July 9/10 - Traveling

I arrived at the Dayton International Airport (DAY) on time (barely) and got through check-in/security without any problems. I slept for most of the plane ride to Houston. In Houston, we had a small layover during which we went to the Fox Sports Bar and drank our breakfast. I had an ammaretto sour; it was delicious.

The flight from Houston to Tokyo was much better than my flights from Dulles to Beijing and Dulles to Geneva. We flew on a brand-new Boeing 777 that was amazing! Whereas most international flights have 7 video channels that play movies at certain times, this plane had personal, touch-screen monitors that offered 137 different movies-on-demand. There were also about 25 TV shows and 500+ songs.

I started the flight with When in Rome and then slept for two hours. I woke up for some food, learned to count to 20 in German (I don't remember how now...I think "eins" is one and "sieben" is seven), and slept for another hour. Then, I watched the new Star Trek movie! After that, I pretty much slept the entire flight. I was only awake about 8 of the 13.5 hours.

The layover in Tokyo was annoying because there was nothing to do in our terminal. We sat and watched a re-run of some soccer match. During this time, I also freshened up on the important Chinese characters I've learned for the trip. Then, we had a nice little flight to Taipei...during which...you've probably already guessed, I slept. Flights are glorious when you sleep throughout them!

We rode a bus to Chung Yuan Christian University (CYCU) and were welcomed by our program directors. Their names are ___________ and Gary. Gary is David's and my program coordinator...the other guy coordinates the engineering program. Both of them have Anglo-fied names. David and I have a student "helper" named Danny (also Anglo-fied) who said he'd be back in 30 mins nearly an hour ago.

The dorms are really nice and roomy...this is probably because we're two people in a four-person dorm. The major downfall is that the Taiwanese do not flush used toilet paper. Instead, they throw it in a trash can and empty that every couple of days. Not to be culturally insensitive, but...gross. I don't want to smell shit for three weeks. Sorry.

Sorry this post is so long...I wrote it Saturday night while waiting for Danny to get here. David and I still have zero details on our program, but we're just going to go with the flow and see what happens. Hope you're all doing well!