I get this question a lot.  Do I tell people how I truly feel? Should I spill the real tea?  When I came to Taiwan, after graduating, I planned to come to Taipei, study 9 months of Chinese and then “maybe” go home and start working. But really, in my head, I was already thinking “Stay another year, get your mess together, do something else and continue learning Chinese” was lowkey already my plan. April came by this year, and everything was going so well. By then, I have fully assimilated into Taiwan, my Chinese learning was going well, I was a part of so many activities, and going home just seemed like an afterthought. It was in fact, the very last option. Even when things went to shit in the summer, going home just was not a thing. When I first came back from living in China for a year, I was experiencing a major reverse culture shock. Even though I have mixed feelings about China itself, I, in fact, was very pleased with my time living …

As early back as elementary school, my father got me hooked onto using computers. He spent a lot of time building his desktop computers so I would accompany him to the big computer shows out in MD and VA where he would go buy his spare parts. Sitting at home, I would just watch him put the computer together in fascination. A lot of the vendors would even sell those educational games and he would get those for me as well. But as I got older my interests expanded to other things.  Now when he set up a computer just for my sisters and me, everything changed. I started going ham and doing whatever I could on the internet. Using Google Search and Ask Jeeves, listening to music and watching music videos on Yahoo, I mean I was doing everything I possibly could. For at this time, the internet was still fresh, relatively new and playing games online was a huge thing. I started playing the single-player games on websites like Arcadepod, Y8, Miniclip, Freeonlinegames, …

I have had a handful of “interesting” encounters with people in Taiwan. Too many to not just share. When I travel, people are more inclined to stare. But I feel in Taiwan, they love to come up to foreigners and share the craziest lines as a way to practice their English or even see if the person can speak Mandarin. And I know for sure being black, a woman, AND traveling solo in Taiwan, I’ve had one too many funny, weird, creepy, and interesting interactions with locals in this country. Here’s an example of just a few: The funny Selecting Snacks We’re by a food stall in the night market where this lady sells a snack called 年糕 which is a deep-fried rice cake. Anyway, my friend ordered and the lady thought I chose the darkest pieces because my skin is so black. I hollered. The audacity. “WOAHHHHH YOU CAN USE CHOPSTICKSSS???!!!!” So in Hualien, I took my friend to a restaurant near our hostel for he wanted some noodles. Mind you, a lot of …

Biking as a way to commute has gained a lot of attention in the past few years, but it is also something that I have personally always wanted to do. When I first learned how to ride, at that time my family and I only lived in a small 2 bedroom apartment in Fort Totten. My father would stand outside and watch us ride our bikes down the alley while fixing his car or chatting with the neighbors. If we went any further, he would get worried for we were so young at the time. When he wasn’t looking, I would sneak off with my sister and ride down to my cousins’ place (which was just literally a block down) to see if they were outside and say hi and I would ride right back. I wanted to re-live those times but extend it to more of an everyday thing. And this where it started: The transition to biking as a way to commute didn’t start till 2013 right before I graduated high school. I …