the heart as it is | courage • grief • beauty

So, unfortunately I have not been able to journal and reflect as much as I would have liked since I was basically sick for my first week and then I also have a paper to be working on. I will write as much as I can about my days 3-9 (4-7 was when I was sick with who knows what)

Day 3, Sunday
I had finally made breakfast for myself. I still have so much to finish since I got sick and have been eating mostly plain things, but my stomach is mostly back to normal now, so I hope to finish more:

After breakfast, I headed to church. I had tried to find an affirming church to go to and could only find a Chinese-speaking one, so I went. Apparently there are a handful of like “secretly affirming” churches but obviously those are harder to find on the internet (I have yet to share here why I started attending affirming churches since Jan 2023 but that is a whole other blog post in and of itself). It was a pleasant experience overall, and I pretty much ended up spending that whole day with them since we went out to lunch and then tea afterwards.

For service, I really appreciated how they had the bookmark open to the page the sermon was on:

Me trying to note the translation version in case I wanted to get a Chinese Bible:

Lunch at this really tasty Vietnamese place:

Tea and cake at a Louisa Coffee location:

Also got to reach my steps that day :

Later that night, while watching a drama I was finishing (回到以前）, I noticed these scene that was taken in a park that I visited the day prior:

Day 4, Monday
This was the day I needed to turn in a document at the national immigration agency in Taipei. The line was very long ( I waited for about an hour until my number was called), but the process itself was very quick. I would have to come back Thursday to pick up another document. After turning in the document, I picked up some food across the street from the agency:

It was also the first day of the typhoon, but I decided to walk home in the rain anyways (with an umbrella) since iI wanted to get my step count in. Here are some photos I got on the way home:

Monday afternoon I started to feel really sick so I tried to rest as much as possible.

Day 5, Tuesday

I was supposed to have a really nice meal with my aunt this day, but I ended up not sleeping much since the nausea kept me up. I had been drinking filtered tap water and could not tell what on earth was making me feel terrible, so I had some bottled water delivered to me and also went out to buy some plain foods ( and also successfully found a childhood favorite bread spread of mine):

I stayed in bed this whole day except for when I had to eat and use the bathroom.

Day 6, Wednesday
I also stayed in bed this whole day. Here is the view from my bed:

My sweet aunt had been checking up on me a lot and recommended I have some regular cooked white rice with fish, so I ordered a bento with those items. I am so thankful it is so easy to find these items on Ubereats here and for uber cheap:

Thankful also for my nightly calls with my husband:

Day 7, Thursday
Still feeling sick, but I had class in the morning (4pm Wednesday PST is 7am Thursday TST). I obviously had my zoom camera off since I was not feeling great. Thankfully class only ran for 1.5 hours (instead of the 4.5 hours it is intended to go for).

This was also the day I needed to return to the National Immigration Agency to pick up a document, so I had to get ready as best as I can and I decided to wear a mask out this day. I was very slowly getting better, but noticed I feel much better when my body is properly ‘elongated’, that is, either lying down or walking. I can stand too but only a little better than sitting. So when I took the mtro and went to the office, I did not do much sitting. Even standing in the metro made me feel a bit nauseous, so I tried my best to focus on my breathing. I also was going through so much of my ginger candy. I am currently on my last bag and am trying to find more in the medicine stores here hopefully.

After I picked up the document, I got some snacks again from the 7-11 across the street:

Some other photos from that day (I did not walk back even though it wasn’t raining since I still wasn’t feeling well):

I was really craving congee because usually when my stomach is feeling horrible, I have congee back at home. It is so ridiculously easy to find congee on Ubereats, so I ordered this super delicious seafood one, and it made my stomach feel really good:

To my delight, I had apparently remembered to pack this strong herbal stomach medicine that I used to eat when I was younger whenever I had stomach issues, so I started taking that this night as I had to do a day trip back to my father’s hometown the next day (not my photo):

Day 8, Friday

For breakfast, I ordered some congee again and ate it with the stomach medicine even though I was feeling a good deal better:

My uncle and aunt (the aunt is my father’s oldest sister) took me to Yilan, which is where I have to go to get my Taiwanese ID card since that is where my dad’s household is listed. It is about an hour trip and we went through some really long tunnels to get there. Here is a photo of me getting my ID card!:

For lunch, my aunt took me to this seafood place since my uncle and I don’t really eat land meat (I also noticed that in Chinese, they don’t really have to distinguish between land meat and sea meat… it’s just 肉 and 魚):

My uncle also used this opportunity to pick up some eggs from his family home:

The last thing we did here was visit a beach. I do not recall at all visiting the beach when I came to my father’s hometown as a child. The scenery here was absolutely stunning:

For the evening, since I was generally feeling a lot better, I wanted to go out and do something since I had wasted 4 days away in bed. I couldn’t think of what to do, but then remembered that Taiwan is well known for their night markets ! So I went to a nearby one in case my stomach wanted to act up again. Here are some photos I took on the way there:

I bought this matcha bagel with red bean at a bakery by the night market:

Some photos I took at the night market:

On the way home, I bought this pineapple bun:

And for dinner, I had leftovers from lunch with soymilk I bought from Carrefour:

Day 9, Saturday

To begin the day, I really wanted to go to a coffee shop kind of place to read and journal. I finally went to one today, but I regret the food I got there because my stomach unfortunately has not fully healed yet (no diary, no caffeine, now raw vegetables – and I ordered all of that woohoo…). I still enjoyed it though:

I then did a little zoom call date with Jacob because I wanted to spend more time with him.

My 12:00 headache came rather promptly (jetlag most likely…) so I rested for a bit, and then headed out to the Taiwanese Museum of Contemporary Art.

I think they asked if I was a citizen when I was going to pay for the ticket, but I said no because even though I have an ID now, my Chinese is so bad so I said no I am not a citizen. The museum had quite a lot of exhibits that were videos and I was not in the mood to watch videos… so I went through the exhibit rather quickly, like 20 minutes.

Also, we are only allowed to bring phones and cameras in the museum. Everything else (including water) has to be locked up in the locker room area. So that was interesting.

Overall, it was a good place to hide from the rain, but I was pretty bored. There were some interesting installations, like the study of cuteness, but unless maybe there are different installations, I would not return (to be honest, I never really was into contemporary or modern art, but sometimes the artwork is intriguing to me).

Some photos while walking around the city today:

Some photos at the museum:

Thank you for reading !