Our first challenge was communicating to the taxi driver where we'd like to go. On many occasions, I call our friend William (who speaks Chinese) and then hand the phone to the cab driver. However, yesterday we attempted to take matters into our own hands. I took a picture of IKEA's Chinese address off of my computer screen and upon getting into the cab, had the driver examine the photo on my digital camera. This ingenius plan proved a success! For fun, here is the photo that we used.
This was also our first experience taking a cab with a female driver. Not once did we feel like we would lose our lunches... or our lives! It was fantastic!Once we arrived at IKEA, we took a good look around the city street and we were delighted to see an Outback Steakhouse! It was then decided that we would shop at IKEA and then eat the meal of our dreams in celebration of our Month-A-Versary! IKEA was exactly the same as at home, it was comforting in an odd sort of way. Though, take away all of the multiculturalism that you would see in an Ontario IKEA and replace it with strictly Asians... that's Taiwan for you! (My students can't believe that Toronto can possibly be that multicultural... it is).
Once we found sofas the next mission was to try and have them delivered to our apartment. We had quite a time trying to communicate this to the employee (who spoke very little English) until a woman standing nearby began to help translate for us! (Thank God for the friendly-bilingual Taiwanese!) and as a result? our sofas will arrive on Tuesday morning!! I cannot wait!After serving as our translator, the friendly-bilingual Taiwanese woman began asking us about ourselves. She then asked if we would each be interested in tutoring her children; we gave her our email addresses. So THAT'S how you get private tutoring jobs! Just be as useless as possible at IKEA! haha. I guess I should mention here that private tutoring jobs are what everyone wants. They pay more than double what teaching at a school pays (equivalent to $40-50CDN/hour).
Post IKEA, we headed to the Outback Steakhouse, only to have the most fabulous meal (after our favourite Indian restaurant that is) thus far in Taiwan! Yes... I acknowledge that it was fabulous because it was familiar, but it takes time to fully experience a culture in its entirety and my stomach is telling me to wait a bit on the food part of this culture. I could describe dinner in 4-5 paragraphs but I will restrict myself to one picture and a mere list of our dinner.
Drinks: Pina Colada and Strawberry Daquiris!Appetizer: A delicious deep-fried onion platter (pictured left)
Meal: A savoury hamburger with french fries and coleslaw (Note: we have both been craving a delicious hamburger ever since we arrived on this island)
The result of this scrumptious month-a-versary meal? Two, very-full Canadian girls wandering the streets of down town Taiwan looking for nothing other than... dessert! We decided to head home and purchase dessert at the bakery that we live beside (literally... right beside). Here I'd like to boast to my old boss at Western Foot Patrol, Samantha. We can literally step outside of our apartment door, walk 10 steps and purchase the most delicious slices of CAKE that you can imagine! (Samantha continually craves CAKE). So this is what we did.
Later in the evening we joined some of our new friends (people that we met at a roof-top party in the mountains last weekend) at KTV. For those of you who don't know, KTV is Asian karaoke and it is the most popular thing to do in Taiwan. We went to a place called PartyWorld that is apparently the biggest and best karaoke joint in Taipei. Now, when I say joint I don't mean a dingy little bar in an alley. No, this place looked and felt like a high-class hotel. The lobby was full of beautiful (and huge) chrystal chandeliers and each floor sported rooms and rooms of private karaoke that are reserved in advance. Room service? Yes please! All you need to do is pick up the room phone and order from a large menu of alcohol and food! I cannot tell you how much fun this was! I lost my voice (yet again) after singing my little heart out all night to tunes like "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and every Avril Lavine song you can (and can't) name. While most of the songs were in Chinese, every time an English song came on, the microphones were immediately passed to us!
All in all, our 1-month-a-versary was a day to remember! Katelynn and I decided that for at least the first few months we will treat ourselves to a lovely dinner on the 4th of every month in order to recognize the realization of our dream of coming to Taiwan! We are here and we're doing so well!
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