Sunday, September 20, 2009

The City - First impressions

We arrived last night. It was a long night and day of travel but I am here safely and thankful for the journey. Learned much about the city from my airplane ride as I sat next to a very nice and talkative guy from here. I simply enjoy learning about one's culture. I pulled out my language sheet and he was helping me pronounce words. Wow. I thought German was hard. Both languages are painful to me. smile.

Several first impressions.

The city is densely populated. There are 22 million people who live on the island and many live in this city. Wow. Even on a Sunday morning here there are plenty of people out and about.

I think one out of two people here have a motor scooter. They may be a stretch but it does not seem like I am off by a lot.

They love tea. It seems to be free flowing. I am enjoying a cup this morning. Not too bad! HOWEVER, I was able to get my Starbucks City Mug last night. There are plenty of Starbucks here and to my surprise 7/11 stores. No Big Gulp for me though.

The people enjoy conversation. Maybe I have been fortunate but I have had several good conversations with people here.

Okay. I have only been here 12 hours and I have much to learn. It is time to get outside.

More Soon,

4 comments:

Kyle Goen said...

Drink a little tea and sit back for a lot of learning. Looking forward to what you guys write about this week.

Andrew Jones said...

hey larry. time to leave the starbucks alone and go native with some nescafe coffee and condensed milk. hmmmm . . . yum!!

Larry said...

About my drinking... I really think the tea has more caffeine than the coffee. We had a great dialog tonight with a guy from here who talked about folk religion and helped me understand a bit more about the "hungry ghosts". We should have some video of it up sometime tomorrow.

Morgan said...

I've enjoyed reading your blog posts about your time in Taipei. We enjoyed having your team here.

You're not too far off on your motorcycle guess. There are actually over 14 million motorcycles in Taiwan--and about 22 million people. So about 64% of Taiwanese have a motorcycle (and that's including babies and kids). It's mind-boggling.