My Sincerest Apologies

I apologize for my remissness in failing to blog since my arrival in Taiwan a week ago. I know that some of you must be anxious for my safety. My failure has been due partly to the sheer number of things I have had to take care of, and partly due to being unable to get internet access for long periods together. Additionally, the times I have had internet access and tried to access Blogger, I kept getting a screen up in Chinese characters. Fortunately, I have finally figured out how to get that converted into English, and I am back in business.

I suppose I ought to begin by describing my flight. My good friend Ken Klein, with whom I stayed prior to departure and who is no doubt reading this now, was kind enough to drive me to airport. When we arrived, we had to rearrange my suitcases--three checked pieces of luggage in all--to make them cost slightly less. Even so, I ended up paying $200 in fees for checking luggage to Taiwan. I suppose there really was no alternative; the stuff had to get here, and to send it any other way would probably have been even more expensive. And les convenient, too, as I did not yet have an address to send it to.

When I reached San Francisco, I had some hassles for two reasons. The first is that I had misplaced the outbound ticket my school had sent me for visa purposes. So I had to go to the Eva Air counter to get it replaced. Also, China Air, which was taking me on to Taiwan, claimed I did not have a proper receipt from Delta for the checked luggage, so I had to go back to Delta and get one.

Fourteen hours later, I arrived, quite bedraggled, in Taiwan. I was nervous about going through immigration, as I thought they would ask a lot of questions about how much money I had with me (very little, in fact...I elected to keep most of it in my bank in America and use my debit card until I had a paycheck). I was also afraid they would search my luggage and find a lot of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) books, which would give me away as a teacher and not a tourist. But fortuantely, immigration turned out to be before the baggage claim, and the simple possession of an outbound ticket on Eva Air was sufficient to get me into the Republic of China for thrity days.

I do have a photograph from the airport of a "Welcome to Taiwan" sign, which I will post on the blog, or possibly someplace like flickr.com, when I can finally use my OWN computer with the internet. I expect that will not be for a couple of weeks, after my school officially opens.

Anyway, to continue. As the date of my arrival was a national holdiay in Taiwan, I had been told not to expect to be picked up by anyone with my school but rather by a town car or something similar, which would take me immediately to a hotel. I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, to be met by a woman named Ruby, who turned out to be the Director of Studies at my branch of Shane. Ruby took me to her home--it was then about 5:30 in the morning, Taiwan time--and allowed me to sleep in what she told me was her son John's room. I found out later that she and her family had moved into this apartment a mere five days before my arrival!

Once I had used John's computer to alert my family and a few friends of my safe arrival in Taiwan, I made a fruitless effort at sleep, but after a couple of hours got up and went out into the family room. Seeing me, Ruby told me that the head of the school, Eve, wished to take me out to lunch. Though I was heavily jet lagged at this point, I felt unable to decline the invitation, and was quickly taken to a lovely buffet that serves what passes for American food in Taiwan (more on the food of Taiwan in later posts, I promise). In the course of this meeting, I found out that Eve and Ruby are sisters-in-law and that this franchise of the Shane English School is a sort of family enterprise. This does not cause me much alarm, though it might cause me a greater than normal sense of guilt if I were to fail as a teacher of EFL.