It Pays to Know the Language...

Pushing myself to go to a country where I don't speak the language is probably one of the biggest challenges I have faced. Sure, I've been to France, but at least their language is written in the same alphabet where you can try to decipher what it possibly means. But here, exploring the authenticity of Asia, the Chinese characters, after a while, all end up looking like a picture of a house. Setting out and yet another day of sight-seeing, I found it almost comical the situations we get ourselves into when 'trying' something since we have no idea what the description or directions are. My personal favorite moment from today was when Anna and I were at the Taipei Main Station underground mall and we saw a line of 3D viewfinders. Looking them over, they each had a title written in Chinese characters on them, but obviously, we were SOL on that one. We looked at each other--"Want to?" "Sure, why not?" We stuck in the coin and bent forward to see the what this viewfinder had to offer. My slides began going by-- "huh, it's the zoo." They were all pictures of all sorts of animals. But from my right, I hear Anna, "Oh my gosh! It's a girl in a bikini!" Anna had accidentally chosen the "Men's entertainment" slide-show. We laughed as the slides continued to roll. Soft-core porn pictures flipped by one by one, but we could barely see them, our eyes were glossed with tears from laughter.