, but she didn't answer. We tried a few times, and finally got a hold of her on Facebook. Soon, our landlord, a handyman, and Samia (for protection and translation, Fonda said) showed up at our door.

Our landlord is great! We hadn't met him before tonight, but he speaks pretty good English, and he is upfront and energetic. He introduced himself: "My name is Michael; I'm the landlord--you pay me." While explaining to us that he and the handyman were speaking Taiwanese, he told us that Taiwanese is the most pure form of Chinese, and that if you read a poem from the Tang dynasty, you would be reading Taiwanese; he went on to tell us that, if we called 911, we would reach Mr. Cheng, the handyman. He's a real character.

So, while Michael regaled us with stories, advice, and a request for a list of our names and what we'd found in the apartment that needed fixing, Mr. Cheng quietly turned off the water to the shower. He and Michael showed me how to turn it off if we need to in the future, and he promised to come back tomorrow around 10am to fix it. Which is great--it means I HAVE to be up before then! Requirements help me to adjust to the jetlag whiplash I've been experiencing. (Seriously--I got in last night at 1:30ish and couldn't sleep; when I did, I slept till 2pm and was still tired. And I'm awake again now.)

So that was today! Some crazyness, some exhaustion, but also quite a bit of accomplishment. Maybe some day soon our apartment will actually look like we live in it, and aren't just in a constant state of transition...

Resolution and KTV

Today was the last day of orientation. Typing that is weird--it means that we are now all supposedly oriented, both to the country and to our jobs; next week, we become independent, functioning members of society again. Which is an odd concept, in large part because the biggest function of this month (how have I been here almost a month already?!) has been to show me how little I know and how little I can function here independently.

But here it comes at me, full-force, Taiwan without the training wheels! It really does feel that way: like I've been learning how to ride a bike, and now, just as I realize how complicated it all is and how little I understand it, my overenthusiastic teacher is pulling out all the stops.

Can I speak Chinese now? No; I can order coffee, tea, or juice alright, or point and say "我要 這個" ("Wo yao zhege"--I want this one), but that's about the extent of it. If I get flustered I inexplicably revert to Spanish. Can I navigate the city? Not really; I can take the MRT to whichever sector I want okay, but street directions? Impossible, thanks to the not-really-pinyin-pinyin-signs and my inability to read Chinese characters. Can I ride a scooter? I guess tomorrow will tell; we're taking our driver's license tests, but even if I get mine I don't have a scooter, and if I did, I don't really know how to handle traffic yet--all my experience is in a parking lot at San-Min. Can I teach? Well, I hope so, but really that is the one thing which requires training wheels-less practice to know for sure.

To top it off, Karina is pretty much definitely moving to a new apartment in the county. While I know she's going to love her new place and have a great experience, the selfish side of me is really really sad that she's leaving--she's a great friend, and I hate that we won't get to hang out every day now. I love spending time talking with her, and she has been a wonderful support to me on many levels in this last month, including graciously helping me with my language inabilities. She's just fantastic in general.

But Karina moving out brings me to the resolution part of this post: we are no longer in limbo; the drama has (essentially) ended. The Meinong league was cancelled today; Lydia will be re-placed in a school in the city. We can't even begin to fathom the stress and bureaucratic crap that Alex and Fonda had to go through to make this happen, but we are eternally grateful to them for doing it.

So today, after question-and-answer time, first just with our ETA group and Prof. Spring and Alex, and then with the larger group of LETs and Prof. Lee, we each sat down with out own schools and figured out when we're going to see them and meet everyone/observe classes. I thought we would be there all week, and some schools are doing it that way, but after impressing my openness to that idea on my LETS four or five times--and after a good 40 minute discussion on timing--it looks like I'll just be at my schools for one, maybe two days next week. Long day Thursday, beginning with meeting Maggie at the Formosa MRT station at 7:15am so she can show me how to get to the schools from there, then going to the first part of Han-Min's morning meeting to meet people, then going to the second part of Qing-Shan's morning meeting (same time) to meet people there, then lesson planning with Patty at Qing-Shan, class observation with Patty at Qing-Shan, then back to Han-Min to (hopefully) observe and lesson plan with both Maggie and Alison. If, as is very likely, we run out of time to do all that, I'll come back Friday.

After our scheduling meeting, we were free for the day; I didn't do much of note until the evening, when we went to check out a gym--really nice, but might do a different (more expensive and further away) branch because of its classes/facilities--then went to a WONDERFUL chocolate shop that gave us each TONS of truffle samples (including the best dark chocolate I have EVER tasted) and free tea--love it!--then went to KTV.

For the uninitiated, KTV is the Chinese/Taiwanese/Korean/Japanese/maybe other countries version of karaoke. Here, unlike in the US, where karaoke translates roughly to drunk strangers belting songs off-key to a roomful of strangers, karaoke takes place in a private room, with just your friends nearby. Which means drinking is no longer a necessity, and therefore the singing is, as a rule, dramatically better.

Tonight, our group consisted of myself, Rachel, Emily, Lydia, Samia, Karina, Tiffiany, and Andew; two of Karina's LETs, Lucy and Emily; Alex, Fonda, and Evelyn. It was a lot of fun, especially when we ended up in a long stretch of Avril Lavigne, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and the Titanic theme song: great having all the female ETAs busting it out while Andrew got awkward.

Another wonderful moment--indeed probably the defining moment of the evening--was Karina's Beijing-opera-meets-Elvis impersonation. Unfortunately Blogger won't let me upload it for some reason, but just look up "Beijing opera" and imagine it superimposed on "I Can't Stop Falling in Love with You." It was pretty epic. Here it is!

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Apartment A

Today has been pretty chill, with the focus being on settling in and getting necessary things for our apartments. The irony, and the difficulty, of that is that we have absolutely no guarantee that we will continue to live where we live now--as I mentioned before, only 7 of the 12 people currently living in our beautiful apartment complex will stay there for the rest of the year, while the other 5 will have to move at the end of the month to outlying areas about an hour from here.

Nonetheless, I feel like now is a good time to take a moment to talk about our living situation. It's pretty amazing. We're in a BEAUTIFUL 12-story brick building near the Cultural Center in Kaohsiung; our building forms a "U" around a gorgeous courtyard complete with polished granite chess-playing tables, a gazebo, and a koi pond. I'm living with Rachel, Brittany, and Karina, and our apartment, apartment "A," as designated by the Fulbright people, is on the third floor. And, in addition to a balcony off the living room, each of the four bedrooms has at least a window facing into the courtyard; one of the two suites, which are larger and have private bathrooms, also has its own balcony. Here's the view from the living room balcony:

I'm in one of the smaller rooms, with cheaper rent--$5,050 TWD, if I remember correctly, so about $168 USD.  Of course, the suites are only about $210 USD, so still insanely cheap, but I wasn't thinking that clearly when we picked, thanks to jet lag. But hey, with the saved money, I can travel more! IF I get to stay here, that is. Anyway, here's my current room--note the still-packed suitcases by the bed; I unpacked my carry-on, but I'm not letting myself get too settled yet.

Just off-camera to the right is a wardrobe; behind the desk to the left is a bedside table. If we DO stay, I have some rearranging to do--the way it is now makes the room look and feel smaller than it is. Also if we get to stay, I'm getting new curtains. 

But therein lies the problem: we don't know if we're staying.

Today we went shopping, first at Ikea and then at Carrefour, which is basically the Taiwanese version of Fred Meyer, and we had no idea what we should or should not buy. Sure, in our current apartment my room needs more storage, but what if I have to move to one with no room for a chest of drawers? Sure, I have a twin-sized bed now, but what if I move to a place where I have a queen? On the flip side, sure apartment A has a fully stocked kitchen, but what if I have to move to a place with nothing whatsoever? And that's actually a very real possibility: the apartments we're in now have been used by Fulbright for a number of years now, and so have a lot of stuff in them that has been left behind by former grantees. Those who move, however, are going to new apartments--Fulbright hasn't even picked them out yet. Chances are they'll have nothing.


So, long story short, I didn't buy much today. An alarm clock, a bedside lamp, a pillow, under-bed storage (which, incidentally, doesn't fit under my bed. But if I move?), a bath mat. Breakfast food. All stuff that could easily move with me, if it comes to that.

A highlight of the day was definitely the fruit section of Carrefour--GIANT mangoes, dragonfruit, lychee, melons, pineapple, peaches, nectarines, kiwis, apples (oddly the most expensive thing there--ah, tropical fruit being local), and a bunch of fruit I didn't recognize. Also amazing was that, after I loaded my cart with fruit, juice, bottled water, Laughing Cow cheese, a coffee drink, chips, hand soap, and dehumidifying stuff, plus shared items with my apartment mates like laundry detergent, air freshener, eggs, bread, and watermelon, my bill came to about $23 USD. Wonderful. 

I'm looking forward to formally learning more Chinese, and I'm learning, bit by bit, even today--trying to figure out what kind of coffee the cafe next to our apartment building has, trying to understand the 7-11 clerk from the other side of the apartment building tell me how much my yogurt cost, ordering "ee-guh kuhluh" (one Coke) for lunch, learning from Rachel that "chi bao le" means "I'm full." (Would have been useful to know that one in China!) "Xie xie" is no longer the only useful thing I can say.

Right now, though, "Wo esile"--I'm hungry. Down to the courtyard for pizza.