Farewell, Taiwan!

Taiwan was excellent, though we've had little time to digest what we saw (and ate) since our return home to Colorado. Final exams are this week. Spring has sprung. And meanwhile, I'm trying to secure a visa to Ghana, write a conference paper, and pack everything for the 3 week bicycle trip into a pannier-sized carry-on bag by Sunday. Life is good. In fact, I've been reflecting on how frequently Casey and I have been told that we'll tire of our flaneur lifestyle and soon realize that one city is not unlike the next and that after a while travel just gets old, old, old. While I'll agree that plane journeys have become a rather stale affair (I wondered if China Airlines was on auto-pilot the whole trip across the Pacific), the cityscape of Taipei is clearly different from that of Rio, and camping in Nebraska offers an entirely unique but equally good experience as pitching a tent in Arthur's Pass, New Zealand. I love this wobbly planet. She is the quintessential professor emeritus of old; and I, the not yet too jaded, overly self-conscious student, am willing to sit on the grass and take notes in the sun.