Moving from America to Taiwan 3: Mandarin Institute and Taipei Healthcare

After being here for about two weeks, everything started to feel normal.

From the first moment I arrived, I did feel like I was in my “new home,” but at the same time there was somewhat of a honeymoon feeling; everything felt magical, new, and different.

I shared my excitement with every Taiwanese person I met. They were happy to hear that I liked the country they were proud of, and they were also grateful for the opportunity to see their home through “fresh eyes.”

As I explored Taipei, there were so many tiny details to appreciate. Every little decoration, the way signs were worded, the colors that were used, etc, had unique touches of detail and grace.

All these details, and all this grace, were normal to the people that lived here. They simply expected every cafe to have compelling interior design, and for every apartment door to have a different personality. So, together, our conversations helped keep the appreciation of these details on our minds. I tried to make a promise to myself that I would always see and appreciate these details, so I have a daily practice of making an effort to notice them.

It is said that learning Mandarin Chinese as an American is difficult. I think this is either true, or I am a slow learner. I’ve been taking classes for 20 hours a week for about eight days now, and I can barely say “I like to eat hamburger.”

Since I am not working, I have the unique privilege of spending the majority of my time in class and studying, so my hope is that fully focusing my efforts on language will be the best long-term investment for the future. Whether I have the opportunity to move here full time or not, I think knowing a little Mandarin will be helpful in any future career I end up in, especially if I go back to the game industry where most of the companies I worked for were Chinese-owned or made a majority of their revenue from China.

The lamp came with cat ears but I threw them away.

I never went to any college, so I find the act of studying to be fun and somewhat of a novelty. I’ve never had to take any test or study for any other reason than to satisfy my own curiosity, so it’s still enjoyable to pull out my giant stack of books, listen to audio recordings, and try to scribble characters on graph paper. At the same time, I’m an extrovert, so I’m really looking forward to the milestone where I know enough to practice through having dialogue with real live people.

However, I don’t really feel like I’m talented at language learning; at least when it comes to Mandarin Chinese. The other people in my class seem to be picking up longer phrases more quickly, and seem to remember a broader range of vocabulary. To make myself feel better, I try and tell myself that they had some exposure to Chinese language before they started the class. Right now I do have a bit of a fear that I won’t be able to learn a “practical” amount of language, and that the time and money will have been wasted. That’s another milestone I’m looking forward to - having enough knowledge and competency to justify the investment.

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Most of the time, I feel fulfilled here. Everyone I meet is fun to talk to, kind, and generally interested in life. I meet a lot of people through dating sites, and haven’t had any weird or bad experiences yet. Before I moved here, I was afraid that as a 35-year old male, I’d be too old to make new friends or find people that had a mutual sense of adventure, but in reality, I’ve had no problems at all creating a social life from scratch out here.

Having lunch with a sculptor at Good Design Institute cafe

Still, even though I have an active social life, it’s still too early to have had deep connections and create long-term friendships and relationships. Due to that, there are times that I feel lonely, isolated, or nostalgic for the friendship ecosystem I met in america. Combine that with the fact that sometimes I’m in situations where I can’t find an English speaker, and with the fact that during Chinese New Year, many people are out of town, and the additive effect is that there have been a few moments in the past week where I did feel more alone than I wanted to.

The feeling doesn’t last very long, and the spell is usually interrupted by a spontaneous invite. I think this is a similar experience to a lot of the people that live here. There is a bit of a work/life balance issue here, so it’s common for people to feel lonely and isolated due to not having enough time to invest in personal relationships. At the same time, it’s a city with infinite opportunity for meeting people and doing activities, so it’s easy to resolve the feelings when they come up.

I also got sick here and went to the doctor. After some Google research, I found that you could just walk to the nearest clinic and pay in cash, even if you don’t have the universal healthcare that is provided to all the citizens of Taiwan. I walked into a random clinic, filled out a quick form, and was in a doctor’s office within about twenty minutes. They gave me three types of prescription medicine, and told me I could come back in two days if things got worse and I wanted to start antibiotics. The visit and the medications cost a total of NT220 (about $7.48 USD).

No idea what it says, though.