Tag Archives: hualien

Postcards are out!

Taiwan, ,

This morning, Steve and I went to the beach and en route, dropped off four postcards bound for foreign shores (one to the UK and three to the USA). If you are the lucky recipient of one of these postcards, you will find out in… oh, darn it, I have no idea. International mail is actually one of those unsolved mysteries. Last February, Steve and I sent off postcards from Grand Bahama, barely a stone’s throw from Miami, to people from work and our parents. One of them took more than a month to get to my mother in Boston. We were really convinced that it was lost en route. So it’s really anyone’s guess as to how long a postcard from Hualien, Taiwan, will take to get to Chicago and other destinations! (At least they were cheap; our postcards cost 11 NTD to mail to the US and 12 for the UK, so that’s about $0.35/40 USD each.)

Postcards of Taiwan and Shanghai are on their way.
Postcards of Taiwan and Shanghai are on their way.

More postcards to come in the next week or two. If you want some postcards, just sign yerself up!

Catch you later!
Connie

Rainy Taiwan, and the hazards of funemployment.

Taiwan, , , , ,

I hardly know how to express our first glimpse of Taiwan. Since touching down on Friday morning, it has been almost rainy nonstop, thanks to the end of the typhoon season. Taipei has been a whirlwind of good things to eat and, well, humidity and rain. Since we plan to stay in Taiwan for several months, Steve and I spent the last 48-72 hours madly searching for an apartment online, cold-calling Taiwanese landlords, and riding the Taipei MRT to the ends of the earth (okay, just to Xinbeitou, but it was like 45 minutes out!). Though we found quite a few interesting places, met some nice people, and considered seven different places, the overall rent seemed rather high for what we knew other people were paying in Taipei, and we spent not a few hours hotly debating the merits of various apartments, the point of staying in Taipei versus other cities in the south, and essentially, subtly questioning each other’s motives for being abroad, period. I mean, what are we really doing here?

This morning, we made a trek to see another very expensive apartment, made an appointment to sign a lease for a place, had a change of heart about the cost, cancelled it, and at noon today, found ourselves sitting in the Taipei Main MRT station with all our luggage, back at square one, wondering “what do we do next?”

Continue reading Rainy Taiwan, and the hazards of funemployment. →