it's only wednesday

it's only wednesday and i've had hot pot twice this week.    

i really must be taiwanese.

love, fif

help. i can't read.

i am an abc (american born chinese).  or more accurately, i am a tba (taiwanese born american).  as previously mentioned, i speak chinese pretty well, and growing up, i visited taiwan numerous times with my mother to visit our extended family.  you would think that because of this, i'd be pretty taiwan savvy.  this is just not true.  i probably know less about getting around in taiwan than any other country i have visited (and there are a lot) because i had to research and plan my own itineraries on those vacations.  


here, i have mostly been led around the country blindly by local relatives, and never really had to do much in the way of figuring out ... anything.  and truth be told, in the first say, five visits or so, i almost never went anywhere outside the walls of various relatives homes.  my strongest childhood memories of taiwan were sitting in front of a fan and watching chinese mtv and vh1.  


a few days after my move here, i found myself familiarizing myself with local buses and running errands on my own. i live in a rather inconvenient place outside of taipei, so going out takes a bit of an effort.    being the middle of the day, i randomly stopped at a restaurant for lunch.   


before i continue with the story, i should point out that the thing about being an abc with above average mandarin skills is, i can sometimes pass as a local.  the problem arises when i'm actually expected to read something... anything...like say, a menu, especially since i am not living in the heart of taipei, where foreigners are more common.  this is exactly opposite of my experience when i lived in finland, where i was clearly a foreigner wherever i went, and most people who saw me immediately spoke to me in english. even when i didn't want them to. 


so you can imagine the surprise when the hostess greeted me, offered me a menu and a place to sit, and in return i looked at her somewhat blankly, and said,  "i'm sorry. i can't read a lot of chinese, can you please explain the menu?"  you can further imagine her (most probable) masked frustration as she patiently explained to me section by section what my options were.   


but her kind efforts led me to order the following: 

fried cheese... cake

pork stir-fried udon

my cousin, bear, finds my bold declarations of being illiterate hilarious.   she finds it even more hilarious that i never bother to explain the strong incongruence between my speaking and reading ability.   but really, why is it important for them to know that? 

love,  fif

one way ticket

i bought a one way ticket to taiwan from texas using frequent flier miles.  it cost me $21.10.  

as i sat in my seat soaring across the pacific, watching a very bad movie with kate hudson and matthew mcconaughey, all i could feel was an overwhelming sense of panic. 

what. was. i. doing?

fleeing, apparently, in strongest sense of the word.   reflecting back on my decision making process, i am not entirely sure what gave me the ridiculous idea in the first place.   but it stuck.  

however, i did not arbitrarily point my finger at a world map and pick taiwan. i have roots here, with an impressively large extended family.  i became tefl certified (teaching english as a foreign language) while playing housewife in boston, and am reasonably fluent in mandarin.  

is this decision forever? no, not forever.  very little in life is ever forever, and all i know is this is for right now.  the truth is, i am buying time, and at the moment, i am feeling so, so much better.  

love, fif

we'll call it phase three.

life can change quickly.  up until one beautiful day last july, i thought i had it all.  at the time i didn't recognize the significance of the conversation that eventually snowballed into my current predicament:

30 years old, unemployed, and divorced (pending).

my friends try to console me by saying, "at least you're not fat". 

the past many months has been mainly filled with pain, sadness, anger, and despair.  i needed a drastic change, an eat, pray, love type of change.  never mind that i loathe the eat, pray, love woman.  i couldn't get past the second half of the book, and i barely made it through the film.  i hate her and her first world problems, except i am annoying in exactly the same first world way- without all the money, and without a best-selling novel. 

drat.

so here i find myself, an american expat, starting over, in danger of dying a spinster, and flailing in formosa. 

care to join me on this super fun journey? 

love, fif