Until Next Time, Taiwan

Currently, we are sitting at the Taipei International Airport, awaiting our 3PM flight to Shanghai. From there we will transfer planes and at 11:55PM tonight, we will be off to Frankfurt, Germany! Do you know what that means?

Ray and I have officially flown around the world together.

Just a fun thought I had : )

The last week in Taiwan has been so much fun and a bit unsettling too. Ray put it best when he said: "It makes me happy that I'm sad to be leaving Taiwan. It means I did something right." While we're so excited to see family (and have second Christmas!) leaving a place you called home is never easy.

As we've prepared, we have shared with each other the things we'll miss about Taiwan. Now we share them with you.

1. Our students- there couldn't be a cuter bunch of kids anywhere (except for our nieces and nephews who will only ever be trumped by our own children. We're planning on raising super model, Olympic swimmers, you know).

2. Select Food Items- Things like: fried curry dumplings, banana milk, fresh mango smoothies, rice triangles, and dongua cha are just a few of our favorites that are unique to Taiwan. With some luck, maybe we'll find fried curry dumplings in the states somewhere. We managed to find a brick of dongua cha (a fruit tea~ in English either Wax Gourd, or Wintermelon) so we're excited to try that out soon!

3. Flora and Fauna- Living in a tropical climate has been unbelievably rewarding in terms of the foliage. You can't go anywhere without being floored by the amount of greenery, the size of the greenery, and the vast varieties of it too!

4. People We've Met & Friends We've Made- Taiwan has some of the sweetest people in the world, they've been kind and helpful to us and even with a language barrier sometimes, we've made some lasting memories. Through church too we've met great people and created friendships that we look forward to tending for years to come.

5. Night Markets- Although Ray may beg to differ, they were one of the coolest things Taiwan had to offer. I never got tired of perusing the streets and checking out all the fun and quirky things for sale. 


Inevitably, we also developed a list of things we probably won't be yearning for any time soon...

1. BUGS- From cockroaches, to mosquitoes and biting midges, the bugs have been overwhelming and a rather unwelcome part of Taiwan. Of course as the weather cooled, things got better. The cockroaches especially though were a never ending battle we're happy to see the end of.

2. Humidity- In the summer you melt from it, in the winter you freeze from it. Who knew you could be shivering and shaking when it's only 62 degrees out! That's apparently what a wet cold will do to you though. We made it through alive, but humidity is something we could deal with less of in our lives. : )

3. Traffic- I don't think you ever quite fully adjust to being on a bike with 20 scooters around you, trying to get through an intersection with no stop lights or signs, and a tour bus eeking between you and oncoming traffic.

4. Smells- It scares us how accustomed to the smells of Taiwan we have become. When we first got here they were almost unbearable, now they're tolerable and sometimes even nice. Have we destroyed our noses forever?! Will we ever smell things the same?! We got some solace when we finally tried stinky tofu last week. Although we made it through the smell, it still did not taste good. Phew! We haven't lost all our senses yet!

 

"Stinky Tofu" by Ray
It tastes like eating a deep fried scab.

Ray ends now with some more reflective and mature writing.

It was a few weeks ago while walking to the store at night that I realized: I've grown accustom to this place. I've grown accustom to the old buildings, the abundant green foliage covering the mountains and popping out wherever it it can, the bright neon signs that line storefronts on the roadsides. I've grown accustom to the sound of hundreds of scooters bustling through the streets, the sound of people speaking in a kind of melodic warble all around us and not understanding what they're saying, the sound of children's laughter, and yelling and giggling. I've grown accustom to the smiles of helpful strangers and the "Hellow!"s of passersby; accustom to the feeling of being a foreigner at home in a foreign land, surrounding by everything I don't understand but feeling comfortable nonetheless. And this realization made me wonder; have I grown to love Taiwan? Do I love this place with all of its smells and foods and quarks and confusion? I know I'll miss it and that I'll look back at my time here fondly and often. Yes, Taiwan has truly "touched my heart."

The Cockroach Story

A few nights ago, Ray and I just could not fall asleep for the life of us. It was hot and muggy, and our bed is harder than what our bodies are used to, there was no helping the situation. As I lay there with my eyes closed, just trying to convince my brain to shut off, I decided there was no hope, and I opened my eyes. It was about 2AM, the lights were off, and there was just a faint glow coming in from outside. I looked to our ceiling... and saw a large black spot. I instantly began rationalizing with myself, wasn't the paper on the ceiling peeling? Could this not be just a small hole I had never noticed before? But it was no use. I knew.

I tapped Ray. "Please tell me that's a hole in the paper and not a cockroach on our ceiling?" I whimpered.

"Do you really want to know?" responded Ray after a moment of searching.

Shuddering and groaning with disgust, I wrapped myself in our sheet and bolted out of the room into the hallway. We couldn't turn on the light, because the cockroach would have beelined it to who knows where! Instead, Ray grabbed the bug spray, and a bowl, and we developed an elaborate plan.

Standing on our bed, in the dark, with bug spray in hand, Ray poised himself for a most terrifying battle. Meanwhile, I still stood pathetically out in the hallway, hardly able to even look at the black lump on the ceiling. We counted down, "3, 2, 1, now!" and Ray sprayed the varmint! It scuttled about a foot and then stopped long enough that Ray was able to snap the bowl around it, trapping him. I reentered the room to hand Ray a piece of paper so he could slide it between the bowl and the ceiling. This he slowly did. The cockroach fell into the bowl with a disgusting thud, and began running around the inside of the bowl. I will never forget that clicking, awful sound! Bleh!

I've no idea how Ray kept his composure. He reports he could feel the creature throwing itself around inside the bowl and against the paper. But somehow he managed to walk the trapped thing out of our room, down the hall, and into the stairwell where we debated what to do next. The cockroach was obviously not dead, we could see and hear him moving. We didn't want to lift the bowl up and then try to squish him as he ran. Cockroaches are much faster than you think. Drawing upon my 6 year old, spider killing knowledge, I suggested we just spray the heck out of the paper, turn the trap over, and allow the fumes of the bug spray to waft up and become trapped in the bowl with the cockroach, effectively destroying him.

So this we did. Ray moved his hand long enough for me to drench the paper in bug spray, and then he quickly flipped the trap over onto the ground. For good measure we put a heavy hiking boot on top of the bowl... you just can't trust these guys, okay?

Falling asleep was even more difficult after that- knowing what was crawling around us in our sleep! But somehow we managed to finally rest, and in the morning, the cockroach was dead. Victory! We have done what an atomic bomb could not.

Ray disposed of the body, I still couldn't bring myself to look at it. For the sake of having all the facts, the cockroach was about an inch and a half long, and I know that's not the worst that has been found in our apartment. Here's to four more months of 2AM cockroach killing sprees!