Arriving in Taipei, Taiwan!
I've been in Taiwan for six days, and it still hasn't really sunk in that I'm actually here, that I will actually be here for the next 10 months. I left Portland, Oregon on Tuesday, August 22nd, and had a relatively uneventful flight to Tokyo, Japan. There were no other students on my first flight, and I was expecting to be alone on my second, but as I was walking to my gate, a girl about my age stopped me and asked me if I was an exchange student. It turned out that we were both on our way to Taiwan, although we were going different districts. Because our flight didn't start boarding for a few hours, we went together in search of Japanese food, stopped to buy some green tea, and then found a ramen restaurant where we ate lunch (despite it being about midnight Portland time, and 3 am in Atlanta, where she was from). We talked for a while about our excitement, our fears, the US, Taiwan, the eclipse, etc. Unfortunately neither of the people sitting next to us on the plane