Our first adventure in Taiwan...

Well....I am officially in Taiwan!  It was quite an eventful day...let me tell you about it.  I left Washington on Thursday at one in the morning.  So...it was really Wednesday night.  :)  The plane ride wasn't that awful.  I was pleasantly surprised.  The fed us chicken for dinner and then I slept.....for 9 hours.  I woke up just in time to eat breakfast and then it was time to land.  The medicine my doctor gave me must have really worked.  :)  It was great!

This is when the adventure really began.  My plane landed first.  I got off the airplane around 5:30.  I got through immigration and I found my bags in no time at all.  Then it was time to wait.  I thought I was going to be the last one in Taiwan....however my plane landed before the rest of the teachers arrived.  I was talking to my dad on facebook when I saw one of the teachers.  It was great to see a "familiar" face even though I didn't know her before now.  So....after the four of us found each other we needed to exchange our money and find a pay phone.  Luckily one of the teachers knew a little bit of Chinese.  That was helpful.

Unfortunately, we got on the wrong bus.  So...we spent about 2 hours on a bus to the Taichung train station. However, we wanted to be at the Feng Yuan train station.  The bus driver told us when to get off.  He dropped us off like 2 or 3 blocks from where we actually wanted to be.  So...we had to walk down the street with ALL of our luggage......that was FUN!  And...on these streets there were these little pathways all along the sidewalk.  We had to maneuver all of our bags around these barriers.  It was quite the adventure.

Then we had to figure out how to get from this train station to the one in Feng Yuan.  We tried to call the head of the Language Institute but he didn't answer.  So...we found someone that could help us.  They got us a ticket for the train and she let us know how to board the train and where to go.  She told us to go to car 12 but we didn't see a label for the number 12.  So....we just waited by the number 10.  However, the train came faster than we were anticipating.  We ran to try to get to number 12 but we weren't going to make it so we started throwing things onto number 11.  We have so much crap.  It was hard to get it all on the train.  The train started beeping like it was going to leave us and we were still not all packed onto the train.  Luckily we got everything onto the train.

We were only on the train for about 10 minutes.  A nice lady helped us get our stuff off the train.  Then, once we were off the train, she helped us carry our bags up a flight of stairs, down another flight of stairs, and down another flight of stairs.  She helped us get halfway.  Then, another friend helped us carry our stuff the rest of the way.  People here are so nice!  I just couldn't believe it!

We finally got to where we were supposed to be....just 2 hours late.... :)  Then, we did some training things and we rode our bikes to the grocery store.  I really enjoyed riding my bike.  It was fun!  After that we wandered around Taiwan and explored a little bit...but not too much.  :)  Then, we got dinner at a local place.  It was actually really good!  I got mushroom rice.  Yes you heard me right.....I actually ate rice.  And then I got pork dumplings.  It was a typical Chinese meal and I actually really enjoyed it.  I also ate it with chopsticks!  That's different for me also.  :)  For dessert we got a smoothie from a place here in Taiwan.  It has been a great first day and I hope to keep learning new things every day!

These are the four teachers at dinner after a LONG day of traveling.  We were all so tired!