Nesting

It's hard to top something as smart as Max's recent (and only) post, but I'm inspired by the challenge.

Nah, really I'm inspired by the blog of an insightful fellow classmate with "time on her hands" (which, for the class of 2009, is code for unemployed), nudges from my family, my good friend Anna Stockwell's picturesque and tasty little posts, and a blog called "Hungry Girl in Taipei." The kind author of this blog bops around the city reviewing food in English, categorizing by type of food, and taking pictures of the dishes and menus. I'm excited to eat all kinds of food in this big skinny city, but I'm skeptical. Could "Mexican" really mean Mexican? So far many things I've had to eat taste faintly of "tea eggs." Tea eggs are hard boiled eggs that float and brown in bubbling cauldrons of tea and spices in Seven-Elevens (I should explain that there are about as many Seven-Elevens here as there are Starbucks in Manhattan). Sometimes these eggs appear whole in your noodle soups or covertly in your chicken sandwiches from Burger King. There are many other tastes of Taiwan that I enjoy more than this tea-egg taste. Still though, I'd rather find these delicious tastes in dumplings than burritos. Tonight it's a banana and Skippy peanut-butter. I eat as many bananas here as I did in the States, and that's pretty much the only thing Max and I are sure to have in stock in our little kitchen. That and coffee. Max and Kiah have gone off on a scooter ride to a night market for some "real" food, but they underappreciate the power of peanut butter if you ask me.

These little things - peanut butter, coffee, non-florescent lighting - help us to make a home here. We moved into our apartment about a week ago and since then every time Max and I return here after work, or play, or whatever else, we feel so safe and good. I hung up pictures in the sliding glass doors of the book shelves and wrapped up our mattress in a tapestry until we finally found sheets just two days ago. There is a writing desk in our apartment, wood floors and cabinets, a single burner in the closet-sized kitchen - the home of our massive tea kettle, a sliding glass window that separates the bedroom from the living room, and a big window overlooking a wide highway and Xin-Tien River and Chung-Cheng Park. I'm so grateful I get to see a ribbon of blue and a stripe of green through the window. We also have roof-top access. When Sam came to visit last week we took cheap and delicious Japanese beer up to the rooftop and oggled the city lights. Tiapei 101, the second tallest building in the world, stands like a skinny wedding cake in the distance. My plan is to write up top. We have a fold-up table and chairs. Plants would be nice, too.

We moved into a pretty empty place last Tuesday and on Thursday we made a big trip to IKEA to fill it as best we could. We bought a giant monster poster to go with the couch that looks like a spaceship, a lantern floor lamp, a desk lamp with a yellow shade, and lots of pillows, among other things. We looked like fools walking out of IKEA, dripping with bags and awkwardly balancing boxes. Of course, it was pouring rain outside. Somehow we fit all of our crap into a cab and managed to say the name of our street correctly for the cab driver. I was sort of looking forward to the trip home. Sitting on top of and among our new home things, I looked out the windows at the cars and buildings.

"Toyota. IBM." said the cab driver.

Max, who sat up front, said, "Apple. Apple computer," and I think we both knew then that it would be a long ride.

Rather than keeping his eyes on the road, the cab driver decided to teach us the Chinese words for "light on/ light off." He turned the overhead light on and off repeatedly, reciting these words. Max amused him until the traffic light turned green and the honking began. The rest of the twenty minute cab drive went this way - "Starbucks. You know?" "Toshiba?" And my favorite phrase of the day - "Oh my gah! Oh my gah! So many cars! You see? So many cars!" And as he moved carelessly between lanes and liberally interpreted traffic lights I wanted to say, "YES! Do you?" One street near our home is full of flashing half-circle lights above doorways that mark beetle-nut stands. These lights appear all over the city. At one point on Tong-Zhan he came to a complete stop - "Look! So beautiful! The lights! Look!" And Max and I put our foreheads to the windows as he requested, expecting to see something out of the ordinary when we peered up, but he just wanted us to look at one of those little neon beetle-nut signs.

"So beautiful. Taipei so beautiful."

The bad news is that I've felt a little bit off these past few days, finally overwhelmed by the hugeness and unfamiliarity of this place. There is way more good news than bad though. I have a dependable source of hugs, even if I can't find bed sheets. With the help of Max and IKEA... and bananas and peanut butter and the promise of writing and a little Tracy Chapman, a little apartment on Xiamen Loo becomes a home. I can breathe easy when I close the door and turn on the little yellow light on my writing desk. And as far as I can tell so far, that cab driver's right - "Taipei so beautiful," and I can see the lights through the apartment window.