Jet lag

I feel like for the amount of time I've been gone not a whole lot has happened. I got on a plane, I got off a plane. Got on another plane, got off that plane, got on a bus and went to sleep in a hotel.

The first flight was pretty amazing. I didn't sleep at all the entire time, probably from the excitement. About every hour I was offered green tea, sometimes hot, sometimes cold. For our first meal we were offered a choice of either chicken cutlet or eel over rice. I hope at this point everyone knows that there was really no question what Dave and I chose. The phrase "When in Rome..." has come into play a lot and will be dictating a lot of my life over the next year or so. Even so, I had to creepily watch the people around me before I started eating to make sure I didn't do/eat anything I wasn't supposed to do. Along with 2 other meals and a rice ball, I probably had about 8 cups of tea, 3 mini bottles of white wine, ice cream and some pringles.

For the first 4 or 5 hours (before I discovered that I had unlimited access to movies and games in the little screen in front of me) I stared at the flight map. It was pretty cool, although it was painful every time they showed how long we had until we landed. After we cut through Canada between Ottawa and Montreal, past Thunder Bay, and over Alaska, I stood up to stretch my legs. For the first time I had a kind of deep moment of reflection. I was basically standing on the International Date Line. I told Dave, "I don't think I could have ever pictured myself here in my life," to which he responded, "I don't think you give yourself enough credit." (anecdote later on how Dave gives me TOO much credit).

Nothing happened in Japan. We were too tired (it had been about 24 hours without sleep, and thats if your counting the 3 hours I slept after the 5 hour energy wore off) to do anything but sit at our terminal and read. The only thing I remember from the next flight is a nasty piece of chicken I ate. I was asleep as soon as my ass hit the seat.

Once in Taiwan, we changed our money, went through immigration and met up with Fred (a good friend of Dave's uncle), and the three of us took a bus to our hotel in Taipei. I'm not going to describe our room until I'm able to take a video of it with the webcam and post it up here. Which I hope doesn't lead anyone to believe the hotel isn't nice, because it is.

For those who care about the business part of this trip (hi mom!), we weren't here for 12 hours and I've already talked to 4 schools. Fred walked around the city with us and showed us a few schools and we dropped off our resumes and filled out applications.

That's it for now, sorry for long post. Actually I'm not.

[oh yeah, anecdote. conversation in Japan:
Me: I spent $30 on these sunglasses. They were designed by NASA and are High Definition and Polarized. I never spend money on sunglasses because I always lose them. How long before I lose them?
Dave: I'll give it a couple months.
I hope United likes their new donation.]