Well, I’m heeeeere. My life of travel has begun!

The flights weren’t so bad; I kept getting very lucky. I had a short layover in Chicago that I was really nervous about, but right at the end of my first flight I started talking to the guy next to me and it turned out he knew O’hare like the back of his hand. He took me almost all the way to my gate, so the short layover wasn’t a problem at all.

My long flight, from Chicago to Tokyo (12 hours…), looked like it was gonna be awesome— I had a whole row to myself. No one had booked the two seats next to me, so I had from the aisle to the window for just little me! Buuuut, right at takeoff the flight attendant moved a mom and her baby there, so they didn’t have to share one seat (which is what they had originally booked). The baby was the sweetest little Chinese baby I’d ever seen though, and she only got fussy briefly when she was hungry. Mostly she slept (one chair was a whole bed for her she was so tiny), or sat there and giggled at me. Occasionally she’d pat my knee and coo at me, so for having to share my row with a baby, it could definitely have been worse.

Tokyo wasn’t bad. Sat there a few hours, then got on my flight to Taiwan. Saw a guy on the flight and just sort of had a feeling he was with TUSA, so I stayed aware of where he was at. When we landed we started talking, and sure enough (his name is Dan). And he had opted to take the high speed train, too, so we were scheduled to get picked up at the same time. It was really lucky, because by this time I was EXHAUSTED— so it was really nice to have someone with me. We had to get a bus from the airport to the train station, then had to wait for about an hour for our train. We both passed out once we got on the train.

We were picked up in Zouying station by our roommates. My roommate’s english name is Vicki, and she is very sweet. We’ve got a bit of a language barrier, but she speaks a lot more English than I speak Chinese, and we’re getting it figured out. We had about a half an hour taxi ride to get to the school. We arrived around 1:30am. I was pretty much done, since I’d been traveling for almost 30 hours.

When I showed up at the school there was a small crowd of Taiwanese students waiting up; I’m not sure I got any of their names correctly, but they helped me get my massive suitcase to my room.

I woke up pretty early this morning (at least for me… I’m not a morning person), and it was raining pretty hard. Met a couple of the American students when I went to brush my teeth; I think we’re gonna go try and figure out some breakfast soon. (My roommmate is fast asleep).

I’ll update again soon (and post pictures). Love and miss everyone at home!