ta-daaa

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Well, kids. She made it.

I'll tell you, 30 hours of travel doesn't feel as bad as it sounds ... although I was lucky as anything in terms of the company I had (as in none!). The first flight to L.A. was the only one with someone sitting next to me and although there was someone sitting in the aisle (oh Elton!) during the long haul to Taiwan, he was a hoot and a half annnd managed to not annoy me after 14 hours of confinement! I know, right.

He was hilarious though, this little old man, and we had fun talking politics and religion and teaching him words like claustrophobia and oxy moron. And, his name was Elton. I mean, come on - it was perfection. Funny thing too, for each of the in-flight meals they served there was an American choice and a Chinese choice and if you didn't answer right away when they asked they just defaulted to racial profiling ... so, for breakfast I got stuck with an omelet lacking in just about everything and a gray finger of sausage and one boiled grape tomato - ew. Meanwhile, he was served kimchi and thought it looked positively gross in comparison to the real thing ... now my omelet, however, that was a breakfast - so we swapped. And I just think that's too funny. I'm sure it was just because neither of us had much of a standard for the "ethnic" food, as opposed to our own, but still ...

Annd let's see, I watched Thursday's sunrise on Friday in Taiwan. Spectaculous.

Annnd, my apartment - in "Smith Tower" (whatthehell, I travel half way around the world to live with another Smith??? - haha), is clean and spartan. There's a bed basically. And three hangers. But the room is big and there is actually a toilet seat - not a squatter. Although the shower head is almost directly above the toilet and the bathroom serves as the shower, which is a little weird, but whatev. The view leaves room for improvement, but it's just so darn authentically Thai that I can't complain. (It is, by the way, a Thai building ... not a guesthouse, no foreigners - "farang" - which has it's pros and cons). And everyone leaves their shoes outside their apartments.

Aside from my brief stint out on the streets in search of toilet paper and water (and my failed attempt to buy a calling card), today hasn't been much. Just trying to gather the concentration to compute all of what's going on. I really haven't slept at all in the past three days and between that and the frustration of the language barrier (oh my god, so much harder than ever imagined) and well, just being half way round the world, I'm going to take it reeeal easy tonight. In fact, after this I think I'll walk back up the street to the apt., take a painkiller (bringing those were the best idea Jason has ever had) and call it a day.

I've got some goals set for tomorrow ... find someone who speaks english is #1. Seek out some bookstores, eat a meal or two, maaybe hike to the US Embassy, get a friggin' map, etc. etc. I have to say, while I know how much more impacting this is without knowing anyone, it would be sooo nice to have someone to commisserate with. I don't know what the deal with the other students is, but they're not living in the same place I am apparently and this means, basically I'm on my own for the next few days. I mean, wholly. It feels good and horribly frightening all at the same time. Nonetheless, I can feel my compentency growing by the nano-second ... despite moments of feeling more lost than a spotted sock in with the kitchen towels, it's a good, good thing.

Speaking of feeling lost, helpless, etc ... on my way back from the bank today, I was attempting to cross the street and kept having to back off and wait as more cars came around the corner and I turned around at one point and noticed this older man with an eye patch sitting in a store front behind me. After another failed attempt, he walked up behind me and in front of traffic, stopping the cars, to help me cross. Leaving me with two notions - one, how outrageously humbling it is to be helped across the street by an aging cyclops ... and two, how outrageously nice Thai's are ... even to the point of outdoing their reputation. In fact, the few farang I've seen around the city don't make eye contact and are so dramatically distant and UNhelpful, even though they were once new and lost and not understanding any of the language, etc, and the native people make so much more of an effort to help even when they can't. Which is just so damn swell. Really. Even though EVERYONE stares at my boobs here. Like they've never seen anything bigger than an a cup. Jesus.

Anyway, there you have it. Day 1 in Thailand ... complete.

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