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Hello friends!
It is my 4th morning in Taiwan and I have been wide awake since 5:30 am. I guess I'm still getting over jet lag, because that is definitely not normal for me! Then I remember that 5:30 am here is 3:30 pm the day before back in Denver, so it makes sense that I might not feel like sleeping.

Anyway, the flight over was long, but I read an entire book, watched Marley and Me and slept a bit, so I survived. I'm staying at a hotel with about 20 other new teachers. We have been in training for 2 days so far and it is pretty fun. I'm looking forward to teaching, but they are really cramming a lot of information into these days, so I really hope I can remember it and use it by the time I get to my school.
Yesterday I got my assignment for the branch of the school where I'll be teaching...and it was not what I wanted. I will be in Chiayi, which is a town I had never heard of until yesterday. I was hoping to be somewhere near the coast, but I'm not. However, they said this city is near an awesome mountain range with lots of cool hikes and stuff like that. So, I was thinking it would probably be ok. Then the head teacher from my school called me on the phone last night to talk about what kind of apartment I might want to live in, so she could help me find one. I asked if any apartment complexes there have pools, because it would be so nice in this hot weather. She paused, then she said something like this, "Oh...we don't have anything like that in this city...its a very small city...didn't you know anything about this place before you decided to come here?" Hmmm. That was not what I wanted to hear, and I immediately got these images of living in Taiwan's equivalent of Winnett, only scalding hot and humid, with no swimming pool in the entire town, no friends, no social life...and pretty much started crying but tried not to let her hear and the rest of the phone call went down hill from there. Finally, she said she would call me back tomorrow night to talk again when she hoped I wouldn't be so tired.

So, that was rough, and embarrassing. I really did not expect to wind up in a small town and was totally caught off guard. Then I researched a little more and found out that the population of Chiayi is 270,000. Apparently, Taiwan's idea of a small city is different than mine. Now that I've had a night to sleep and recover from the surprise, I think it will be fine. I had a great time in Chile, and Punta Arenas only had 100,000 people and it was super isolated. In Chiayi, I can take the high speed train and get to Taipei in 1.5 hours for about $30.

I will really find out more next Thursday when training is over and I actually travel to the city and get a chance to check it out for myself. As far as the school goes, I guess there are 3 or 4 guys working there and I am the first female teacher they've had in a long time. Working with guys should be cool...and I suppose the kids will get excited about meeting me if they've just been around foreign guys.

Well, better get going to breakfast. They serve chicken nuggets and onion rings every morning...ha! Living the life.
Delight