Love and enthusiasm

I love it here I love it here I love it here. And I love feeling this
love for a place.

Oh Taipei, where have you been all my life?

Sent from my iPhone with love

The best temperature to serve coffee is:

Unless of course you're getting an iced sea salt coffee, which you are. Ladies and Gentlemen, and Mother in particular - I found it. Or rather it found me, because this is actually an 85 C we stumbled on onr way to a farther one I had researched and marked on our map.

Kate and I managed to, almost accidentally, have a wonderfully successful first day in Taipei, and the day is by no means over. It's half past four and we're just back at the hostel recuperating a bit. This morning we decided that walking around our neighborhood was a good way of orienting ourselves, so we set out in the general direction of the 85 C marked on our map, and along the way we ate breakfast from a 7/11 (a whoooole different experience in Asia - I had milk tea and a sushi roll), stopped at the famous and breathtaking Longshan Temple (next to which we found the sea salt coffee we were searching for), and afterward passed through a whole street of jade bead stores and a whole street of exotic (and not so exotic - hello common house finch) bird shops to find ourselves in the vast, oxygen rich haven that is the Taipei botanical gardens. In this way, with no real plan, we found ourselves having a perfectly lovely day.

Needless to say, I am already in love. This city (so far) is incredible, and somehow feels a world away from the Philippines. English signs are hard to find, senselessly lovely designs adorn perfectly common sidewalks or power boxes, and there is so, so, so much to look at. Plus, with all the food and flowers and temples, this city actually smells good.

And amazingly, Kate and I have both noticed how comfortable we are here. We've been in Taiwan less than 24 hours and even with the newness of it all, we're finding ourselves at ease. No one stares or gapes or hassles us when we are merely looking through a shop, and if you stand on the street staring at your map for just a second too long, someone will attempt to help you. This is a big, busy, and very densely populated city, yet it somehow doesn't feel crowded. The streets, though well-used, are free from horns and other unnecessary noise. It's just...calm.

I could go on. And I will, later. For now, the only pictures I can put up are those I email to this blog straight from my iPhone, typing the words later on a hostel computer. So, one picture at a time for now, and I'll bore you with billions once the trip is over. Which I hope it never is.

Arrived

Kate and I slept in this morning after out middle-of-the-night arrival
in Taipei. Showered and collected, our next step is to plop down in
the lobby an plan our day. 85 C anyone? Maybe?

Three more days...

Here we go - just three more days until Kate and I make our great (temporary) escape.

This has me thinking about tea houses, night markets and temples. About fast public transportation and bars that serve more than room (and it's a hot room)-temperature San Miguel. About ten months in one place, and five days out of it. And, most importantly, about iced sea salt coffees and the mini road trips taken to get them. And how those mini road trips - my mama and I heading up to Irvine and back all before 10am on the most delicious whims - are for me, merging into a pilgrimage.

We bought these tickets ages ago, back when we both desperately needed more things to look forward to. Then, very suddenly, it is upon us. That old restlessness emerges, the kind punctuated by the dull thudding sound of a passport being stamped. Let's GO!

Maribojoc

Early morning is one of loudest, most chaotic times in Lila. Starting around 4:30am, old, screeching radios crackle to life, all the town's dogs and roosters begin their high-octane, interspecies shouting match, and one or two of my neighbors fires up their videoke machine for a predawn lung workout.

When occasion calls for me to wake this early, I'm always amazed at my ability to sleep through the racket any other morning. It's borderline deafening - not at all what you might expect of an otherwise sleepy little town that's not exactly known for its vigor.

Yesterday was just such a morning, as I was jarred into wakefulness by the rather unforgiving alarm clock on my cellphone, which, in a robotic female voice, shouts "The time is 5am! Time to get up! The time is 5am! Time to get up!" until I do so. Then flop out of bed (or rather off of bed, out of mosquito net), climb stiffly down some dangerously steep wooden stairs, and make a beeline for the Starbucks Via.

An hour later I was on a bumping jeepney to Tagbilaran, pressed between a throng of staring high schoolers on their way to school - a reminder that, even it a small town, every time I switch up my routine a bit I run into people who apparently have never seen me before, and that I am indeed something to be gaped at.

Another hour passes and I'm on a bus to Maribojoc, Todd's site on the west coast of Bohol, half an hour north of Tagbilaran. Maribojoc is somewhat famous for its extensive mangrove forests, and today we'll be working to make them a bit more extensive by jamming propagules into rocky, submerged sediment. The marine equivalent of planting a tree.

Driving up the coast I am taken in by how beautiful Bohol is, something I seem to make a regular point of forgetting. Jungle-draped hills pushed up against a placid sea, endless stretches of nipa palms growing densely in flooded lowlands. I try to look at it though someone else's eyes, someone who hasn't been jaded by the frustration of trying to carve out a place here in a town with very little interest in the work that needs to be done.

But on this day there's work to be done, sea creatures to be found, and photos to take. And that's a pretty good day.

The planters planting

A propagule, freshly grounded

A propagule from the last planting, now a wee tree

And now the post-planting snorkel:

A chocolate chip sea star. Colored blue and green instead of the usual tan, and quite shy about it too

Two not-so-shy pipefish

Blue tips

Todd getting some attention from his coworkers

Cracking up

Facebook Status

Kate's status update on facebook this morning:

Kate Jaffe

woke up today with a giant spider the size of my hand scaling my wall. tried to kill it, its sack fell off and exploded and hundreds of baby spiders were born on my bedroom floor.

Happy Monday everyone!

Friends

They're the single most important thing here. And when you find yourself on a lonely jungle island thousands of mile from home, you thank your lucky stars everyday that no matter how thick the mosquitoes, challenging the work, and how bitingly you miss your family, in this one department at least, you really, really lucked out.

So here's to friends. Those who fill the weekends, those on other islands, those on the phone or in emails, and those halfway around the world. Without you, I'd be lost.