First Month in Taipei

Ni hao!

My fellow Americans,

Me and Maggie are stuck inside this weekend as yet another category 5 typhoon is destroying the city. We feel OK, we bought some delicious "Taiwan Beer" and pizza flavored pringles to get us through this time of national hardship. There are four story high waves hitting the coast as we speak. Four Stories High!!!!!

We know you all have been biting nails in anticipation of our first blog and we feel we have built enough suspense. We had temporarily suspended our blogging to deal with the finacial crisis at home (even going so far as to postpone a blogging debate we were invited to) but now that McCain feels better we do to. What would America do without an impulsive jerk leading the country? So without further adieu, here it is----BLOG #1........

We were picked up at the airport by a fellow with our names on a giant cardboard sign to take us to our hotel for the next week, "The Golden China". It was nice, breakfast every morning and very close to our training class. After about nine days of grueling, mind numbing training we were set free to our apartment. We love it, it is kind of a throwback to an era that strived for touchable velvet wallpaper.

We quickly found our bearings but setup proved harder than we thought. For some reason many people insist on speaking Chinese even when we tell them we don't understand them. Phone calls to the internet compnay proved fruitless until Maggie went to the company and talked to a lovely man who was very supportive of Barack Obama (as most out here are, being peace-loving, logical people) and he assisted us in setting up our internet.

The first week we went out to get cell phones at electronics alley. Hundreds of stores all crammed together and you go and barter with them for the best deal. Later we went to the Taiwan Beer Factory, where we were such a novelty we ended up on stage with the Taiwanese cover band, dancing to bad 80s hits and getting bought drinks by the locals who wanted to practice English. We soon found ourselves at my all time favorite restaurant, the Indian Beer House, where everything is covered in dinosaur bones. You pee into a statue of an aborigional man and then wash your hands in a T-Rex's mouth. We may get a skull of our own for proper hand washing.

We live right outside of Taipei proper in a city called Banciao. It is pretty congested but we are developing some Banciao pride and it is cheaper than living in the city. There is a lot of great cheap street food that we eat daily, although we often aren't sure what it is. The other day we accidently enjoyed a nice congealed duck blood sticky rice. Delicious! We went out with some friends of Paul Amato and Sarah Pedersen for oyster pancakes and pig's blood soup with intestine. Later that night a nice man named Albert, who was helping us with directions, took us out for Stinky Tofu. Kind of smells and tastes of feet. Also pretty good. He wants to open a hot dog bar in Taipei and has the crazy notion that hot dogs would be popular at baseball games. We told him that would never work.

Well, we miss you all and are having a good time out here. We would love any and all visitors to come out and see us.

Until next time! Goodbye...............