What a crazy first day! After being woken up from some incredibly overly cheery flight attendants at about 4 am, we ate breakfast (french toast with a tomato garnish...what???) and landed in Taipei around 5:30. Of course, since it was around 1:30 pm at home, we all felt great! An adorable little bus came and picked us up at the airport. Here is a picture of the inside...it definitely made me feel like we were in Asia!
We headed straight for the Chinese Youth Center, the hostel that we're staying at. Now, I stayed at a hostel when I was in Spain when we went to Granada for the weekend, and that place was pretty sketchy (we kept our stuff in lockers, stayed in a room with 16 strangers, and had to listen to an Italian couple...well...you know...all evening), but this hostel isn't messing around. Our room is great, and we have a huge shower (with lots of hot water) and internet in our room...and a great view! This is what we see out our window: 
After we made it to the hostel, we left our bags in the lobby -- which seemed unsafe to me, but apparently that's a normal thing to do here (???) -- and headed to check out the school. The school here is ridiculously nice!!! I'll talk more about it after school starts though!
By this point in the day, we were pretty exhausted from walking around and sleeping on a teeny tiny plane seat for 13 hours, so we went to get some food! We ate at a place affectionately known as "Shaved Noodles" by our hosts (we don't know the real name of the restaurant) because the place makes their own homemade noodles every day. The food was amazing, and the pop cans we drank out of were entertaining, to say the least...
Just a normal sight around here...apparently so many people ride bikes that they have to stack them on top of each other!
To sum things up, here are some lessons learned so far...- Always check your TravelCard PIN number BEFORE you leave the US...
- On a similar note, always tell your bank if you're going to Taiwan for a month BEFORE you leave the US! They get confused.
- Cab drivers in Taipei are nice until your directions are incomprehensible.
- Even if you don't think you will be, you will still be jet lagged. Don't fight it.
- Even if they cost a fortune, phone calls home make everything better!
I miss everyone back home! I'll try to update again as soon as I can! :)
