Transitioning

So far my catapulting myself onto another continent and changing lifestyles, countries, and culture in less than 24 hours, hasn't been too difficult. It certainly helps to be with family in a familiar place.

Right now it's almost midnight on my new side of the world, and I am eating a sandwich and wondering if I will be tired soon. I made the mistake of going to bed around 5:45 pm, fully intending to wake up at 6:30 and get ready to go for vespers at 7:00. Well I did wake up at 6:30, but I couldn't get my eyes to open fully and my brain to fully turn on and comprehend anything, so I gave up and went back to sleep after eating a couple chocolate brownies.

When I finally started getting restless enough to wake up, I was sure I had slept most of the night. Wrong. It was only 11 pm. I checked my clock again - perhaps it was still on Taiwanese time and it was really 7 am or something, but nope, it was 11 pm. 'Oh goody' I thought to myself. 'Now what do I do?'

So I got up and made a sandwich and checked facebook, of course, because what else do people do at midnight when they can't sleep?

I think next on my list is read a book or write about how tiring it is to keep changing continents. Wait, I'm doing that now.

Oh yes, I can tell you about my first day back. I will say it's lovely to be with family. Home is where you find parts of yourself staring back at you from different faces. That's family. You have uncanny similarities and you belong. It's nice to have that feeling of belonging when you've been a nomad for a while.

Well yesterday we made our way into town, about a half hour drive, and I got to try a new restaurant that was highly recommended to me. It was interesting. We stepped in the door and the two people at the counter looked at us and I immediately thought of saying "liang wei" or "two people." I bit my tongue before the Chinese words escaped my lips. After we were seated we were given a menu the size of a photo book. I began to feel overwhelmed. I'm not used to this many choices on a menu. So I began my search of what to eat, first by looking at food prices. When I started to convert the prices into NT dollars to figure out how much they really were, that's when I realised how much of an influence living in Taipei has had on me. It used to be I always converted NT into USD but now it seems I'm now doing the opposite.

I'm not sure if it was the lovely sunny weather, the warm temperatures, or the nice long drive in the car, or even the lovely fried food we ate for lunch, but by the time we reached home mid-afternoon, I was barely awake. I sat on the sofa watching a British comedy for just over an hour before I finally gave up fighting the battle with my drooping eyelids and finally headed off to my bed where I promptly fell asleep and was dead to the world for the next hour, until I woke up, had my chocolate snack, and then went back to sleep again.

I think I shall end my update here. I might actually be starting to get sleepy again. That would be nice. I wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of trying to fill hours of extra time in the middle of the night. I like to brag that I never really get jetlag, and I fully intend to continue with that theme, so off I go to get (another) good night's sleep :)

Until next time :)