My trip with hannah

Back in January I had my first visit from a friend since coming to Taiwan. hannah, an old friend from college, came to East Asia to visit me and some of her other friends before returning to Saudi Arabia where she works. She was here for six or seven days and we used the time to take a trip down to Nantou County, where I used to live. Then we went on to Tainan, the oldest major city in Taiwan. I'm going to try and break this up into two posts to keep it from getting too long.

hannah's arrival was a bit of a story itself. She pointed out that there was a world of difference in the post-arrival directions provided by me compared to the directions from her friend Leslie (who lives in Japan).

There's a bus from the airport into Taipei Main station - you think you can manage that? I don't know if it's hard to find if you don't know Chinese. The bus terminal is past the baggage area at a corner of the terminal. Give me a call if you have any trouble, I can meet you at main station and we'll go home together. If you're really in trouble, you want to go from the airport to Taipei Main Station - to ChengDa University. There is a Starbucks within sight of the main gate for ChengDa and that's less than a minute from my house. We'll work this out, no worries, see you soon-

That's all the directions I gave her. Leslie, reportedly, sent several pages of meticulous POV notes and instructions so as to defy the remotest possibility of misinterpretation. hannah mused that even though both methods of instruction were effective they gave clear insight to our different personalities.

hannah made it from the Airport to Taipei Main Station without incident, then she used a taxi driver's cell phone to give me a call so I could tell him where to go. Everything worked out fine. hannah met Bagels and my roommates, Tom and Vinny, then she crashed on the couch. We left for my old home, Nantou County, the next day after I finished my Chinese class.

The drive down wasn't too eventful. After going through the first toll both we found the window wouldn't go back up. The rest of the trip it just stayed down. Our first stop was in my old town, Ming Jian. There was a mechanic I'd used before so I took the car to them right away to see if they could fix it. They said it'd take at least an hour and we were glad to have the time to walk around. Ming Jian isn't often seen as a great place to visit, but I wanted to show hannah where I had lived, and why I liked it so much. Walking with Bagels, we stopped in at my old school and said "hello." The kids remembered me and I saw my old boss, Uncle Sam. Everyone was very friendly and I'm really glad we went by there. I showed hannah my favorite restaurants and told her small stories from my time there. We stopped at my favorite drink stand and got fresh orange juice - quite easy to find because of the low cost of labor in Taiwan.

We went back to the mechanic and he had managed to get the window back up. He said the switch could roll the window down, but not up - don't use it. I took his advice, payed, and we drove East, towards the mountains, to JiJi. There we met with my old friends from Ming Jian, Eric and Jill, and their two sons, David and Young. Eric is a civil engineer who works on Taiwan's hydro-infrastructure. We used to have long, interesting talks about his work - I'm always glad for a chance to visit with him. Jill's English is very good and we talked about how her graduate studies were going. David and Young were very glad to see Bagels again. We all had a great dinner together before hannah and I left, driving up into the mountains to Sun Moon Lake.

As a brief aside, I'll tell you that as a resident of Taiwan, there are four places that I'm considered socially obligated to take any guest who'll be in my care for any extended period of time. Taroko Gorge is a natural marvel, a gem on the East Coast just north of Hualian - we didn't go there. Taipei 101 is one of the tallest buildings in the world, certainly the tallest in a seriously active seismic zone - we didn't go there. Taiwan's night markets practically burst with unique foods, myriad shops, and cosmopolitan people - we didn't go to any of them. We did go to Sun Moon Lake. Sun Moon Lake is a large, scenic lake just inside the edge of Taiwan's Central Mountain Range. It's developed but I wouldn't call it overcrowded. It's usually pleasant and peaceful enough. The fact the we hit only one out of four Highlights™ was later a source of minor scandal.

A few photos of our story so far:
1.) That's hannah with Bagels in the car. They got along well and Bagels seems to love riding in the car now.
2.) That's me with some of my former students at my old school in Ming Jian. Bagels was there too, but she makes a lot of the students uneasy. I have hard time understanding why people often feel so nervous around dogs here.
3.) That's me with Jill and Eric. The little boy is Young. David is behind his mother, out of the shot. I was trying to get Bagels to stay for the photo, we'll try and get the timing better in the future.

I'm gonna stop here because this is already getting long. I'll pick it up again soon enough. Also, on the right I've added a feature that makes a link to any online reading I've found particularly insightful. Give it a shot, I won't put anything up that isn't worth the time.