My Favorite

This is one of my all time favorite pictures. It was snapped by my cousin Rachel when she and my two other cousins came to visit me in Taiwan. It's such a beautiful depiction of a typical moment in Taiwan time (that pink person in the background is me taking it all in with glee). There are so many strange and wonderful things going on all at once. I decided to post this after having a conversation (via facebook) with Emily, who I lived in Taiwan with--she is now in Korea teaching. Anyway, we were reminding each other of funny times during our year of traveling, and the one that really mad me laugh was actually something that happened a lot of times during that year. We would be swerving through traffic on our scooter, or waiting at a crosswalk at a big intersection, or trying to make our way through Sunday foot traffic downtown, and one of us would look at the other and say "Geez! There's Asians everywhere!" or "Can you believe how many Asians there are???" or something of that nature. It was funny to us because , of course there were, and also because we were often in a state of shock that we were living and working in such a place. During my time there I found the Taiwanese to be so pleasant and happy, they were very helpful and sincere.

I didn't usually think that we stood out so much, but there were occasions where it was obvious that we did. Like the time Emily and I walked into a random hole-in-the-wall bar and the music literally stopped, everyone stopped talking, and they all turned and looked at us. It was alarming, so we did the only natural thing we could do and went on stage to sing karaoke. The only song they had in English was Jingle Bells and we totally nailed it. People were dancing on the tables and taking pictures with us and asking for our autographs--it was magical. Well not all of that is actually true, but they did buy us drinks and ask for an encore. I was thinking to myself at the time, as I looked over at Emily giving it all she had, that this was one of those moments in life that I will always look back on a smile about. It was so unusual and happy.

So there is my random nostalgic not about Taiwan for this month. I have been back for almost a year, and lately I have been missing it a lot.