the heart as it is | courage • grief • beauty

Now for the real purpose of my trip: a comprehensive health check up ! My mother used to have my sister and I do these almost every time we came to Taiwan, so I decided to sign up for one myself. It costs around $735 USD to see an audiologist, optometrist, general physician, gynecologist, ophthalmologist, get a tomography, blood tests, urinary/stool tests, and do various ultrasounds – all in one day ! Plus you get special clothing and food & snacks too. Results are mailed within a week.

I decided to go with a particular university in Taipei, because they’re one of the most well-known universities in Taiwan, and I was assuming they’d be able to work with an English speaker. I suppose to my surprise, the exam is only done in Mandarin, but also my Mandarin is not as terrible as I was expecting (although I definitely am needing to have a lot to learn). Their online spots fill up quickly, and you basically have to book half a year in advance, which I did! I managed to grab a date during my spring break period.

The sunlight on my way to the hospital:

Check in time was between 7:30-8:20 am, so I headed out from our Airbnb at 7:00 am ish. Once I got to the waiting room area, they gave me a number as they were verifying everyone’s paperwork (they usually mail the paperwork to everyone but as I don’t live in Taiwan, they said I could go pick up the paperwork the Friday before):

While waiting, I got an amber alert about an upcoming earthquake, and the earthquake literally started like 3 seconds after. It was a big earthquake – 6.2 on the Richter scale in Taipei (7.1 in an area of more central Taiwan, and it lasted maybe for 30 seconds. That was hand down the biggest earthquake I’ve personally ever experienced and it was quite scary. I was on the 6th floor of the building so I could feel the building sway quite a lot – ceiling panels not too far also stated falling from the ceiling and creating a lot of dust. I tried to stand near a pillar for the meantime because that’s all I know how to do in an earthquake in a big building:

I had aunts from both side of the family check in on us, reminding me that the Taiwanese are very accustomed to earthquakes. Some hospital personnel didn’t want to close some doors because “sometimes the doors get stuck during earthquakes”.

The health check ups started shortly after, even though many aftershocks were still present. We did a quick little orientation, and then went into locker rooms to change into outfits they had prepared for us:

No jewelry since we would have to be around a lot of machines ! So there were courtesy bags :

We weren’t allowed to eat 8 hours prior to the health check up. So after some tests and consultations have been done, we had snacks around 10:30. I selected soy milk and a tea egg!:

The eating area also had this British health documentary playing in the background.

After some more tests, we had lunch closer to noon. I was able to select fish as my main entree, it was tasty !:

During lunch, they had someone talk about a healthy diet. There were also tea dispensers in the kitchen area ! :

The exam ended around 2:30, and so I headed back to the Airbnb. Around 6:00, Jacob and I headed out to Raohe night market, known for its handful of Michelin-star food stands (which I can’t eat anymore due to my change in diet six years ago):

The two things I grabbed here was 1. 臭豆腐 fries ! An interesting take on a traditional snack:

I also got this cane sugar juice:

Some other food photos I caught while walking around:

And finally, some other photos walking around the night market: