The beginning of a new adventure [back]

As the ever evolving, continually changing adventure that is my life has begun its latest permutation, I now find myself in Tainan, Taiwan. The process of me coming here was rather spur of the moment, and to be honest, I really have no idea when I’m coming back to the United States. It all began a month ago, the moment I returned to my hotel room in Golden, Colorado the night of my cousin Renee’s wedding. I decided to check my emails and discovered I had a message waiting for me from Justin, my old boss from DigitalThink. Since leaving my job in June as a Wilderness Instructor for Thistledew Camp, I had been talking to Justin about working with the company he started a year ago as a consultant. We had discussed various projects, but had not decided on any one in particular. When I opened the message from Justin that night, it simply read “Call me asap. How do you feel about Taiwan?”

That was all I needed to know. The next morning, I called Justin and was soon enlisted to embark on my current journey. Justin’s company was doing work for a large corporation that is rapidly expanding its production capabilities in Asia. Because of this rapid expansion of facilities and need to hire and train large amounts of employees, I was hired to help implement the rollout out of a learning management system in the local Asian facilities, currently Taiwan and Japan.

After a few weeks of getting up to speed with the background and overview of the current initiative, I boarded the plane to head to Tainan, Taiwan. My traveling companions are Suzanne (whom is also going to be in Tainan for an extended period of time), Bonney ( the client), Justin (my boss), and Sherry (a performance consultant from the firm developing the training for this project). Our itinerary took us from Elmira, New York to Detroit, Michigan to Osaka, Japan, and then Taipei. After spending the night in Taipei, we were to fly to Tainan.

I have never been to Asia and didn’t really know what to expect. As with all of my other international travels, I based my expectations on previous experiences, but figured they would be proven incorrect as soon as I got off the plane. My basis for expectations about Taiwan was India. India was complete chaos and borderline sensory overload as everything in India is completely different than everything in the United States. The minute you get off the plane, the sounds, the smells, and the sights bombard you. There seems to be no order and every sensory trigger is bombarded with new experiences. I knew Taiwan wouldn’t be as overwhelming as India, but I still braced myself for the worse.

Upon leaving the airport in Taipei, I realized immediately that my expectations were completely off. Taipei is way more modern, way less chaotic, and much more well-to-do than I had imagined. The trip from the airport to downtown Taipei was about an hour and it felt just like driving from the airport in any American city. Of course it was dark and all I could see were lights, but everything was modern. After we got checked into our hotel, Bonney, Justin, and I went out for dinner. We went to the TGIF next door. I know, it’s not the least bit exotic and rather American-centric, but hey, we justified it by saying that since we were still on US time, we may as well eat American food.

As always, my biggest day to day concern is how I am going to get my daily coffee fix. I came fully prepared to "survive" my first two weeks over here as I brought a French press and 3 pounds of coffee. As we drove around Taipei, my fears (at least while I'm in Taipei) for getting a cup of coffee quickly disappeared. As we drove a little further, I got disgusted. There was a Starbucks on almost every single corner of the city. It is as bad as San Francisco! There was also pretty much every other American chain restaraunt that you could think of, fast food and otherwise. Holy Cow!

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