Moments of Meghan

October 24 marks my and John’s one-year wedding anniversary. When John and I got married, we decided to honeymoon in Southern Virginia. We rented a cozy, quaint cabin and enjoyed the majestic fall scenery. We chose to plan an international trip during our first year of marriage, as opposed to right after our wedding. I am so glad we did this. I loved our relaxing stay in Southern Virginia, and it’s been fun to look forward to this two-week trip to Taiwan that we booked back in February. While we’ve been gone, I’ve tried to write updates every few days. I’ve broken the trip up into parts, rather than having one forever long blog post. Here’s the run-down of the first part of our trip…

October 10 – October 13: Taipei, Taiwan (Written on October 13)

On Monday, October 10 around 5:30 p.m., we boarded a plane at Dulles Airport and headed to Taiwan. We had a 4-hour layover in L.A. Our plane ride from L.A. to Taipei lasted 14 hours. I thought it was going to feel suuuuper long, but thankfully I slept a lot. After 24 hours of traveling, we arrived in Taipei at 5 a.m. Wednesday morning (October 12). Taipei is exactly 12 hours ahead of the Eastern Time Zone in the U.S.

We spent that first day seeing the local sites in Taipei. My goal was to stay awake until at least 8 p.m. I made it to 9 p.m. Although, 7 – 9 p.m. was a significant struggle…I was so, so tired. I think we’ve adjusted fairly well, and our jet lag has been minimal since we were able to stay awake all day on Wednesday.

The people here have been so nice and friendly! I was nervous about not knowing Mandarin, but a lot of people seem to know English. The street signs are in English (as well as Mandarin), and the announcements on the metro are also in English.

Starbucks has become a favorite spot of John and mine, even though we’re not coffee drinkers. When we go there, we know that the workers will know how to speak English. It makes us feel at home 🙂 Starbucks here has a delicious mango passion fruit smoothie. One thing that’s different in Taiwan is ice isn’t commonly served. When we ordered this delicious drink, the Starbuck’s worker let us know that there was ice in the drink and wanted to verify that was okay us. We thought this was odd until we realized that ice isn’t commonly served in drinks here. Tonight we stopped in 7-11 and the 7-11 didn’t have slurpees!  In my mind, slurpees are a 7-11 staple…but I guess it wouldn’t be in a country that doesn’t generally serve ice in their drinks 🙂

Another thing that caught us off guard is the number of mo-peds. Mo-peds are everywhere!

Tomorrow John and I are headed off to a resort in Kenting, a city located in the very most Southern part of Taiwan. It’s known for its beautiful beaches and majestic mountains.