I'm at the gate waiting to board my flight to Taiwan. I'm all by myself and headed across the world to a country where I don't know anyone. I feel a little sad to be leaving all my friends and family behind, but mostly I feel relieved to have finally said goodbye to everyone and be able to start my new adventure. The weight of saying goodbye was heavy, and I feel much more free now.
Being alone in a big group of people is nothing new, and doesn't feel strange. What does feel odd is that I don't have a cell phone anymore. It worked out perfectly that my carrier shut off my service today since I didn't pay my bill for the month. I honestly don't need my phone today...but I feel isolated without it. I miss being able to send out random text messages to friends about whatever I'm doing.
Even though I don't know anyone in Taiwan, I have a bunch of phone numbers that I can call when I get there. My friend Brett knows a couple girls in Taiwan and gave me one of their phone numbers. Apparently, this chick is super excited to meet me and even offered to meet me at the airport...and said that I could move in with her if I wanted to. Whoa. Maybe that's a cultural thing? She wants to be welcoming so she offers that, even though she doesn't know me. Maybe its the polite thing to do, and I'm not supposed to take it seriously.
A young Asian guy just walked by. He is wearing super tight, white jeans and actually carrying a purse. Wow. This is going to be interesting...and very fun to people watch.
In addition to Brett's friend, my aunt knows a woman named Shu Yuan who is Taiwanese and lives here in LA. I met with her last night and she was sooo excited that I was traveling to her country. She was talking really fast and moving her hands a lot. She gave me a long list of her friends who speak some English so that I could call them when I get there. Apparently, she already started calling them this morning to let them know that I was coming and ask if it was ok for me to call them.
I think this flight is going to be pretty full. They just announced that if anyone is holding a boarding pass that was issued by a domestic airline, they are subject to be offloaded. That sounds inconvenient, I'm glad that my ticket is for China Airlines, now I don't have to worry.
I see a whole group of people wearing powder blue polo shirts and passing around hand sanitizer. One of them walked by and I thought her shirt said something about a pony club. They all look about my parents age, or older. One of them is taking a video of the plane, sitting parked outside.
They make me think about the last time I went to Asia. I was in a big group like that, only we didn't have matching shirts and we were all in college. We took a flight from here to Tokyo, and it was 12 hours. I thought that was the longest flight ever. The one I'm about to board will be 14 hours. Whew. Even though its lonely to be flying somewhere alone, I think I prefer it to traveling with that huge group. It was a little more stressful to have a professor herding us around. I feel quite capable of finding my way around by myself.
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