Musings

Ne how! Ne chi shenme? Wo chi bagel hua he hong cha. Wo xie huan.

Anyways… Right now I’m sitting at the Starbuck’s at Taipei 101 with my friend Alyssa and her roommate Louise. All the Taiwanese students are so kind and generous, especially to us meguoren exchange students.

I figured it would be good for me to just let everyone know exactly how things are and what I’ve been doing, rather than random pictures and cryptic messages about Taiwan’s political history. It’s difficult, though. I’ve been having trouble forming a narrative about my trip. Plus, there are so many details, and they all seem important. But I’ll try, though it may be out of order.

My room is very small… it’s about 12X15, and I share it with three other girls, all Taiwanese. All the rooms are set up the same way, with loft beds above our desks and little closet-y things. My mom sent with me Dan’s old extra-long dorm sheets and a mattress pad, but they’re not very useful, as mattress pads need mattresses. The beds here are made of metal and something resembling laminate flooring, and we have these straw mats on top of them. It was hard to get used to at first, but now I’m sleeping pretty comfortably.

I wasn’t going to put up the mosquito netting they gave me at first, but I quickly changed my mind. I never saw any mosquitoes, yet somehow I woke up covered in bites. So I put it up, and it worked okay, but now it’s falling apart (stupid Ikea) and I can’t find another. Also, since I’ve been wearing shorts and skirts lately, my legs are covered with awful, itchy bites. I’m all the time smearing hydrocortisone on them. If anyone has any advice, let me know. ;)

I have had some experience with the hospital system here (not firsthand, luckily). One of the other exchange students, Keith, was having really awful diarrhea, cramping and vomiting a few weeks ago, so at about 3am we took him to the ER of a nearby hospital. Unfortunately, we learned after the fact that it was not a very reputable one. They hooked him up to an IV for dehydration, and put him in the observation room for the night. It wasn’t a fun place to be. It was really grimy, and there were some really sick people there. At one point, a nurse came over to put some medicine into Keith’s IV. This nurse was probably not as experienced as one might prefer. She hooked up the medicine to the IV, but never attached it to the needle in his arm, instead leaving it dripping onto his bed. We watched this for a few moments, before I ran over to the nurses’ station to ask if she was going to hook it back up, and she ran over and hooked it up. Then, a bit later, she changed the needle, which left Keith’s blood splattered all over the floor. It’s probably still there. I wouldn’t be surprised; this place was really dirty. FYI, if you ever get sick in Taipei, don’t go to WanFang Yeuen.

After a while, a doctor who spoke English came over and told Keith he had inflamed intestines due to an infection, and they wanted to admit him for three to five days. That’s when I took that picture of Keith, it was a moment where we laughed so we wouldn’t cry. He ended up only staying one day after being admitted, and he’s feeling much better now after many doses of various antibiotics.

But this experience highlighted something I’ve felt a lot lately; that I’ve been living in opposite world, where everything I think is a big deal doesn’t matter, and what I think is trivial is of life-or-death importance. For example, personally (and this is just me speaking crazy talk), I think that the moment a person gets admitted into the hospital, they should get a gown and an ID bracelet. And that spattered blood should be cleaned up ASAP. Apparently, I’m the only one here who thinks this way, though.

But single-gendered dormitories, that’s something that should be a priority. There’s a girls dorm, and a boy’s dorm, and never the twain shall meet. It is a sacrilege to even stand in the doorway of a dorm of the opposite sex, and if it’s a true emergency and you simply must enter, you have to get a special red vest to be worn at all times in the building. When Keith was in the hospital, Alyssa and I asked the dorm supervisors if we could go into his room to get some clean clothes and toiletries for him. The woman gave us red vests. As we opened the door to go into the dorms, some boys sitting outside who didn’t know we had permission actually jumped out of their seats and ran after us, telling us not to go in, or we’d get in trouble. Then, the supervisor actually followed us in with A SECURITY GUARD!!! Who kept asking us questions about Keith’s illness and what hospital he was in, like he didn’t believe us. It was either they didn’t trust us, or they thought one of the tiny timid Taiwanese boys was going to attack us. It’s so important that we need a minimum of four cameras pointed at us at all times when in the dorm hallways. Yeah. That’s super important.

But poo on the floor of the girls bathroom can be left there for at least a week. No biggie.

The whole separate-dorm thing wouldn’t be so bad if there was a lounge area where everyone could hang out together. But there is none. If boys and girls want to hang out as a group together, we either have to sit outside or go out. There is a loophole (there’s always a loophole), though; boys are allowed to fix computers in the girl’s dorms. Computers tend to break a lot around here. ;)

By the way, did I mention we have a “curfew”? I’d tell you more about it if it actually meant anything, besides the campus supervisor wandering around meekly telling random people to please be in by 12:30.

All of us exchange students have been unble to sleep lately. Last night I was up at 2, wandering the halls, and as I turn the corner on the 3rd floor, I see Alyssa come out of her room, and she says "I can't sleep!" And I said "I can't either!" We tried to go sit on the patio area in front of the dorms, but the security guard flashed his flashlight at us.

Here's Alyssa helping me clean:















And here's our neighborhood, JingMei: