Point and Smile

A week ago at this time I was in L.A. or almost there. But what a difference a week makes.

One of my fellow Global Fellows commented last night that this place is starting to feel like home. It is. In the past week I have adjusted to a day to night time change, started a brand new job, embraced Taiwanese cuisine, and made some awesome new friends. Oh, and developed a somewhat Diet Coke-esque addiction to milk tea, which I am enjoying as I write this.

I mentioned in the last post how friendly the Taiwanese people are, and this has only become more evident in the last few days. The state offices where three other fellows and I are working also have local interns, extremely sweet girls who are as curious about our culture as we are about theirs. It makes for a very interesting flow of information.

The J-O-B is good, if a bit long and tiring. I spend pretty much all day researching Taiwanese companies on the internet, trying to find local distributors for such exciting Washington State products as stucco and wooden doors. It's a very laid-back environment, though; my boss is quite a character and the other girls and I have been sampling local restaurants for lunch.

THE FOOD IS AMAZING and deliciously cheap. I passed on the pig's ear today at lunch, but other than that I've been pretty adventurous about eating everything that's placed in front of me. I've found it's more fun to put something in my mouth and decide if I like it that way before finding out what it is. I had a delicious red bean donut a few days ago and some amazing cuttlefish (a.k.a. squid- who knew?) soup. And last night we went to this world-famous dumpling restaurant where we pigged out on everything under the sun wrapped in soft dough. Mmmmm...

But enough talking (and dreaming) about the food. It may seem like it from this account, but I promise I'm not shoveling food into my mouth every second of the day. My time has been better spent doing things like...shopping! Jeannie, who is a super fun employee of USC Taipei, took us to a shopping area on Wednesday night that we dubbed "The Grove on Crack." What's great here is that the vendors welcome haggling, and armed with Jeannie's knowledge of Chinese and English I was able to get a fun bag for a really good price.

The language barrier hasn't really been a problem since our host students/Jeannie/the local interns usually translate for us. But even when we're alone, the smile and point tactic works pretty well. The smile is usually returned here.

This weekend we're going to be rolling in style at the NTU prom as guests of Chris, who is a graduating graduate student. I'm definately more excited about it than I was for my own prom, details to come! I wonder if the NTU students know the Soulja Boy? We'll find out!