Nee hao,
I'm currently beginning the next chapter of my abroad story. My month in Phnom Penh came to an end yesterday, as I rushed to catch my 11:25 a.m. departing flight (lesson learned: don't wait until the last minute to print your tickets/pack everything). After a very brief lay-over in Hong Kong (about 9 hours shorter than the one I had the first time), I took off for my new home: Taipei. I arrived at the airport around 6:45 p.m. last night, and finally made it to my hostel at about 8.
Though my layover in Hong Kong and the following flight were both brief, they still gave me some time to reflect. Here I was at the Hong Kong Int'l Airport, the same place I had been exactly one month ago as I awaited my flight to Phnom Penh (see "Nee Hao!"). One month. It's still hard to believe that's all it's been. The teaching experience gained; the friendships developed; the ethnic food consumed--all in just a mere 30 days. Since that first layover in Hong Kong, confidence in my teaching abilities has sky-rocketed. Instructing the girls at IU demonstrated to me that I can be an effective teacher while also making class FUN (must have been a crazy concept to one of our LanguageCorps instructors, a.k.a. "Sgt. Buzzkill", who put me to sleep both times he taught). And that ridiculous language I couldn't understand a month ago??... Well, not much has changed there---it's still pretty much impossible to understand what people are saying to me. BUT I definitely see myself making progress and beginning to master some aspects of it---well at least enough to order coffee in Chinese at the airport yesterday..hey-o! ("wo yao mai ka fe"—Thank you Davy and your incredibly fast paced crash course).
Then reflection time was over. I had finally made it here to Taipei--the place I will be calling home for at least the next 364 days. Though I plan on traveling some when I get the opportunity (i.e. vacation time and, more importantly, money), the next year will be nothing like the first month--where I bounced in between Hong Kong, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Sihanoukville, and Saigon. I'm here in Taiwan for the long haul.
And it was at this point, as I walked out of the Taipei airport, that I began to feel shock for the first time. Now "culture shock" is defined as the difficulty people have adjusting to a culture that is markedly different from their own (or at least that's what Wikipedia says it is...but I was trained well during college to never totally trust that site…so therefore I'm not going to fully buy that definition). Because you see, my first impressions of Taipei were that it actually seems quite like back home in many aspects---the tall buildings, the multitude of actual cars (not just motos and tuk-tuks anymore), even the freeway we took (yes, a FREEWAY…I thought I was going to have a heart-attack being in a motor vehicle traveling at faster than 15 m.p.h for the first time in over a month) all reminded me of back home in the good ole Bay Area.
So really the shock for me was not adjusting to a place different from the one I'm originally from, but settling into a place so different from the one I was just in. Somehow in the month I was in Cambodia, that strange little country became normal to me. The constant hassling by tuk-tuk drivers, massage parlor workers, and even pimps ("you want lady?") became expected; the 1 and a half hour wait for meals was ordinary; and the generally slower pace of life I'd adjusted to.
I thought perhaps that my weekend getaway in Saigon would be a great introduction to the craziness I would encounter in Taiwan. And in some aspects, it served that purpose--the motorbike madness in Vietnam made Phnom Penh look like a small town in the Midwest, and the assertiveness of vendors in the market (actually grabbing my arm with vice grips several times) made those in Phnom Penh seem, dare I say, timid.
But in so many ways, Taipei is like Saigon on crack (whoever said NYC is the city that never sleeps?). The sea of buildings and cars reminds me that I'm in an entirely new place. And the rapid pace of everyone walking in the streets shows me I'm definitely not in laid-back Phnom Penh anymore; instead this city seems to be run predominantly by Type-A personalities (hahaha...get it?)
And so long story short, last night was the night of shock. After getting very little sleep the night before (lesson reinforced: don't wait until the last minute to print your tickets/pack everything), flying all day, and then being put unexpectedly in this very ghetto hostel (who actually thought I'd be missing Rick's house?), I was very overwhelmed.
But after some rest, I woke up this morning to an exhilarating realization---this is exactly what I asked for. The craziness of Taipei life. Even the feelings of loneliness remind me that I decided to come here, instead of opting to follow other friends to places like China and Thailand, because I wanted my own place to explore. So now I’ve got what I wanted. I’m in Taiwan now—time to rock and roll.
