(I finally have some time and a reliable internet connection! This post was written Tuesday evening.)
Okay, so I was a little confused as to the time difference between Taipei and Oregon. Apparently we are 15 hours ahead here. I'm typing this from my dorm room at Fu Jen University. It's just after midnight (9/14) here and 9 am (9/13) at home. I woke up at 7 am on 9/12 and, with the exception of a few catnaps on the plane, I've been up for over 24 hours. It was a good day though, even if it was long. It was really interesting flying over the date line. It meant that it was never dark outside for the entire trip to Tokyo-Narita. I had a window seat and the sun was beating on it for quite a while. I burned my head on the sun shade more than a couple of times! They fed us a TON on the plane and even though it was airplane food it was pretty interesting. (I'll post pictures of all of the food later.) They also played 4 feature films and plied us with free beer, wine, and sake so all-in-all the time went pretty quickly.
It was really cool to fly in over the farmland of Japan (I never knew how integrated it is with the rest of society) and to explore the airport for about an hour (after a very rudimentary security screening).There are a lot of fancy perfume, jewelry, and purse stores, duty-free shops, and even a McDonalds (that was quite expensive from what I can tell). I only bought a bottle of water with my debit card so I didn't have to worry about the currency exchange. Then came a 3.5 hour flight to Taipei. By then the sun had set so unfortunately we didn't get to see almost anything the entire way there. The only thing that was really worth seeing was the lights of Japan, once you got up high enough. It was really beautiful, seeing the rivers of lighted roads, the dark lines of real rivers, and watching the brake lights from cars drive on the wrong side of the road! To be honest we were all pretty tired by that point, so it was probably a good thing that we couldn't see much.
When we landed in Taipei we had to go though customs and were scanned with a thermo camera that was looking for people with high fevers. We also saw an adorable sniff beagle whose job it was to find animal and plant products to prevent them from being brought into the country. One of our hosts Marie met us at the airport and sent us to the University with a hired van. Fu Jen is a lot farther from the airport than I had previously thought, about 30 minutes. Having never been in another country before, it was fascinating to see so many signs that I didn't understand, and look at all of the foreign cars on the road. I'm looking forward to seeing more of the city in the daylight. We got into our dorm rooms, took a quick jaunt to the campus 7-11 (What better way to see cool new foods?), and are all getting ready for bed.
We haven't been able to get the internet to work in the dorm rooms so this post will go up some time tomorrow (hopefully!). I'm a little frustrated with my inability to contact my family to let them know that I've made it, but I'm sure that it will all get worked out tomorrow. The melatonin tablets I took are starting to kick in, and I've only got a few short hours before we are due up for breakfast with our hosts. We've got a few things on the schedule tomorrow, but I'm just taking each day as it comes, so I don't really know what! I'll keep taking pictures and try to update you all soon.
Later!
Emily
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