Getting Here

So here I am! In TAIWAN, of all places.  And already the adventures are just rolling in, one after another...

It started even before I boarded the huge plane that brought us here, specifically when I got to the terminal and couldn't find Kylie Moe or Kendra Kimber or any of the other people who were supposed to be going with us.  Well, not a big deal at first, but after they had been paged three or four times and I still hadn't seen them, I began to get rather nervous. Luckily for all of us, it was a relatively short-lived feeling, and they arrived soon afterward... making me ever so happy! 

Did I mention our plane was huge? Have you ever been in a plane that has two stories? Yeah... it was that enormous. And since a 12 to 13 hour flight is torturous at best (even while "sleeping", which is what I did most of the time, if we're being completely honest), the only other thing I have to say about that flight is that the food was actually edible.  I had heard horror stories about having to eat second-rate sushi on flights such as these, and since I have found myself barely able to choke down sushi of any kind even while my stomach was completely happy with me I couldn't imagine the results of that being very pretty.  But, if you can tell from the picture below, we were treated to things much better (in my opinion) than poor sushi -

I have to say that roll was absolutely delicious and my favorite part of the entire flight.  In all seriousness, I'm pretty sure it kept me from getting sick!

So after the never-ending flight, we had to find our way through the airport, where there were these interesting statues to look at: 

 We also had to get our passports stamped, get some money changed, and find our luggage (averting a near missing-luggage crisis in which four girls each had one bag missing... but no worries, disaster was averted and they were found!) And all this was juat a pre-cursor to the real challenge... the bus ride!

That one little aspect has had me worried for weeks.  How in the world were a bunch of American girls supposed to catch a bus and get to a place in a country they have never been in before without speaking any of the language?? Yeah, I didn't know either. 

First we weren't sure which bus company it was.  After we figured that out we didn't know where to catch the right bus.  Then apparently the lady selling our tickets put the wrong time on them, but luckily she figured that out and changed them for us.  The real blessing in this situation was that another lady (who was working for a different bus company) came and showed us where to go and explained in broken English what we were to do.  She was probably the only reason we made it to the transfer station, where we had to wait about an hour out in the open with all our bags.

 

When the bus finally came, the driver was super friendly and so helpful... except he didn't know a word of English.  But he wasn't going to leave us just anywhere, the poor guy was working terribly hard to figure out where we needed to be.  Somebody finally suggested showing him a page in the Berhan School Handbook that had the characters telling where our stop was.  So I ran up to do that and afterwards everything was fine. 

Our bus! (All the buses here are very brightly colored... I kinda like it) 

 

Yes, that is what you think it is... a tiny little bathroom stall in the bottom of the bus... this wasn't our bus, but one of about thirty that came and went as we stood there at the transfer station.

 
 

And we made it!

Thanks to some VERY patient people, a little bit of sign language/charades, a handy-dandy little handbook, and I'd say quite a bit of luck and a few prayers as well.  You can imagine my relief when someone looked like they expected to see us!

Now this little beauty I saw in the Taipei airport, and I could not resist - I just HAD to take a picture.  What you see there is an emergency button.  Where was it? In the bathroom stall. Now do you understand? I'm sure it has some useful purpose - what I cannot fathom - but to me it was just hilarious! If only it worked to fix bus problems...