Day 1: Culture shock.

View from Kyleigh and my dorm room

The alleyways are VERY narrow

 

Well today has been an extremely long day. It's currently 7:32p in Taipei (3:32a in Seattle). I am exhausted and have been up since 230a Taipei time. Fortunately my flight went by very quickly. I have very bad luck when it comes to sleeping on planes, but thanks to the help of some Melatonin I was able to sleep for about 6 hours. Jet lag is beginning to have a new definition after today.

Being in Taipei is amazing, but it is definitely a culture shock. I am the only person with blonde hair I have seen since I arrived today, which is definitely not what I'm used to when being in Seattle nearly half the women around me have blonde highlights. Another thing I am not used to, are pedestrians not having the right of way at crosswalks. You have to be care at every crosswalk making sure mopeds or cars don't run you over. Speaking of mopeds, I have never seen so many mopeds in my life. There are rows upon rows of mopeds on every street. And it's amazing how much people can carry while they're riding one of those things!  Even though I am in such a large city, there is so much green around me. I love it. There are amazing orchids, cherry blossums, and tons of trees within the city.

We were kept busy all day to help avoid the jet lag we knew we were all experiencing. We went on a couple of walks to various places throughout Taipei. It's an amazing city and I'm so excited to see more of it as the days go on. Tonight we went to a dinner at Cheng Hsin hospital with doctors and nurses that welcomed us. It was such a blessing to see how greatful and thankful they are for us to be visiting their hospital. I now have my own official set of nice chopsticks too:)

Valuable lessons learned today: 1) there's a such thing called a "squatty potty", 2) going to a grocery store with everything in Chinese is frustrating, and 3) crosswalks aren't always a safe place

That's all for tonight! I am so excited to see where the rest of the trip takes me and the adventures I will be going on. I'll have another blog post tomorrow and will upload some pictures <3