{"id":563,"date":"2009-02-24T22:19:31","date_gmt":"2009-02-25T05:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/?p=563"},"modified":"2014-04-11T21:23:26","modified_gmt":"2014-04-12T03:23:26","slug":"saying-good-bye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/saying-good-bye\/","title":{"rendered":"Saying Good-bye"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bye<\/p>\n

Seven months is apparently<\/strong> long enough to grow fond of a place.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 I want to come home.\u00a0 I have greatly desired to be home in Idaho a number of times.\u00a0 But I discover, with some surprise, that I have a rather long list of what I will miss about Taiwan.<\/p>\n

First on the list<\/strong> is people.\u00a0 Our language tutors have become our friends and it will be odd to not be able to see them every week, to share recipes and discuss life, both during and after our lessons.\u00a0 Then there\u2019s our watchman\/handyman\/butler, \u201cUncle\u201d Huang.\u00a0 He is a dear smiling face, not only very helpful, but always pleased to see us head off to explore the city and offer some new vocabulary words.<\/p>\n

\"bye<\/p>\n

We never learned<\/strong> enough Chinese to communicate much with him, or the family that runs the buffet restaurant downstairs and a few feet around the corner.\u00a0 The restaurant is also their home and there is a piano at one end of the dining area that Natalie was allowed to play on before we rented a piano.\u00a0 The food is quite different than what we are used to and we could never quite tolerate enough to constitute a real meal, but it was also a good place to meet neighbors.<\/p>\n

Just last week<\/strong> the fruit vendor that I buy from the most commented ( in gestures,\u00a0 a few words of Chinese, and a very brief translation from his son) that he hadn\u2019t seen me in a while.\u00a0 Is it normal to miss your produce vendors?<\/p>\n

\"bye<\/p>\n

\"bye<\/p>\n

\"bye
\nand taxi drivers?<\/strong>\u00a0 When I took Greg\u2019s mom to Costco last week, the taxi driver from No Extra Charge<\/a> went out of his way to give me a very cheerful greeting.\u00a0 And there are several people in the actual Shi Dong market building that have gone out of their way to help me or just visit in a friendly way.\u00a0\u00a0 These two people below sell us our most of our eggs.\u00a0 The young lady made quite an effort to make sure she gave me the calendar for the whole building so that I wouldn\u2019t accidentally try to do my shopping when it is closed on Mondays.\u00a0 I believe the young man is her brother.<\/p>\n

\"bye<\/p>\n

The ladies at the salon I have been to the most are very personable.<\/p>\n

\"bye<\/p>\n

I will miss more<\/strong> than just the back and shoulder massages that come with the haircut\/color.\u00a0 These are given very enthusiastically by the young lady on the left.\u00a0\u00a0 She also enjoyed trying to help me practice Chinese.\u00a0 The woman in the middle gave me a manicure and lots of energetic conversation.\u00a0 The lady on the right is the same age I am and hides it well.\u00a0 She is very sweet, has worked here for 30 years and is a supervisor.\u00a0 CoCo also works in this building and has helped me immensely in practicing Mandarin.\u00a0 I also help her with English.\u00a0\u00a0 What didn\u2019t I talk about with her?\u00a0 I will definitely miss CoCo.\u00a0 I will get a picture of her on Friday.<\/p>\n

Here is one of the nice people at the street corner dumpling shop that we just started to frequent on the way home from buying produce:<\/p>\n

\"bye<\/p>\n

There are some<\/strong> pleasant ladies who run the pottery shop about a 3 minutes walk from my front gate.\u00a0 Here is a picture of the roof, where an amazing number of beautiful pieces sit in the weather collecting water and dirt.\u00a0 Greg\u2019s mom (in photo below) and I went shopping there Monday for nearly 2 hours.\u00a0 The inside is more orderly, but still quite dusty, giving a sense of archeology.\u00a0 There were many good finds.<\/p>\n

\"bye
\n\"bye
\nThen the nice lady<\/strong> on the right, after carefully packaging everything, helped us carry it home.\u00a0 She said it was her duty and she definitely wouldn\u2019t let the watchman carry the bags up.\u00a0 It was hers to do.\u00a0 She also said to bring back anything we changed our minds about or that arrived broken.\u00a0 So she was not only a gracious shop keeper, politely offering information without any sales pressure, she was the epitome of service.\u00a0 I believe it is her mother on the left, who has owned the shop for around 25 years.\u00a0 I have browsed in the shop several times previously without buying anything.\u00a0 I will miss their smiling faces.<\/p>\n

I will miss<\/strong> the video store clerk of the little \u2018hole-in-the-city\u2019 shop where we rent videos these days.\u00a0 He is so patient in attempting to help us understand the process and due dates.\u00a0 Again, we are limited to one or two English words with a heavy accent, or our smattering of Mandarin.\u00a0 We can\u2019t be that important to his sales base.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even see other expatriates in that section of town.<\/p>\n

Speaking of<\/strong> expatriates, I\u2019ve enjoyed getting to know many of them as well.\u00a0 It is fun to both meet them as individuals and as representatives of their countries.\u00a0 I still need pictures of some of them that I have spent more time talking to, as well as the helpful staff at the Community Center.<\/p>\n

There are other<\/strong> little details of life here that would be pleasant to transplant.\u00a0 The kids WALK to soccer practice and almost every game!\u00a0 The dogs riding shot gun on the scooters are entertaining.\u00a0 Road work is done in a day.\u00a0 There is always something in bloom and never any ice on the roads.\u00a0 The walking path is along a stream.<\/p>\n

But I won\u2019t<\/strong> miss being so far away from my family and long time friends.\u00a0 The typhoons, large cockroaches, and packs of stray dogs are gladly left behind.\u00a0 It will be nice to be able to communicate more readily with nearly everyone and find clothing in our sizes.\u00a0 It will be nice to wander out in the yard, my yard and garden.\u00a0 I can\u2019t be in two places at once, but I\u2019d sure like to come back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seven months is apparently long enough to grow fond of a place.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 I want to come home.\u00a0 I have greatly desired to be home in Idaho a number of times.\u00a0 But I discover, with some surprise, that I have a rather long list of what I will miss about Taiwan. First […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}