i suffered a grave disappointment today: the tea shop where i spent so many afternoons two summers ago is no longer in its old location right near my old apartment. whether this means they've moved or gone out of business i don't know; i sent them an e-mail asking if they were around and if they'd like to get together, which translates to, i hope mimi still has the same e-mail address and that she doesn't mind it's taken me two years to actually write to her. for those who haven't heard me gush about this i'll give the short version of this story: during my last visit to taipei, when i was here with my brother wes and sister katie, there was a tiny tea shop and book store that had just opened up a few days after we arrived by a woman whom i called mimi jie (or 'big sister mimi') and staffed by her two school-age daughters and a few of their friends. we were her first customers, first patronizing the store three days before it opened, and we rarely if ever paid for our drinks there. all of the girls were very friendly and mimi in particular spoke good english, so we went to the shop every day to check up on them and unwind after working at the YMCA. (full disclosure: the young girls there all developed serious crushes on my brother.) mimi's story is an amazing one: in the past she had worked as an opera singer, both in western and beijing styles, and also a voice actor for chinese language cartoons (including western ones in translation; we received samples of all of the above, and she was very talented), and then worked for many years as a kindergarten teacher. she opened the tea shop after her husband died and from all appearances it was pretty successful. we got close enough to them that on our last night in the city, she took all of us and the girls out to dinner to celebrate. spending time with her in that shop is one of my best memories of taipei, and i hope i can get in touch with her again.
other than that, though, everything is great. i hung out a bit with my host family and broke down the language barrier with them, making communication a lot easier, and i got to see my office and meet most of my coworkers, and despite it being tremendously awkward on account of my rusty chinese and difficulty understand the taiwanese accent, it looks like i'll have a pretty amazing setup there. it even turns out that there is a girl my age from penn state (named jeannie, what do you know) that makes up the other half of what marie dubbed the "oddball contingent," from whom i hope to find a little sanity amidst all the chinese-speaking.
i also found the secondhand book and record store i loved so much for last time and began my research on local independent music. i found the beginnings of pretty much everything i was looking for, from ratty expat punk to green day-inspired pop to an awesome twee pop band called tanapo!! who, to my dismay, broke up just a few months ago. i did get links to some record labels, though, and miraculously found a website with a complete history of alternative music on the island as well as descriptions of local indie bands of every stripe, local punk and indie labels, and listings for clubs and festivals across the city. (side note: if anyone's interested in learning a little about this stuff, the site is called island of sound) i've already made plans to check out a couple of bands this weekend, including motherfucking dean and britta plays galaxie 500 playing right in my goddamn neighborhood this sunday, and a local feminist folk-punk bar (!) that i might be able to do a little playing in if i can play my cards right. in other words, i've been on the island for less than 24 hours and i've already found pretty much exactly what i was looking for before i came.
i also met the little ones i'll be living with today, a boy-girl pair of twins named sean and cheval, around ten years old. they were very shy with me, probably because they're not confident english speakers, but they seem like sweet kids. joan, my host mother, told me today she's considering having them take guitar lessons at a local rock school/practice space down the street (oh yeah, i also found that).
as my last act of the evening, i just want to put in my two cents for taipei being one of the friendliest cities i've ever been to. i'm not just talking accommodating sales staff either, although it does bear mentioning that they are among the most helpful i've encountered anywhere. white people may be put off that it's not customary here to excuse oneself when bumping into a stranger on the sidewalk, but everyone i asked for directions from went to greater lengths than anyone before to direct me, some even going so far as to write down addresses with pinyin and the names of nearby metro stops and other landmarks. maybe it doesn't sound like much, but it was prominent among the many things that made me feel already very much at home in taipei.
tomorrow is my first day at the office, and also my first day teaching seventh graders. wish me luck.
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