Last Day

Well, it’s my last day here in Taiwan if you don’t count the time it will take to hop on an airplane to begin the arduous journey in the flying torture chamber they call an airplane.  Today was spent finding one last geocache, successfully, wrapping up some loose ends and packing.  My dad brought so many gifts to Taiwan, that I can use one of the empty suitcases for my carry-on bag, significantly lightening my load.  On the other hand, he’s bringing so much back, that two of the largest suitcases are full and one of them may be overweight.  I did manage to exclude the 7 wooden ducks that he was supposed to bring back; orders from my mom.  Unfortunately, many books and DVD’s made it into the bags.  After I packed up all the extras, I locked up the bags to prevent any unauthorized stowaways.  However, that all took place later in the day.

My primary intent today was to find one more Geocache, after dropping by my aunts one more time to return the key and print up our boarding passes.  The cache was hidden near the Taipei Sports Arena, and was fairly easy to find.  I traded in my last travelbug and traded out a travel coin from Germany.  Unfortunately, I didn’t know the goal of the coin was to make it to New Zealand, so I’m taking it way off it’s course.  Hopefully it will find a way back.  The main highlight of the day was something that should have happened weeks ago.  I got to talk to Tanja on the computer via Google Chat.  I missed our meeting yesterday, and we never planned on coordinating any time of real time communication.  She surprised me by taking the webcam off my computer and installing it on hers, so I got to see her and Chloe for the first time in three weeks.  It will be even more wonderful to see her in person “tomorrow”.  I put quotes around it, because, while I’ll be leaving Taiwan on Saturday at 9:00 and arriving in Detroit at 12:00 Saturday, I’m actually leaving on Friday at 20:00 EST, so my tomorrow is your two days from now.  It’s a little mind bending.

Some relatives and friends stopped by tonight after dinner to say their good byes and wish us safe travel.  It’s difficult to say if I’ll ever see them again, even though they’re family.  It would be nice to be closer to people you have an innate bond with, but even with computers, the distance makes a meaningful relationship difficult. 

So baring any accidents, this will be my last entry from this connection, in this location.  Experience tells me that I won’t have a connection in the interim unless I purchase some time on the airplane, which I’ll only do in an emergency.  I’ll probably still write some entries on the ride back, and they’ll probably be filled with how horrible the experience is, and I’ll wrap up the blog with a few introspective posts.  While this is about finding my roots, maybe it won’t be isolated to this specific travel event.  It will be difficult to find Chinese culture related things to write about in South East Michigan, but I’m not ruling out the possibility.  I guess that’s it for now.  See you on the other side.