Monday, March 4, 2013

On Cities and My Second Host Family

I feel I have fallen very behind on my blogging, and I apologize!  I shall try to keep up with it better.

Over a month ago, I changed to my second host family, after living with my first for nearly five months.  By now I am feeling good with my new family, but it was a bit more difficult than I expected.  I really got used to the level of comfort I had with my first host family, and it's hard to build up that kind of relationship all over again with a new group of people... but that's not to say I don't like them!  I am quite fond of my new family.  I have one host brother, Harry, he is 16 years old and goes to the same school as me.  The whole family really enjoys sports, especially tennis, both playing and watching, so their TV is often tuned to sports channels.  They eat mostly at home, which is a change from my last family who liked to dine out.  The food is really great, and I hope to learn to cook some simple dishes by the end of my stay. 

Now I'd like to talk a little about cities...  about a month ago, I was on the way to one of my Rotary club meetings with my Brazilian friend Joao.  The meetings are on the ninth floor of a department store, in a traditional Taiwanese restaurant.  We were in my third host dad's car, descending through several levels of parking levels for the store, when Joao said something about how incredibly difficult it would be to design and construct a multilevel parking lot like the one we were in...  where would you start?  Just thinking about it is intimidating, and to take on such a project must be overwhelming.  And this is just for one shopping mall, in a single city, in the small nation of Taiwan...  It made me think of all the metropolises (metropoli?) around the world, each one like a living organism, kept alive, and not only alive but perpetually growing and developing, by the cooperation of hundreds of thousands of people.

Something I have found amazing about the  city of Kaohsiung is its transportation.  In particular its bus system.  There are dozens of lines all around the city, many of them intersecting with each other.  However, each bus has to have its own distinct schedule from the other buses that intersect with its line, to avoid congestion.  And at every stop there is a schedule posted for the various buses that will stop there.  The bus drivers must adhere to this schedule no matter how  many people happen to be riding on a given day (although I'll admit the buses are often late, and sometimes arrive to early at the stop, which is infuriating).  Furthermore, the buses that accomodate areas with more use must have more frequent arrivals.  It's amazing and wonderful that people took the time to sort all of this out, just so that we can have a decent bus system to get around!  (Am I sounding crazy?  I don't know why, this stuff just fascinates me...)

The garbage truck in Taiwan is another interesting thing.  It sounds like an ice cream truck (when I first heard it I thought it was one), and when you hear it on your street, you take your full garbage bags, if you have them, and walk out to the street and toss them in the back of the truck where they are compacted.  Everyday it will arrive at your street at the same times, twice a day, except on Sundays.

Another amazing thing about Kaohsiung are the thousands of street vendors that all are seemingly thriving, despite the fact that there are so many of them.  It seems impossible to walk down the street for 2 minutes without seeing some kind of stall or stand, selling fried chicken, tea, noodles, dumplings, or tofu.  You'd think that so much competition would make it impossible for so many vendors to survive, but somehow they seem to thrive...  I think I'll pin it on the Taiwanese's love of all things delicious and cheap.  I'm not sure where this blog post is going, so I think I'll just wrap it up here... basically, I'm just trying to say, cities are really awesome!

In my next post I think I'll talk about my recent trip to Taidong, which included the craziest festival I have ever seen or heard of.  While in Taidong I also got the chance to meet my Taipei counterpart, Connor Rohwer...  it was nice to talk to a fellow Northfielder who had also experienced the crazy wonderfulness of Taiwan.

Until next time, byebye

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