Random Thoughts
(WARNING THIS IS REALLY LONG!)
We got to look at some vehicles today for test driving. We had asked to see two different cars, the Toyota Wish and the Mitsubishi Savrin. Both are basically small minivan/SUV type cars. I had thought we would have to schedule time to go to leasing office or car lot, but nope, they brought the vehicles to us at Anthony’s work, complete with salesmen – quite funny, I think, but oh so convenient. Anthony drove both around the block and I drove both in a circle in the area right in front of his building (not on the road!). We had Liz and no car seat, so it was just easier that way. We liked both vehicles, but I think we have decided on the Wish. It can seat SEVEN (yes, seven people) but it rides like a car, not an SUV. It has cameras on the front and rear of the car, which you can watch in the center dashboard, for parking and seeing what is behind you – quite amazing! It also has DVD player, GPS Nagivation System (all in Chinese, UGH!) and some other awesome features. All leather interior – seems the norm here, rarely do you see cloth seats. I don’t know how long the paperwork will take, but it will be great to have a car! We do need to get our ROC license at some point, which involves a VERY hard road test and an EASY written test. For example of written test see http://www.tcmvd.gov.tw/d8k/english/k.idc. I have been told it’s best to go to driver’s school where you can do practice driving same as on the test. We are considering that since we’ve both not driven much lately and the test involves a lot of parallel parking and S curve driving, staying within the lines.
It has been fun getting used to this new found freedom of being able to do things during the day that only involve one child. It’s easier to go places and get things done – since Liz usually takes at least one nap a day that gives me an hour or two where I have some down time. So far, I haven’t really done ANYTHING productive, just spent a lot of time on the computer, reading about other peoples experiences here in Taiwan. It is so interesting to see what others think of this place. I really have no idea how I portray this city/country, whether I sugar coat it or not. I know that at times I am not completely honest how I feel about certain things that happen here, but it’s not usually aimed at locals, it’s aimed at other expats.
I find this place to be very different than home, at times very frustrating and inconvenient. People can be downright rude and inconsiderate here. Since I don’t understand the language yet, I don’t even know half of what they are saying – I do know that we get made fun of and talked about wherever we go, but it doesn’t really seem to bother me. We get our pictures taken and the girls get a ton of attention. We even had a lady stop driving her scooter, get off, walk over to us and ask to take a picture of Ashley – it’s the blonde hair. That would never happen back home and just seems so odd, but I don’t really consider it horrible here. It bothers me occasionally, but only when the girls seem upset by it or don’t want to be looked at – and then I tell people no. It seems from what I’ve heard that other expats think it’s horrible and rude that people here do that. I don’t really understand that. There are so many things that I could just rant about and complain about being here, but I don’t see this as an opportunity to complain about the differences between here and back home, but as an opportunity to see how another culture lives, even one that really seems to be quite a bit backwards from the “Western way” of living. There are supposedly phases one goes through when relocating to a different country. I forget exactly what they are, but there is the initial honeymoon phase, then I want to go home phase and then the acceptance phase in the end. I feel like I have passed all the phases and have really just accepted that we are here and I want to make the best of it. I never really have felt the “I want to go home” part (this DOES NOT mean that I haven’t missed our family and friends though!). Who knows, maybe I haven’t even made it over the honeymoon phase. I think that finding a friend within the first month of being here really helped and getting out every day, seeing the sites, walking around, meeting other expats – all of those things that I did in the beginning really helped. Also, the fact that my main friend here has been here for over 5 years, is married to a Taiwanese man and has made her home here (in other words, is not planning on going back to her home country) helps too – she helps me see the good things here and doesn’t complain about all the weird behaviors here. I find it so strange how much time is spent on expat boards complaining about the cultural differences here. I know that it’s a place where people can go and vent, but sometimes it seems to go beyond venting. I couldn’t imagine if there were sites were people were complaining about Americans (I’m sure there are sites like that), and I’m sure Americans would be appalled at what other countries think of us.
Don’t really know why I’m sort of rambling on like this. I don’t get many comments from this blog or questions about our life over here, so I either am covering all the bases or people aren’t reading it or it just isn’t that interesting. I wouldn’t mind a few comments from people – friends, family and even strangers – on what they like hearing about and any questions about what it’s like. I don’t really want the blog to become a daily log of everything we do, I can’t imagine how boring that might become once we just start sitting around the house.
On to other stuff – the one major thing that I think I get frustrated most with right now is the measurement system! And this isn’t even against Taiwan, it’s against the US. Why in the world does the US have such a different measurement system than the majority of the world? (I could be wrong here too since I am just assuming that most of the other countries use the same as Taiwan and China). So everything is in meters, grams and Celsius. That simple – but since I don’t know the conversion and I’m so used to using feet, inches, pounds and Fahrenheit, it can be VERY frustrating for me. For instance, trying to buy meat – I usually buy 1 or 2 pounds of meat, but I have no idea what that converts to in grams and it doesn’t occur to me, until I’m at the meat counter, that I need to know how many grams – UMMM, can you just put some meat in a container for me? – I just kept telling the butcher, more, more, ok, that’s good. Guess I need to carry around a handy little conversion chart or something. I did print out a Celsius to Fahrenheit sheet for the kitchen and for the temperature, so I can tell if it’s chilly outside or hot. Amazing what the difference is between 20 Celsius and 24 Celsius.
Oh yea, since I couldn’t tell how to operate the Japanese Rice Cooker (Zojirushi brand), I emailed the companies customer service department, inquiring about a PDF manual for the rice cooker and do you know, within 2 days I had a PDF manual emailed to me. I find that extremely incredible, since I never really expected a reply in the first place due to me never having ever heard back from any other customer service I’ve ever emailed. Thank you Zojirushi!
We finally had some homemade Mexican food! The other day, I went to Jason’s (in Taipei 101) and found the Old El Paso taco kits – complete with tortillas, taco sauce and taco seasoning – just add meat (hence the I need meat from butcher, but don’t know how much). It was SOOO good. I had found Mexican shredded cheese blend at Costco the week before, so we even had good cheese to go with! MMMM…too bad I can’t find the green or even regular enchilada sauce; it would be great to make some enchiladas too! Someone told me that I can find tortillas at one of the bakeries here so I’m going to have to look for that. The kit at Jason’s cost 299 NT (roughly $10 US!) that’s a bit steep, but it’s so worth it every once in a while – right?!
We took the girls to Page One bookstore this evening; I wanted to get Ashley some books on being different. I realized today that since she’s the only “white” girl in her class (there are several other children from America in her class, but they are of Asian descent, so she’s the only fair skinned, blonde haired, blue eyed kid), she may start to have some issues about being different. This came to my mind after I saw a classmate of hers touching her hair and talking in Chinese while Ashley just looked at me with the expression of “please make her stop”. Someone on one of the boards I frequent offered me some great books as suggestions. So we went and picked up several tonight and I plan on reading them to her everyday and hopefully getting her to talk to me a little about it.
See what happens when I don’t post for a few days, it just goes on and on and on….
We got to look at some vehicles today for test driving. We had asked to see two different cars, the Toyota Wish and the Mitsubishi Savrin. Both are basically small minivan/SUV type cars. I had thought we would have to schedule time to go to leasing office or car lot, but nope, they brought the vehicles to us at Anthony’s work, complete with salesmen – quite funny, I think, but oh so convenient. Anthony drove both around the block and I drove both in a circle in the area right in front of his building (not on the road!). We had Liz and no car seat, so it was just easier that way. We liked both vehicles, but I think we have decided on the Wish. It can seat SEVEN (yes, seven people) but it rides like a car, not an SUV. It has cameras on the front and rear of the car, which you can watch in the center dashboard, for parking and seeing what is behind you – quite amazing! It also has DVD player, GPS Nagivation System (all in Chinese, UGH!) and some other awesome features. All leather interior – seems the norm here, rarely do you see cloth seats. I don’t know how long the paperwork will take, but it will be great to have a car! We do need to get our ROC license at some point, which involves a VERY hard road test and an EASY written test. For example of written test see http://www.tcmvd.gov.tw/d8k/english/k.idc. I have been told it’s best to go to driver’s school where you can do practice driving same as on the test. We are considering that since we’ve both not driven much lately and the test involves a lot of parallel parking and S curve driving, staying within the lines.
It has been fun getting used to this new found freedom of being able to do things during the day that only involve one child. It’s easier to go places and get things done – since Liz usually takes at least one nap a day that gives me an hour or two where I have some down time. So far, I haven’t really done ANYTHING productive, just spent a lot of time on the computer, reading about other peoples experiences here in Taiwan. It is so interesting to see what others think of this place. I really have no idea how I portray this city/country, whether I sugar coat it or not. I know that at times I am not completely honest how I feel about certain things that happen here, but it’s not usually aimed at locals, it’s aimed at other expats.
I find this place to be very different than home, at times very frustrating and inconvenient. People can be downright rude and inconsiderate here. Since I don’t understand the language yet, I don’t even know half of what they are saying – I do know that we get made fun of and talked about wherever we go, but it doesn’t really seem to bother me. We get our pictures taken and the girls get a ton of attention. We even had a lady stop driving her scooter, get off, walk over to us and ask to take a picture of Ashley – it’s the blonde hair. That would never happen back home and just seems so odd, but I don’t really consider it horrible here. It bothers me occasionally, but only when the girls seem upset by it or don’t want to be looked at – and then I tell people no. It seems from what I’ve heard that other expats think it’s horrible and rude that people here do that. I don’t really understand that. There are so many things that I could just rant about and complain about being here, but I don’t see this as an opportunity to complain about the differences between here and back home, but as an opportunity to see how another culture lives, even one that really seems to be quite a bit backwards from the “Western way” of living. There are supposedly phases one goes through when relocating to a different country. I forget exactly what they are, but there is the initial honeymoon phase, then I want to go home phase and then the acceptance phase in the end. I feel like I have passed all the phases and have really just accepted that we are here and I want to make the best of it. I never really have felt the “I want to go home” part (this DOES NOT mean that I haven’t missed our family and friends though!). Who knows, maybe I haven’t even made it over the honeymoon phase. I think that finding a friend within the first month of being here really helped and getting out every day, seeing the sites, walking around, meeting other expats – all of those things that I did in the beginning really helped. Also, the fact that my main friend here has been here for over 5 years, is married to a Taiwanese man and has made her home here (in other words, is not planning on going back to her home country) helps too – she helps me see the good things here and doesn’t complain about all the weird behaviors here. I find it so strange how much time is spent on expat boards complaining about the cultural differences here. I know that it’s a place where people can go and vent, but sometimes it seems to go beyond venting. I couldn’t imagine if there were sites were people were complaining about Americans (I’m sure there are sites like that), and I’m sure Americans would be appalled at what other countries think of us.
Don’t really know why I’m sort of rambling on like this. I don’t get many comments from this blog or questions about our life over here, so I either am covering all the bases or people aren’t reading it or it just isn’t that interesting. I wouldn’t mind a few comments from people – friends, family and even strangers – on what they like hearing about and any questions about what it’s like. I don’t really want the blog to become a daily log of everything we do, I can’t imagine how boring that might become once we just start sitting around the house.
On to other stuff – the one major thing that I think I get frustrated most with right now is the measurement system! And this isn’t even against Taiwan, it’s against the US. Why in the world does the US have such a different measurement system than the majority of the world? (I could be wrong here too since I am just assuming that most of the other countries use the same as Taiwan and China). So everything is in meters, grams and Celsius. That simple – but since I don’t know the conversion and I’m so used to using feet, inches, pounds and Fahrenheit, it can be VERY frustrating for me. For instance, trying to buy meat – I usually buy 1 or 2 pounds of meat, but I have no idea what that converts to in grams and it doesn’t occur to me, until I’m at the meat counter, that I need to know how many grams – UMMM, can you just put some meat in a container for me? – I just kept telling the butcher, more, more, ok, that’s good. Guess I need to carry around a handy little conversion chart or something. I did print out a Celsius to Fahrenheit sheet for the kitchen and for the temperature, so I can tell if it’s chilly outside or hot. Amazing what the difference is between 20 Celsius and 24 Celsius.
Oh yea, since I couldn’t tell how to operate the Japanese Rice Cooker (Zojirushi brand), I emailed the companies customer service department, inquiring about a PDF manual for the rice cooker and do you know, within 2 days I had a PDF manual emailed to me. I find that extremely incredible, since I never really expected a reply in the first place due to me never having ever heard back from any other customer service I’ve ever emailed. Thank you Zojirushi!
We finally had some homemade Mexican food! The other day, I went to Jason’s (in Taipei 101) and found the Old El Paso taco kits – complete with tortillas, taco sauce and taco seasoning – just add meat (hence the I need meat from butcher, but don’t know how much). It was SOOO good. I had found Mexican shredded cheese blend at Costco the week before, so we even had good cheese to go with! MMMM…too bad I can’t find the green or even regular enchilada sauce; it would be great to make some enchiladas too! Someone told me that I can find tortillas at one of the bakeries here so I’m going to have to look for that. The kit at Jason’s cost 299 NT (roughly $10 US!) that’s a bit steep, but it’s so worth it every once in a while – right?!
We took the girls to Page One bookstore this evening; I wanted to get Ashley some books on being different. I realized today that since she’s the only “white” girl in her class (there are several other children from America in her class, but they are of Asian descent, so she’s the only fair skinned, blonde haired, blue eyed kid), she may start to have some issues about being different. This came to my mind after I saw a classmate of hers touching her hair and talking in Chinese while Ashley just looked at me with the expression of “please make her stop”. Someone on one of the boards I frequent offered me some great books as suggestions. So we went and picked up several tonight and I plan on reading them to her everyday and hopefully getting her to talk to me a little about it.
See what happens when I don’t post for a few days, it just goes on and on and on….
posted by The Armstrongs at
11/18/2004
