Last Post for Seven Months

I've left Taiwan and gotten back to Cary. I miss the city, friends, and boy like hell but I think I'll make it. However, as my life does not promise to be exciting, I will not continue to post on this blog until I prepare to depart for Taiwan yet again. So far I'm looking at leaving on January 4th, thus arriving on January 5th, but we'll see what happens.

Thank you all for reading and I hope to see most of you in person! Otherwise, until January!

Final Post

Well I guess it's about time to write a final post from Taipei. I fly out tomorrow morning at 10 am, so I have to leave the city at 6 am to get to the airport.

I hate to be melodramatic, but it really does feel like I'm going to leave part of my heart behind. I love this city, the friends I've met here, and most recently the wonderful guy I have to leave behind.

I'll write more this evening but right now I'm at a public computer and people are waiting...

-2:34 PM

I'm sleeping at his apartment tonight. I really don't want to leave. I have thought many times about just not getting on the plane, but I don't have any choice about staying here...

I just have to keep my head and my spirits up while on the plane... it's going to be one of the most emotionally draining 22 hours of my life, but after that I'll be home with all the silver linings that Cary has to offer... food (particularly Mexican), free rent, comfortable beds, family, friends, et cetera.

I also have resolve. It may be small solace, but I keep telling myself: I WILL be back in Taipei come January. I don't care what it takes or what I have to do. I am determined to come back here to the city and people I love so much. So if you are ever in the East Asian neighborhood in 2011 or any year thereafter, let me know!

-12:35 AM

Woke up and I'm feeling worse than ever. In 40 minutes the taxi will pick me up and I'll be dragged away from this city and leave this wonderful guy behind for 6 months. Thinking a lot about just skipping the flight ><. Probably won't but fuck I wish I could just run away and stay here for two months.

-5:30 AM

Hualien Photos - Taroko Gorge

Taroko Gorge. This has to be one of the most impressive natural sites I've ever seen, next to Yellow Mountain [黃山] in mainland China. I'll let the pictures hopefully speak for themselves.


Hanging bridge over Swallow Grotto [燕子口], one of the famous tourist sights


The river at the entrance of the park


Golden bodhisattva statue at the temple near Tianxiang [天祥], a small town about one-third of the way into the gorge


Bridge to the temple in Tianxiang, looking up at the mountains


Debris from recent rockslide, requiring the road to be detoured. These occur very frequently in Taroko Gorge due to the incredibly steeply-angled mountainsides


Rockslide. Not quite so recent (as can be seen by the small vegetation growth)


Mountaintops. Because we rode mopeds we were able to get further than most tour buses, which cannot continue past Tianxiang

Hualien Photos - Hualien City

So as I mentioned last time, I spent Wednesday through Friday in Hualien [花蓮], an eastern Taiwanese city known for its beautiful beaches and mountains. It's also the most common gateway to Taroko Gorge, which is a deep gorge carved into the mountains by the Liwu [立霧] River. It is famous for its sheer sides and the abundant marble found in the gorge.

Hualien is fairly large area so it's difficult to get around without some form of transportation, be it taxi, bus, car, or moped. So the other two Americans and I decided to rent mopeds for Wednesday and Thursday, and we used those to drive around Hualien and Taroko Gorge. Dangerous? Perhaps. But it was a lot of fun and mopeds can get to places in the gorge that tour buses cannot reach. Definitely worth it!

Here are photos of Hualien itself, and I will post photos of Taroko Gorge in a separate entry.


The scooter I rented to ride around Hualien and Taroko Gorge


An ancestral hall in Hualien city. Looked impressive but there wasn't much inside


Mountains behind an airbase (hence the barbed wire fence in the foreground)


Pacific Ocean

Pre-Hualien

Instead of going to Sun Moon Lake with the study abroad group (as I had plans last weekend which involved seeing off my Japanese classmate, baking cheesecake, and lots of time with a guy), I am instead travelling to Hualien (花蓮) on the eastern coast of Taiwan. It's supposed to be a beautiful region. I will leave tomorrow on the train at 9:55 am, and should return to Taipei on Friday at 10:35 pm. I will make sure to take lots of pictures!

Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and Da Vinci Exhibit

Today I went to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall [中正紀念堂] for the first time, and it was very impressive in the same way that nationally significant sites in most nations are. It evokes the feel of the National Mall in Washington, or Tiananmen Square in Beijing, or Buckingham Palace in London. It is a very patriotic place for Taiwan.

The Hall itself is the blue-roofed building pictured above, with the stairs leading into a room that contains a statue of Chiang Kai-shek, an early leader of the Nationalist Kuomintang Party in China [國民黨]. The KMT fought with the Chinese Communist Party for decades, eventually being expelled from mainland China and settling in Taiwan.




The surrounding area is also very beautiful, as it contains two orange-roofed buildings (used as theatres) facing eachother and a large gate.



However, as much as I am fascinated with politics and the political history of Taiwan and China, I did not visit just to see the patriotic sights. I was actually there to see an exhibit on da Vinci, which has been running for months but concluded today. Unfortunately, due to museum rules, there are no pictures of the museum itself.

It was a very interesting exhibit. Interestingly, it didn't focus on da Vinci as the painter everyone knows him as, though there was a section which showed high-resolution photographs of the Mona Lisa and it had reproductions of such famous paintings as The Last Supper and Virgin of the Rocks. The main focus of the exhibit was da Vinci as the inventor. The exhibit showed pictures of his sketches and had built models based on these sketches. Unfortunately, there were far too many people there...but as I'm in East Asia I really should expect that by now!

After the exhibit I returned to campus to bake cookies for the international food sale that's been going on this week. While I had to make the cookies in a toaster oven (again), I think they turned out fairly well and judging by their previous popularity I expect that this batch will also sell out.

Approaching Departure

There are a lot of updates in the past week. Some of which I shall post here and some of which you will have to ask me personally if you want to know =D.

The most major update, and thus the first one, is regarding my return to North Carolina. I looked into extending my flight and it would cost me $400 US. Additionally, to avoid visa troubles, I would have to fly out of the country, stay a night, and then return, a trip that would also be fairly expensive. Thus, it is much more feasible for me to leave here at the end of the CIEE program on June 8th and just save up to come back here soon.

I have signed up for fall courses sufficient to attain my B.A. degree, so that I can graduate in December and return here as soon as January. While this may seem like a strange decision, I actually want to teach English here and most schools in China and Taiwan begin their year after the Chinese New Year (February 3rd next year) and thus pre-CNY is a good time to look for a teaching job. And I want to return to Taipei as soon as is possible, thus I WILL return here in January no matter what I have to do to attain that goal. I've seen too many of my good friends with big dreams get bogged down in North Carolina after graduation, working minimum-wage jobs at local food establishments, and I refuse to allow that to happen to me.

If I recall, my last post was some time last Tuesday. Classes since then have not been noteworthy at all. My grades remain the same regardless of how many or few errors I make on tests, but now we only have nine days of class left! As this semester has been an academic waste of time, I'm glad that it's nearly over, but I am really loath to leave Taipei. I've really come to love it here, and it feels so intimate, active, impulsive, friendly, and like home. I have met many wonderful friends here and learned so much (outside of the classroom). But goodbyes and reminiscence is for another time.

On Tuesday evening the CIEE group went to karaoke. Unfortunately, this sort of activity is best meant for a group of people smaller than ten. Otherwise, people pick songs and then have to wait upwards of 45 minutes to sing a song due to the backlog of requests. Moreover, karaoke here is such that people will pick songs they are good at and then sing solo to demonstrate their ability. I still really enjoyed myself, even singing multiple Mandarin songs! The first song I sang was "我要快樂" by A*Mei, a famous Taiwanese aboriginal singer, and everyone applauded my singing =).

On Thursday night I went out with my dame and a couple of other friends to celebrate one of their birthdays, or something like that. Only it was actually a secret plot to reunite a DIFFERENT friend with her boyfriend, who had flown in from the US without telling her so he could surprise visit her. Quite romantic and cute and sweet and all that =D.

On Friday night I went bowling with some of the Americans. I was surprised to find a bowling alley in Taipei, but I guess I should expect such an international city to contain almost anything imaginable. The computer and the pin setting-up device were both incredibly archaic, however, requiring manual reset of the pins at times. I won the second game, getting a strike and two or three spares. The first game I did not win though, as I had to remember how to throw the ball correctly. Or that's the story I'm sticking to, at least!

Tonight I baked cookies! The last time I tried to bake here, I was thwarted by an oven that looked functional but in fact was not. This time, I had to make do with baking in a toaster oven. While it took a few tries to find a method that worked, I finally began making batches of cookies to sell at a bake sale here that starts tomorrow. It was a lot of fun and I absolutely relished the chance to finally demonstrate my dessert-making abilities!

Impressions on gay acceptance: Yesterday I walked around Taipei for several hours, holding hands with another guy, without a single glare or snide comment directed at us. Even in Chapel Hill, when I held hands with my ex, we were glared at and more than once had rude comments shouted at us. This even in Chapel Hill, a supposed liberal paradise. I also recently saw a cute lesbian couple carrying a little boy in Taipei 101, with similar lack of reaction from passersby. The contrast with American attitudes is striking. Why can't Americans get this right?! It's alright by me if someone thinks gays are weird or whatever. Many older Taiwanese probably do, after all. But unlike their American counterparts, these Taiwanese are polite and civil, thus they don't make the public an unsafe place to be gay. This is an incredibly important concept. In the US I am afraid to hold hands with men I date because I instinctively try to avoid conflict. Thus I don't want to invite the blatant reproach and verbal attacks that so frequently come. I should not have to fear doing the same thing that straight couples do every day without a second thought, but the nature of American society mandates that I fear to show who I am. Taiwanese culture, which is conservative in many respects, does not instill such a deep fear in me, and thus I am freer. I cannot speak for Taiwanese gays but I get the sense from my friends here that they don't have to face this same fear.

Finally, pictures will come soon. I apologize for the lack of photos lately, I just don't carry my camera with me at most times because I like to go around Taipei without a bag of stuff, and it's begun to rain almost every day here and I don't want it to die of water exposure. However, my friends DO have cameras, and once they post pictures on facebook I shall grab them and put them here for you all!