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I am leaving tomorrow to return to the States.  So, I figured I’d make a list of the top 10 things I’ll miss about Taiwan.

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So, I’ve realized that despite the odds, the weather forecast always turns to rain and never the other way around.  The happy pretty “sunny” icons that smiled at me on Monday, predicting beautiful weather for the next week have so easily been replaced with this grimacing “chance of rain” icon in an effort to ruin my weekend.

But, I have realized that it’s never the other way around.  There’s never a week when I go to Weather Underground and the forecast says rain all week but then the next day it’s turned for the better and everything has cleared up.  No, Yilan is in a perpetual state of a chance of rain.  You might think that the sky is clear and it’s bright and sunny outside.  But, you would be mistaken.  Within a few short hours, the entire sky will have changed to clouds and rain and all your hopes and dreams of a happy scooter ride would be immediately squashed.

This weekend, Monica, Kim, Deborah, Eric, and I headed to Hualien (on the east coast of Taiwan) to celebrate my birthday.  We’d been talking about going to Hualien for weeks now since we heard that it’s one of the most beautiful parts of Taiwan, so we knew that we had to visit!  So after teaching my Saturday class, we hopped on a train to Hualien!

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So, I’m not sure what happened or who got fired, but somehow, last Tuesday I managed to pass my scooter driving test. I don’t know how, but i somehow managed to stay going straight long enough and not kill anyone or run into anything (or at least the judge didn’t notice) and left the Luodong DMV with a license to drive a 50cc-250cc scooter!

My Mode of Transportation Before

(above) Before getting my scooter, Eric was my mode of transportation.  Trust me, the helmet was necessary.  Haha, okay kai wan xiao.  But, seriously, people would just sandbag me everywhere. I was the Official Yilan ETA Sandbag.  I had to say the word zai so often, I made it a Chinglish word.  For example, you can use it in the context of asking for a ride: “Hey, can you zai me tonight?”, or also in the past tense: “Yeah, my friend zai-ed wo.”

Soon after the crazy miracle, I bought my very own scooter (pictures to come)! It’s a cute 100cc and I’m so happy that I finally, after like two months of living in Yilan, have a scooter! Driving on the road is super scary though, I must say.

Life Skills Learned in Taiwan:
X - Riding a Bicycle
X - Driving a Scooter
O - Swimming

Let me preface this entry by saying that I am an extremely unbalanced individual.  I think most people that have actually met me will agree with this.  I suppose that this title of being unbalanced all began in eighth grade when I fell out of my chair in computer class.  The curse of being unbalanced has never left me since.

So when we arrived in August, it became quite evident that the only way we were going to get around was to scooter.  We were also convinced that every previous ETA had tested to be licensed to drive a scooter and subsequently bought a scooter to ride around the entire year through sunshine, rain, and wind. Naive little Jessica assumed that she too would be able to master scooter driving.

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