Week 1: Quarantine to Kinmen

Eight-ish days ago, on August 11th, 2022, I woke up at 4:30am and began the long slog to Taiwan. It was bittersweet to say goodbye to my family, who were all varying degrees of groggy, my dog Max included, but I also couldn't wait to touch down in Taiwan and meet the other English Teaching Assistants (ETAs).

Somehow, I made it through the flight from PHL to SFO, then the flight from SFO to TPE (despite the overwhelming nausea, sleep deprivation, and sensory overload that come with spending twenty-four hours or so traveling). My favorite part of the journey was definitely the layover at SFO that I spent on the outdoor balcony.

I made friends with some of the fellow passengers from my flight, including a local Taiwanese woman, while we waited in line after line at the airport. Two and a half hours passed shuffling from point A to point B, but I eventually climbed into a taxi and headed to my quarantine hotel in Kaohsiung.

The first three days passed without incident (minus an unfortunate lack of wifi and some lingering nausea). I liked the quarantine meals overall, but I definitely enjoyed the bubble tea one of my Taiwanese friends from Temple sent me the most! Besides watching a bunch of TV on my laptop, I spent some of quarantine drawing in a new sketchbook and calling friends and family. Since my room was on the thirteenth floor, I also enjoyed watching the sunsets over the nearby mountains from my window.

During these first three days, I was also given my school assignment for the year: Jhou Huan Elementary on Little K (Lieyu County)! Little K is separate from the rest of Kinmen (金門), so I'll be taking a ferry every day to school. Hopefully, once the bridge between Little K and the rest of Kinmen is complete and I have a scooter license, I can also drive to school.

I'm excited to teach at Jhou Huan and meet my fellow local English teachers (LETs) as well as the kids! I've never taught before, but I hope can help with extracurriculars, including Chinese folk dance (which I haven't had the chance to do since before the pandemic).

After the first three days of strict quarantine, I had four days of self-monitoring, which meant I could leave the hotel between 8am and 8pm if I submitted a negative rapid test. I spent the first day meeting up with another ETA from my site at the hotel, during which we walked around and got dinner. My first meal out of quarantine was delicious: pork wontons, thick noodles, a tea stained egg, silken tofu, and thousand year old egg.

Although it was later in the evening, the humid heat of Kaohsiung was still stifling, so we took refuge in a 7-Eleven and soaked up the AC. Once we had purchased and finished some snacks, we crossed one of the bridges over Love River and visited a Carrefour and a small night market before heading back to the hotel.

I spent my second day of self-monitoring largely inside while attending the mandatory Fulbright training Zooms, but I did go out by myself and explore some markets in the late afternoon. In the end, I purchased a couple drinks, a pudding, and a dragonfruit all for roughly $5 USD.

Walking around by myself in Taiwan, I was surprised how few people stared at me on the street. In other countries where there are fewer Asians, particularly European or Latin American ones, I'd become accustomed to being stared at, and I assumed here in Taiwan, I'd be stared at for appearing obviously American. Instead, most of the stares I got were from people who realized I couldn't understand Mandarin very well.

Most of my interactions consisted of 不好意思, 我的中文沒那麼好 (sorry, my Mandarin's not that good) and pointing at things while saying 這個 (this one). Part of me wished I had the immediate safety net of English from not looking like everyone else, but the other part of me was pleased I wasn't immediately foreign-looking (and therefore might get better deals while shopping). At the very least, I was grateful for any Mandarin I could scrape together from a mix of two different Chinese schools and several semesters of college Chinese.

The third day of self-monitoring, I met up with two other ETAs, both placed in Chiayi. Unfortunately, since we had chosen to go out midday, the sweltering heat outside forced us to try to building hop. After some confused directions and a lot of sweating, we retreated into the same Carrefour I'd visited a couple days ago. At the very least, we managed to get some nice cold bubble tea from a place called MACU (after the three of us ETAs fumbled with the translation). The vocab word of the day for me was 冰沙 (n.): smoothie, slushie.

I spent some of the fourth day with one of the same ETAs as we wandered Kaohsiung and chatted. Among other things, we saw two large ceramic vases filled with little goldfish and some duckweed and a couple of birds in bird cages. We also got to meet some of the Pingtung and Kaohsiung ETAs for probably about five minutes while they walked to their daily training site.

Although I hadn't been able to meet or hang out with many people during quarantine due to my arrival window (thanks to some bureaucratic and logistical hurdles), I still appreciated the opportunity to ease into living in Taiwan at the quarantine hotel.

Today (or rather yesterday, since it's already midnight as I type this), I finally got to check out of the quarantine hotel and fly to my site at Kinmen! I spent the morning packing, then met my taxi driver outside the hotel to go to the airport. After a quick fifty minute flight from Kaohsiung to Kinmen, I met one of the Fulbright coordinators at the airport. We went to Carrefour for some home goods and food, then drove to my apartment in Jincheng (金城), where we ran into my roommates and some other ETAs coming back from a 7-Eleven.

Everyone was very friendly and helped me sort things out as I finally put my stuff down (no more living out of a suitcase!), then we grabbed lunch at a little noodle place and chatted. After that, we came back to the apartment, and the other ETAs went back to theirs (which is exactly one floor above the one my roommates and I share). I unpacked a bit, then we all went to the Kinmen Starlight Festival (金門星光節). We got a little lost along the way, but we got to see more of Jinhu (金湖), including an unsettlingly large spider.

The festival itself was nice, just humid (as the rest of Taiwan is). Although the lights were pretty, I must admit, the dinosaurs scattered throughout the park were pretty cool too. I also appreciated the opportunity to finally meet most of the other Kinmen ETAs (who I had previously only seen or messaged online)! As mentioned before, everyone was very friendly, and I liked getting to chat with them.

Not long after, I went back to my apartment with one of my roommates and finished moving in since I was a little overwhelmed from the travel and the heat. It still doesn't quite feel real that I'll be living here for a year, although I also know the year'll fly by. Maybe it'll sink in in a couple weeks or a month, but for now, I can't wait to explore Kinmen more and get to know everyone.

Writer's Note: This post was originally written on Saturday, August 20th, 2022.