Last Days in Taipei

These waning days of summer! Is it waning? Or am I preemptively preparing myself for the emotional hurricane that comes with the end of another season, life swooshing past, me a paltry leaf in the wind. We are midway through August.

We are preparing to return to Canada, packing up our bags, trying to use up our supplies and eat up our snacks, visiting favourite restaurants and shops one final time, savouring the last of the cheap BBT. The three of us (me, Caleb and Naomi) can each get a BBT for ~$6.80 CAD, which is the cost of a single BBT in Canada, so how can we resist those pearls and thick straws, still plastic in Taiwan, sea turtles or no.

In any case, we continue on, even into the waning of these summer days. Naomi made a new 6-year-old friend who told me it’s best not to get dehydrated. I sat in a cafe beside someone who took a whole roasted potato out of their bag and started it eating it. We’re reading Howl and the Moving Castle, which is a very good read, but I overheard the children talking about the differences between “evil witches” like the Witch of the Waste or “normal witches” like their mother and I feel like I don’t even know what’s going on in life anymore.

This has been an adventure, and while it’s not quite over, I have many, many more draft blog posts and photos and things to share than I can possibly get done before we leave the country. I want to remember it all! The gondola rides and the famous dumplings, but also the nights tucked away reading Howl, the familiarity of our closest subway station and the fruit vendor, the heat and the mosquito bites, the wide eyes and the new opportunities. Impossible, of course, to remember every detail, but I’m going to try.

Taipei 101 is a famous landmark that we did not actually go to, but passed by. You can go up to the observatory and look for miles around, but at some cost.