Taipei Bus Driver

It was the last night I would be able to see my parents until winter break. I had come back to their hotel room after eating delicious Thai food. We watched television and chatted. It was almost midnight, so I went to the corner hoping to catch a cab. All the one's that passed by had their lights on, but fortunately within a minute the 251 bus appeared. I hopped on the bus (the only passenger at that hour) and was greeted with a warm "Hello!" by a very friendly rather eccentric driver wearing an undershit and an aboriginal style shell-covered bandana. He asked me where I was headed. "Gongguan" I said. "Oh, you go to Tai Da?" he asked. "Yep", I replied. He responded to this with ten minutes of very fast talking in heavily accented Mandarin and very broken English. He talked about his son at Tai Da, his Taiwanese heritage, his love of Taiwan, the beauty of the Taiwanese language, why Tang poems sound better in Taiwanese, and why I should be careful when eating in Taiwan because inorganic pesticides and fertilizers are all too common and completely unnatural.

My parents are back in the States now and I'm alone here in a new country. Having a lot of fun and learning a lot, but I definitely miss everyone back home.