Jet Lag and Seven Elevens: Traveling to Taiwan

Celebrating arriving in Taiwan

I’ve never been able to pull an all-nighter. Partly out of inability to keep my eyes open and partly out of a fear of the next day’s consequences. But I’m proud to say that through egregious boredom and sheer will (loud music) I was successfully able to stay awake throughout the entire time traveling to Taiwan on June 23rd, for about 30 hours.

The day started bright and early at 8 o’clock rolling out of bed and repacking the room me and my roommate had managed to destroy in less than two days. I want to thank my Mom and Grandma for being the reason I could fit more than 2 pairs of clothes and a jacket in my suitcase. Without these two wizard’s spatial awareness and time management I would never have made it to San Francisco. At the same time, I had to figure out how to recreate their work which was time consuming and involved many repackings, but just in time I was ready to go without needing to use the pop out zipper. The trip to the airport and through security went off without a hitch, and by the time my cohort members were done putting their shoes and jackets back on (let’s go precheck!) I was ravenous. We decided to get airport udon, which I was initially skeptical about, but was actually delicious. I was going to buy some snacks with my leftover stipend, but my cute artisan candied pineapple rang up at 8 dollars. So no ‘stacks’, but plenty of granola bars and leftover udon.

The surprisingly delicious airport udon

The plane itself would have been uneventful if not for a near recreation of my flight to Malaysia many years ago. On the plane, as the other NSLI-Y students I was sitting with and I tried to squeeze our baggage underneath the seats in front of us, my hand came up from the floor sticky and wet. The farther under my seat I felt the more damp it became, until it was clear that underneath all of our seats was soaked, and steadily leeching towards our backpacks. We managed to make makeshift dams from the airline-provided blankets, and passed the rest of the flights watching the actually impressive collection of movies United has curated. While the mysterious liquid wasn’t Tiger Beer, the memories of the Malaysia flight made me surprisingly comfortable, despite the damp slickness clinging between my fingers. And instead of the bad airplane food (what’s the deal with that) I ate leftover udon and felt like a king.

Landing in Taiwan!

We landed in Taiwan just outside of Taipei and made our way to customs. While waiting in line, I was furiously trying to figure out what greeting I should use. Should I say “hi”? “Hello”? What time is it, does a “good afternoon” suffice or is it nighttime already? Should I try Mandarin? And then I was at the front, frozen between saying “您好” and “hello”. The customs officer took one look at me and immediately pegged me rightfully as an American with little practical Chinese ability and cued me through with courteous English. We got our bags with no problem (thanks United for not sending any to Japan) and made our way onto our super Mario themed bus, to which everyone screamed “Mario!!”.

Taiwan at night

Taiwain the following morning

Taiwan’s highways and skylines look very similar to many cities in the US with smaller buildings gradually coalescing into tall apartment buildings and small skyscrapers. I had a wonderful moment of to myself listening to this album on the bus before taking a short cheat nap (on an hour) during the 3 and a half hour drive too Gaoxiong. Correct, from the top of Taiwan where our plane landed near Taipei to the very southern city of Gaoxiong, Taiwan is only slightly larger than Maryland, and takes only a little more time to drive North to South as Maryland does East to West. Despite similar drive times, the climate is wildly different. Keyword: hot. The sentence I’ve said the most since arriving in Gaoxiong beyond “sorry, my Chinese is very bad!” Is “台湾太热了”, which translates to “Taiwan is way too hot”. Stepping off the bus at a rest stop halfway through the drive we were hit with waves of hot, sticky tropical air, even at 11 at night in a more Northern part of Taiwan. As unsurprisingly uncomfortable the climate is, with the wave of heat came a wave of nostalgia. The air smells just like Malaysian air—slightly sweet, fresh, thick, with a hint of diesel fuel. It smelled familiar, like home, and was the first time I truly understood that I was going to live here for the next month and a half. By the time we got to the hotel I was so tired I couldn’t even feel it anymore. In fact, I was so jazzed I proceeded to take a forty five minute shower (though shorter than my usual) and eat several American chocolate candies that I decided wouldn’t travel well before forcing myself to crash.

Hotel snacks from our resident director

The next two days in Gaoxiong we had almost completely to ourselves to relax, recuperate, and rest in the hotel. So naturally everyone in the cohort decided to immediately get outside and explore the city. I promptly added this as yet another reason why I love the cohort. It was an absolute blast. Sort of a repeat of our time spent relaxing in San Francisco, but with so much more freedom and such a completely different environment. Gaoxiong is an incredible city, bustling with people, motor scooters, cars, with every street lined with restaurants. Even though it's clearly busy there's a calmness to the city, a sort of unstressful and purposeful way people go about their days. We fell into this mood, and pretty much immediately got lost. With no idea where we were going and many of us not having changed our sims cards (so no google maps), we ended up splitting the group several times. My group wandered around a gorgeous park, explored our first Taiwanese 7-11 (which is a total upgrade from the states), and ended up hot, tired, and triumphant back at the hotel. The next day there wasn’t as much city wandering, and a group of us met in my hotel room to watch a Taiwanese version of The Little Mermaid called “The Mermaid Princess”. I highly recommend it. The animation quality is unity asset store level and for the storyline I think the writers went around the room each saying one word to formulate the plot. It was a surprisingly good assessment of our Chinese skills as the language level was very child friendly, and therefore very learner friendly. Another reason why I love the cohort—we ended up all talking throughout the movie comparing our hometowns, living experiences, and reasons why we wanted to study in Taiwan. Again, NSLI-Y picked an incredible group of people, and I’m very excited to spend the summer with them.

Lost at the park

Yes!!! Burger king!!! Very chillburger

That night, we met our host families for the first time. Before the program each NSLI-Y student was given very basic information about the family—a two sentence introduction, list of family members and ages, the parent’s careers, and each family members’ English proficiency. I was under the impression that each member of my host family spoke “basic” English, and that the father could communicate effectively. I arrived at the table with my host family and immediately realized how completely wrong I was. Apparently ‘Basic’ English consists of knowing how to say ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, and ’bathroom’, and the only member of the family who could communicate in English was the 15 year old daughter who was studying in school. While right now I’m very happy that’s how it turned out, as I pretty much exclusively speak to my host family in Mandarin (excluding the help from google translate when needed), in the moment I was extremely nervous. Way more nervous than expected. And what’s worse is I didn’t realize how rusty my Chinese is, and how utterly broken my grammar is in practice. Before NSLI-Y I’d only ever spoken to a few native speakers, one including my amazing Chinese teacher back home (hi Xiaomu!). But I think because my teacher is used to speaking with non native speakers, she can understand my Mandarin way better than native speakers who haven't spoken with a native English student. After a month of not studying intensely, apparently it was so bad I couldn’t speak in full sentences. I would string words together that I thought made sense, and my host family would stare expectantly, then whip out the pocket translator. But the night ended on a really nice note. My host family took me out for boba tea, and my host mom pointed out the college where I would be studying Mandarin. Ian’s (a member of the cohort) host family and mine are close friends, and we spent the rest of the night at their house eating Taiwanese fruits, cakes, playing pickleball in the dining room and Mario Kart in the living room.

Me and my host sister, she's super excited about the old bay

On the other hand I don't know if my host brother likes the hat

I’ve leave off this entry here, right before starting Mandarin classes. It's actually incredible how busy this last week has been. I’m excited to let you know all about once I can find some free time!

In the meantime, here's some random photos of my first few days in the city! More explanations to follow.

My friends may be happy to see Chainsaw man for sale... in Japanese.

One particular friends likes this I can't remember who (jk Mallory)

They have milo here!!

And my favorite jam

Shopping for fruit with my host family

Taiwanese night market

A blurry view of the American school

One example of an amazing meal I've had

The back gates of my school, Wenzao

A delicious new fruit, 书葡萄(tree grape). It's much more sour and strong than grapes and instead tastes like American grape juice.

Not cantaloupe, but yellow watermelon (although it tastes too much like cantaloupe for my liking)

View from Wenzao

Until then, 再见, and I love you all.

-Violet

Lost in San Francisco: The In and Out Expedition

It hasn’t hit me that soon I’ll be embarking on a life changing trip: summer immersion in Taiwan through NSLI-Y. I’m sitting in my hotel room waiting for my roommate to finish brushing her teeth and reminiscing about today, the day before, and everything that has led up to our pre-departure orientation in San Francisco.

Me and my cohort members fighting to stay awake

Yesterday, the first day of orientation, started off pretty normal with me (literally) rolling out of my bed in Baltimore and getting dressed. Except at four in the morning. I pulled up to the airport an hour later woozy from no sleep, slowly eating a burrito from the night before, and met up with a few of my immersion cohort members flying through BWI to San Francisco. After an uneventful plane ride with lots of sleeping, we grabbed our bags (in under 30 seconds, thank you SFO) and met two more cohort members, Laura and Jayne. Needing to grab taxis, I stepped outside for the first time into the San Francisco, California air. To be honest, I was expecting more popstars and less wind, but it was still a gorgeous day in a new smog-free city. The buildings remind me of New Mexico’s standards of old fashioned chalky yellow walls and curved tile roofs with modern coffee shops crammed inside (shoutout to Donna!).

We arrived at our hotel having time traveled to 9:30am PST. With nothing on the agenda until 6:30pm and each with a whopping $75 dollar stipend, we decided to go out of America in style by cramming ourselves full of processed foods and shopping. Of course, In and Out was a must-see West coast staple, and of course, we immediately got lost the second cell service died. We happily wandered around the shopping center suburb, completely disoriented and following the flickering beacon that Google maps provided, until hot and ravenous we found the glorious In and Out.

The sought after for burger, finally found

It was the best burger I’ve ever had (minus the french onion soup burger we had at that field hockey tournament, Dad) paired with some seriously mediocre fries (I don’t know how but the fries were lukewarm on the outside and refrigerator cold on the inside). We headed back for boba (needing an American comparison for the famous Taiwanese drink) and ran into two new people, Tyler and Ajahla, who had just arrived from the airport (as our cohort was landing in shifts). It’s at this point I should mention the immediate connection our group had. I’ll admit, I was initially worried about meeting the other members of the cohort. I didn't know who they would be or if I would fit in. But NSLI-Y has handpicked some seriously incredible people for this trip, and not just in terms of stellar academics or impressive resumes. Everyone here is genuinely excited about meeting the cohort and passionate about the program we’re in. There was instant chemistry with the group, and adding people along the way only just built our excitement and sense of childlike fun.

The In and Out Gang (thank you Laura for all the amazing pictures!)

Ian displaying a stellar example of childlike fun at the cards table

Trader Joes travels

With newfound momentum we headed towards Trader Joes, buying snacks, sparkling apple juice, and talking about regional grocery stores. Back at the hotel we spent the next hour relaxing in Laura and Ajahla’s hotel room and talked about our shared excitement for the upcoming months. The excitement never bubbled over. The group is so warm and genuinely kind, and after moving down to the lobby, we met with other cohort members (newly landed) and played cards for over an hour. After an awesome Chipotle dinner (again, cramming in as much Americanized food as possible), we celebrated our first night together with a toast of fancy apple juice. A group of us (now calling ourselves the “lost foreigners” after our In and Out adventure) returned to Laura’s room and ended up watching Family Feud and discussing memories of our own families watching the show. Hailey and I, my hotel room mate, returned to our room and began to get ready for bed. One of us made an offhand comment about the upcoming program that spawned an hour-long conversation about human nature, how culture shapes humanity, varying government models, and good versus evil based on cultural definitions. I went to bed that night with a greater sense of purpose and more excitement about the program we’ll be embarking on.

BS in the lobby with new arrivals

Cooling the fancy apple juice for the toast

Park icebreakers

Through the next day excitement somehow continued to build. We spent most of the day at a beautiful public park, complete with a state of the art jungle gym and community garden. I’ll admit I was jealous of the neighborhood kids. The playset would have been perfect for a daring game of woodchips but alas, we had work to do. It was amazing to get to fully meet the rest of the group. I was able to talk to or at least say hello to all twenty four other people, and I’m grateful to the icebreakers despite the initial awkwardness as I think I know everyone's names (which is impressive by my standards as I always struggle to remember names). After introductions was lunch, followed by cultural fluency exercises. These were incredibly beneficial, as well as self reflective. We compared personal, American, and Taiwanese societal beliefs, dissecting where we individually and where the group lay on a scale between individual vs. collective for each category, as well as discussing culture shock and how to respond to subtle cultural differences. I will carry the advice with me, though I know that responding to fake cultural standards by holding up fingers per cultural norm violation during a controlled exercise will be wildly different from actual cultural misunderstandings.

Program terms of conditions review complete with flaming hot cheeto prizes 

And yet, despite all of the prep work and mutual excitement, it still feels like this experience is a summer camp that I’ll be picked up from in a few days. Even as I’m nodding along to explanations about last minute packing and our international flight information, it all feels theoretical. As much as I may be physically prepared (thank you Grandma and Mom for everything) nothing could perfectly prepare me for living outside the US without the concrete safety net of family and friends. But as much as I am nervous, there’s more buzzing excitement. While I can’t pinpoint exactly what makes me afraid, I can point to exactly what I’m thrilled about: language study, talking to native speakers, meeting my host family, sharing my culture, learning about a new culture, living outside of the US, and cheap amazing Asian food. I have everything to look forward to, I am delighted to share my journey with you (if not just so I don’t have to tell the same stories over and over again, I can just say “check out my blog), and I am honored to be continuing my family's living abroad blog. Hi to everyone in Baltimore and beyond, and I’ll write soon.

Hello from half of the NSLI-Y Kaohsiung cohort! The rest soon arrived after this photo.

Lots of love from San Francisco,

Violet

Returning to Baltimore

As many of you know, Hopkins formally ended its relationship with Perdana University on July 31st. As a result we had to end our Malaysian adventure (at least) one year earlier than expected. It is difficult to put into words how amazing this experience has been for us as individuals and as a family. It is also hard to imagine that after 67 posts this is going to be our last blog post for a while. For a family that previously included one person who prided himself on not having a Facebook account (Brian) and another who had no interest in taking pictures (Mary), the blog has become an important part of our life routine. It is a powerful vehicle for conversation and reflection in our family. It has also been a great way to keep in touch with our friends and family throughout the world. We are incredibly humbled that we have had over 15,000 views since we started in July of 2013. We only hope that you have enjoyed reading it as much as we have enjoyed creating it.

Our KL farewell dinner at Soul'd Out!

There are simply too many people to thank for making this past year possible so we are not going to try to list everyone here. If you are reading this blog, you are an important part of our lives and we thank you for sharing in our family.

Until next time, remember the greatest adventure is what lies ahead -- Selamat Jalan!

At a welcome home bbq in New York

Tourists at Home in Kuala Lumpur

With Vicki and Gil in town for two of our last three weeks in Malaysia, we became KL tourists. This turned out to be a fun way to wind down our time in KL. We hit some of our favorite spots and introduced them to the cast of characters that colored our lives here this year. And we also said our goodbyes...

Mary and Rosie at TTDI market

As you might expect from reading our blog this year, much of the year centered around food. Ana and Sue from LaZat put together a special family Malaysian Chinese cooking class for us. In addition to the adult student cooks, Monique's daughter, Aimee, and Violet joined us. Mary has been looking forward to this for the entire year since the focus of the class was her favorite Chinese dish, char kuey tao (CKT). The morning began with a tour of the TTDI wet market to learn about the ingredients we would be using in the class. Mary of course stopped by to see her resident spice lady Rosie, who as usual was delightfully cheerful and even put together a special snack pack for Gil. We then we headed over to LaZat for 4 hours of cooking and gorging! We started off by making fried wantons with shrimp and prawns. Next up, a delicious crab salad followed by the CKT. The trick to a flavorful CKT is frying the ingredients in a wok at incredibly high heat. After nearly choking to death on the the thick black smoke of frying chili (ok, maybe Violet and Brian burned them a little) it was amazing to us that anyone survives long enough to become an expert Chinese Malaysian cook! The Malay cooking class next to us nearly had to be evacuated. Sue of course was un-phased and found the whole scene somewhat amusing. Overall the food was delicious (of course!) and Violet and Aimee represented the next generation of chefs well.

Sue in her element at the TTDI market

We were glad to be in town to go to LaZat's Hari Raya open house
and say farewell to Ana, LaZat's owner. 

We also had to continue the Pohl tradition of Korean barbeque so we took everyone to our favorite Korean restaurant, Dao Rae. This also doubled as a farewell dinner for Nicole. We were so happy that she met Gil and Vicki since Nicole has been such an important part of our life this year. (Violet is still asking when she and Nicole are going out for another foot massage.)

No visit to KL would be complete without a trip to Restoran Lim Kee on the food street Jalan Alor. As usual, Lillian did not disappoint. The salt and pepper squid is still the best dish we have had in KL (sorry duck curry from My Elephant - you're close but not quite there!) and Lillian made a special noodle dish for Gil that was one of his favorite dinners of the trip. Lillian and Simon are simply wonderful hosts. Our friend has celiac disease and Lillian prepared separate dishes for her using gluten-free ingredients our friend brought from home. We have convinced all of our Mont Kiara friends that Lillian's is the place to go on Jalan Alor and we hope they continue the tradition of eating there at least once a month (remember guys, she is closed on Thursdays).

Our final dinner with Lillian on Jalan Alor

Gil loves malls and tall buildings so we spent an evening in KLCC at the Petronas Towers. We started off by exploring Suria KLCC mall and then headed over to the Sky Bar at the Traders hotel to watch the sunset over the backdrop of the Towers. Patrick took us here in July 2013 to introduce us to the city so it was a fitting goodbye to one of the most gorgeous architectural structures in the world. The view at night is simply spectacular and it is a wonderful place to spend an evening with family and friends.

Are they drums, are they stools? Brian can't tell...

In addition to loving malls, Gil and Vicki also love to shop, and shopping we did. We have officially dubbed Vicki and Gil "the great shopping enablers." Mary went to Jim Moore's to buy two stools and ended up with 4. She went to IPC to buy 1 Thai pillow and came home with 2. Brian went to get 1 instrument in Hanoi and came home with 3.  You get the idea...

Brian however wins the award for the most ridiculous shopping adventure. Whenever we go to a new country he tries to learn about the local music with a particular focus on stringed instruments. For the past few months he has been looking for a traditional Malaysian stringed instrument called a sape' but they have been impossible to find anywhere outside of a few towns in Borneo. He briefly talked about going to Kuching with Gil for a 12 hour trip but we had too much to do in KL to get ready for our move. So he did the next best thing - he brought the sape' store to our apartment. Brian found a sape' teacher and musician who commissions sape's from local makers in Sarawak, Borneo. After discussing things over Facebook, Saufi agreed to bring a traditional 4-string sape' to KL from Borneo the weekend  before we moved. It is solid wood, handcrafted, heavy and beautiful. It is by far the coolest instrument that Brian acquired from Southeast Asia. Saufi stayed for over an hour teaching Brian how to care for, tune and even play the sape' and then he gave us a ton of both traditional and contemporary sape' tunes to download. Check him out at http://melodyofborneo.blog.com/.

Tyler and his swim coach, Michelle (or as Ty called her
for months -- "Miss Shell") at the kids' final swim lesson. 

A heartfelt goodbye to Mr. Madu Tapa, our wonderful apartment guard

Brian and Saufi with the sape'

In addition to being tourists, we also started the unappealing task of packing our apartment and preparing to move back home. Our apologies to Gil and Vicki that their last day was spent changing lightbulbs and sorting pictures.

While Gil and Vicki were incredibly helpful, we simply could not have gotten through the last few weeks (or quite honestly, the last 8 months) without the help of Anita. Anita has been our helper around the apartment since the beginning of the new year. She has been a god-send. She is thoughtful, organized, generous and caring. She is wonderful with Violet and Tyler and just knows how to get things done. Need to find the obscure downtown office to pay your parking ticket? My favorite weekend market is right there - I'll handle it. Craving some fresh Indonesian tempeh wrapped in banana leaf? I know where to get the authentic stuff. Need someone to watch the kids for a date night? I'm free tonight on short notice. Need someone to sew country patches onto Brian's guitar case? I'll do it without you even asking. Anita, we have been so blessed to have you in our lives this year. Thank you for bringing fresh flowers to the apartment every morning, keeping us organized and sane, and being an overall force for good in the world! We will miss you more than words can express.

Anita, we miss you already!