5:45 AM
Just Sleep, Room 903
That didn’t work. I couldn’t finish journaling last night. I fell asleep hard. I woke up an hour or two later screaming bloody murder with Charlie horses in both of my legs. These were the worst Charlie horses I can ever remember having. I think I probably scared the girl in my room. I’m going to be sore for days.
Okay so back to what I was going to write yesterday…
The FSE staff met us at the airport and we took the bus into Taipei. We had a couple of hours to freshen up, eat, and check our email before walking over to the Fulbright office.
We spent the day taking care of paper work, financial matters, introductions, and having lots of food. The lunch box I ate had fish, shrimp, chicken, eel, and steamed egg. I tried them all.
Our day had a lot of built in buffer time where we could just hang out and talk to each other. One of these breaks was over an hour and eight of us followed to guys who’d been here studying for a couple months out into the city. We walked through the Ximen shopping area where I remember going last year with Kelly and Vanilla. It felt even busier during the day than it had at night.
Deciding we had the time for it if we hurried, we all took the MRT to Chiang Kai Shek memorial hall. It was worth the trip. There buildings around it on the grounds were gorgeous and the Chiang Kai Shek statue is set into the building kind of like the Lincoln Memorial, but with a live guard on each seat. I think the weirdest thing was watching a guy get up from the desk off to the side to straighten out one of the guard’s uniforms—I guess it was less than perfect, but you could have fooled me.
After that we finished the FAQ back at the office and went for dinner, working hard to stay away until a decent bedtime. Dr. Chen was really funny and everyone we met from the FSE office seems really nice. For now, I’ve got a couple of hours until check out and I’ve got to see if I can make my legs behave.
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