Our flight left Seattle at 12:50am on Thursday the 4th and we arrived in Taipei at 5:30am on Friday the 5th. I took a few children's Benadryl on the flight and for about 7 hours straight I couldn't open my eyes. Just kept waking up uncomfortable, changed positions, and fell right back asleep. If you ever get the opportunity to fly EVA Air, do it. Free headphones and slippers, personal tv, tons of leg room, and amazing french toast :) After such a long flight, I left with cankles and puffy feet (not as bad as yours after the India flight though, Britt). Taipei City is about a 45 minute drive from the airport. Our accommodations are amazing. We are staying in a dorm-like building right next to Cheng Hsin, the hospital we will be working at 5 days a week for the next month. We have big 2-person rooms and bathrooms with a shared living room and small kitchen on every floor. The 5th and 6th floors (which we are staying on) are occupied by physicians and single nurse managers with other floors housing recovering mothers post-delivery, families of patients, and so on. The people have thus far been unbelievably hospitable. They prepared breakfast for us and stocked each room with Chinese goodies. After a brief orientation, we were given a short break to unpack followed by a 2 hour jaunt around the city. The street markets are a sight to behold...the scents are tantalizing. I wanted to eat at every single cute little restaurant we passed on our walk. After grabbing a few essentials from the 7/11 next door, we are back in our rooms for a rest and a much needed shower. We are attending a welcome reception from 4-6 tonight with the hospital administrators, physicians, nurses, etc. and will be receiving our "first real Chinese meal" as one of our amazing hostesses told us. The drive from the airport was amazing. I wish I had been able to take more photographs. Taiwan is a very very beautiful, green, tropical place. The rice paddies and fields are surrounded by green hills. The area in which we are staying is considered the "ritzy" part of Taiwan but amongst new, beautiful buildings are even more old buildings. The country and the city are equally beautiful and have an almost magical feel to them. It's warm, humid, smoggy, and bustling with people and I LOVE it.
The best surprise for us was that each person was provided their own ethernet cord and connection so all my worries about not having internet access were washed away. Unfortunately, however, facebook seems to be inaccessible so it seems as though there are some people I won't be able to communicate with using that route. All in all, I'm already in love with this place and it's people.
More to come, but for now, it's naptime.
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