Bright Lights

So this is Asia - spur of the moment, get me to another country, 21 hour flight later - I arrived at my hotel in Taipei. Utterly exhausted, the humidity hits me as I step out of the taxi, along with the smell of a Taiwanese city. I nearly lost my airplane breakfast roll on the sidewalk and with this impending nausea I opened the scene for a new year of teaching spectacle.
Check in time was 3 pm, leaving me with three hours to roam the surrounding streets, dodge the thousands of scooters on sidewalks and zebra crossings and scout for something reasonably digestible in a city where I couldn't understand the language. An hour later my sleep deprived body gave up - I settled on some cheap snacks from the corner 7/11 and went back to wait in the hotel lobby gasping for some cool conditioned air. Here I sleep-waited until they finally allowed me upstairs and I jumped into a much needed shower.

Whisked through nine days of teacher training - in a city where it seemed that the sun burned everything to an ashen grey during the day and neon signs flashed brighter than beams at night, where the humidity embalmed you and the noises threatened a revolution on your brain waves - I was supposedly given the recipe and ingredients for teaching English as a foreign language to children. How did I end up here!? Lend me a hand for I need some extra fingers to count how many times I had asked myself that question over the past 10 months.

It all happened so fast that I didn't fully digest the challenges of living and working abroad long term. I left behind everything familiar to live alone in a foreign country. Yes, it might sound brave but I didn't anticipate how emotional it could be. It took me one month to pop my big toe out of the South African bathtub plughole where I had stuck it, refusing to let the bathwater run out. The water was keeping me under - like walking through your days as if in a fish tank. It was also keeping me afloat and comfortable - but one day I let the water drain and watched as it spiraled down. I was still standing and the water was no longer needed as a barrier between where I was and how I felt. I was immersed in Taiwan!

Now, as I drive my scooter through this familiar midnight city, street lights reflect off darkened leafs and I know I was supposed to come here, I am exactly where I should be.
This body that I travel with can relay distance. It can switch on neon signs in foreign language and run motors of transformation.