24 hours of pure exhilaration and I'm finally here

May 16th, 5:52 AM, Toronto




Allright, I've said my goodbye's and made it into the loading gates at Pearson airport. My flight leaves at 7 AM for a 12:30 arrival in San Francisco. I've been to California but only in the L.A/palm springs area. Actually my California trip was the last time I went on a place...6 years ago.

In 24 hours from now I'll be landing in Taipei, Taiwan. It's hard to beleive that in only 24 hours a person can get to the complete opposite side of the world. What I'm doing today would have taken years and years for someone to do 1000 years ago. All we have to do is fork over a little cash and wait around in airports. However, just because it's easier doesn't means it's less far away. This really is an adventure and I'm looking forward to every minute of it. And right now I'm becoming very excited about flying. Isn't that every kids dream??

It feels great to finally be at the airport ready to go. I've been planning this trip, packing, and saying goodbye to people for so long that I never thought the day would actually come when Iwould be waiting in the airport typing away on my laptop. Time really moves sometimes, I'm going to have to watch out for that when I get to Asia. Asia!!! I can't beleive it.

Ok, now it's time to listen to my brand new iPod (I finally got one yay!). Will report back in San Fran.

Cheer.s


May 18th, Taipei




So didn't get a chance to catch up in SanFran...to be honest I spent all my time watching Flight of the Conchords! Which was great of course.

Here I am in Taipei in the golden china hotel with my new roommate Nate. He's from Ohio and is a very relaxed, down to earth guy. We've just come back from a short jaunt down the street. Taipei is actually quite a beautiful city from what I can tell so far. THere are really nice looking palm trees lining the streets and hundreds and hundreds of scooters.

The flight went on without a hitch (all 24 hours of it). However when I got to the airport there was no one waiting to pick me up so I decided to take a cab. A cab driver asked me to follow him and he led me down a flight of stairs and even further down an elevator to the back of a very dark, sketchy parking lot. He asked me to wait and disappeared around the corner. After about 7 or 8 minutes I decided this was crazy and started to head back upstairs when a man came out and asked me to follow him upstairs. Apparently he was some kind of aiport security and told me in broken english that he and his crew are trying to bust an illegal taxi service trying to take advantage of tourists. I pointed out the illegal cabbie who I had talked to earlier and he was reprimanded appropriately. So I helped solve a crime within my first hour in Taiwan!

Last night I walked around a little around the hotel and actually grabbed a snack from a street vendor down a side ally (sketchy I know haha).

I'm off to find a park. Will report back soon.

5 days out.

Wow, so 5 days. It feels like I've been thinking about and planning this trip for so long it would never actually come. HOWEVER, time does move fast and here we are, a mere five days from departure. I'm busy with all the pre-trip stuff like packing and the even more laborious task of organizing all the stuff I've accumulated in 4 years at university. I guess you could say I'm a bit of a pack rat, but hey, aren't most of us? We seem to always think that we'll need this or that in the future but then forget about it and it ends up sitting in some bin somewhere for the rest of your life...but at least we now it still exists JUST IN CASE!!

I've been systematically saying goodbye to my friends. It feels weird saying goodbye to someone that you usually spend so much time with. Like my roommate Tim, we've lived together for 4 years and now we won't see eachother for at least a year, crazy. It's all part of growing up I suppose.

On another note, it seems as if Taiwan is the cool place to go for Owen Sounders. I know at least 6 people from my little town who are there or are going there in the next little while. I'm not going there because of any of them, but it will be neat to know a few people who are there. Also it turns out my friend Jordan is going a couple weeks after I leave. He's from Owen Sound and I lived with him for 5 weeks in Quebec last summer for a french learning course...who knew a year later we would both be heading to Taiwan...me for teaching and him for a wedding, who knew.

Speaking of teaching, I'm actually really looking forward to it. I've never really done anything like that before so it should definitely be a great learning experience...for me and the little unsuspecting Taiwanese kids.

Ooohhh so close to riding a scooter!!!! Once I'm over I'll be posting bloggs and pics and all that for everyone interested.

Regards.

2 months out

So it's just been wild you see. Waiting out these last couple of months. Waiting as time goes by, slipping through your fingers like sand. When we were younger our hands were smaller, we could only stream so much sand in through the filter at one time. Now our hands are bigger, and the sand is denser, more refined. There are messages written in the sand, if only we could stand still long enough to read them.  

There's a poem written by someone called Diane Ackerman and it almost perfectly sums up the reasons I have for going to Taiwan. It goes like this:

The great affair, the love affair with life, 

is to live as variously as possible, 

to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, 

climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day.

Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, 

and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, 

life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length.

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, 

but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

~ Diane Ackerman ~

Live as variously as possible.  We only have so long, so let's get lost.  One needs to take a few risks, shake up the emotional terrain a little bit.  Only through the changes in our environment do we come closer to understanding who we are.  We think of ourselves as a consciousness in relation to the world.  Disrupt the environment, and the brain is forced to go into high gear in order to assist the immersion process.  High energy thinking and acting.  Always on your toes.  I've heard of this kind of remedy before; it has been called a cyclebust, and has been known to elicit peaks in human performance and creativity.  I'm going to focus these high energy impulses on studying and learning, specifically with regards to culture, music, and physical well being.  Oh, and it would also be nice to take a few pictures along the way.  

Stay tuned. 

The Beginning

Well, here goes...

This is the first post in a series of hopefully extremely interesting, entertaining and informative posts recounting the details of my Asian adventures in Taiwan. I'm going to be working as an English teacher with a company called Hess (yes, like the party district in Hammytown) and I'm very excited about the possibility of living and working in Asia.

I've spent four amazing years at Uni and have fallen in love with this town and the amazing people I've met here....however, I'm just about to turn 22 and I know there's way more to the world than my limited travel experience has enabled me to see. When I was a kid my dream was to become an explorer (I thought that was actually a profession one could aspire to becoming) and some of my best memories have come out of traveling. I have always maintained that the second I finished University I would travel. Of course what I didn't take into consideration at the time were those pesky (but unfortunately necessary) nuisances called student loans. I asked myself how I could justify traveling when I had so much debt to repay and wondered if there was a way to combine traveling with the need of making some serious cold hard cash...

The answer lies here: http://www.teach-abroad.net/teach-english-in-asia/

The first time I seriously thought about teaching in Asia was when my cousin and her boyfriend were visiting and telling me all about their travels throughout Southeast Asia and Thailand. At the time they were living in Shanghai and told me about the endless opportunities for native English speakers to teach overseas. For a long time I considered Thailand due to its laid back lifestyle, jungles and whitesand beaches...however although you make enough money to live comfortably, you would not really be able to save any and hence not pay back student loans. I then discovered a program called JET (the Japan Exchange and Teaching) program where one could make almost $3000/month. I did my research, took some Japanese history/culture classes in school, and read a bunch of books on Japan in preparation for my voyage. I fell in love with the country from a distance. I even wrote an essay for my history of technology class on the introduction of Western communications technology in Japan which turned out to be my first (and only) A+ essay in University to date.

I went to a Work Abroad fair at McMaster one day in the fall to talk to the JET program representative. I ended up wandering around picking up brochures and learning about different teaching programs in Asia, and even talked to reps from NOVA (sad story; Japanese school went out of business stranding hundreds of English teachers without jobs or places to live). Later that week I pulled out the JET application booklet to start filling it out when a brightly coloured brochure slipped out from between the pages and fluttered to the floor. It was a brochure from an organization called Hess and said "Teach English in Taiwan". I picked it up, read it through it, was captivated, and instantly made my decision. I Thought about when I had talked to the Hess representative that day and all of the things she had said about her amazing 4 years in Taiwan and about all the wonderful things she had said about the country formerly known as Formosa meaning 'Beautiful Island". There was just something about that moment that made me realize exactly what I had to do and where I had to go. I haven't looked back.

Due to the timing of the hiring season I had to wait a few months to apply and finally did so on December 31st. I left for Trois-Pistoles Quebec (another story entirely) and had my phone interview with the amazing Christina in that crazy small town on the St. Lawrence 12 hours away from my home in the middle of winter. Apparently it went well because within a week I had an acceptance letter from the Hess main office in Taiwan waiting in my inbox. All that is left to do is fill out and complete a mountain of forms/VISA applications, take a quick medical and come May 18th I will be unpacking my bags in a hotel room in Taipei, ready for the 2 weeks of mandatory teacher training.

This really does seem like the perfect thing for me to do next year and I believe Hess to be an outstanding, very well organized, and incredibly helpful company who will provide all the support necessary to make sure all of their new teachers have an overwhelmingly positive experience in their first year abroad. My only regrets are that I will be very far away (literally on the other side of the world) from my friends and family but I know that they will understand and be supportive knowing that this is an experience that I truly believe in and will put everything into.

It's 2008, I'm turning 22 in 2 days; it's time for a big adventure.

More to come...

cheers!