A Safe Arrival

Mr. Wang and his son Brian picked me up from the airport last Tuesday night and drove me to their home 40 minutes away in Banchiao, Taipei. They both speak some English, so we were able to get to know each other during the drive. I was able to use a little Mandarin with them, but mostly we fell back to English. Brian is 20 and in his third year at a university. He has an older brother, a younger brother, and two younger sisters, but only his youngest sister, Cindy, lives with them. Mrs. Wang and Cindy know only a few words of English.

The Wangs live in a 5 story condo, with Mr. Wang's veggie food business on the first floor. The bedrooms are on the second and third floors, a living room on the fourth floor, and an extra room on the fifth. My room is on the third. It's bigger than I was expecting. It has a double twin bed, two desks, a fan, AC, small closet, and a cable internet hookup. After unpacking and settling in, I now feel quite at home here.

Mrs. Wang runs a small cafe just around the corner from their home. But if you're thinking on the scale of the San Fernando Valley, "just around the corner" is an understatement. The cities in Taiwan are densely packed. Houses go up, not out. Nobody has a backyard. So, "just around the corner" is a different expression. It's really close: go down a tiny alley, around the corner, past a tiny coffee shop, and you're there.

The cafe is a hole in the wall with just a couple tables. There is no service counter. Customers step into the kitchen to order and pick up their food, and some eat there at the tables. It's cluttered, but it's all vegetarian, so that makes it clean in my book. They are generously feeding me breakfast, lunch, and dinner here. But don't say that my rent payment is for room and board; that doesn't sound right. We are more familiar than that. We all eat dinner together as a family and sometimes go for walks together in the evening.

So far I haven't done any touring outside the neighborhood. I would almost be bored if I wasn't a third of the way around the world. This is a chance to reflect on myself, to recreate myself in a new environment. I can more readily develop good habits like flossing, exercise, taking my vitamins, achieving inner peace through non-judgment, generosity, humility, and conquering the demons of my inner and outer worlds. So far, I have been taking my vitamins. Going to work on flossing next.

Tomorrow Brian is going to show me how to use the subway. We are going to Shida university, where I will register for Mandarin classes. The quarter begins September 1st, so I still have time to get in some touring.