"YOU DON'T SEE THAT IN MINNESOTA!"

In my (Annalicia's) opinion, one of the greatest gifts of visiting a new place is the perspective the experience offers. There are countless things about life back in the US that I thought were "normal" before moving to Taiwan. What I mean by that is I didn't think twice about these things...I didn't even entertain the thought that some people might do or think about these things in a way that's different from my ideas about them. It's an interesting experience to have a culture challenge what you didn't even question before. It's a humbling experience to have to say to yourself, "Well, apparently that particular idea isn't inherently "normal"...it's just a "normal" one for me."

The following is a list of some the things Phil and I have noticed as being different from what we're used in the States (rural Minnesota in particular). This list is not intended to be very serious, but it might give you a taste of what I was trying to describe above. Also, it's not my intention to judge the Taiwanese culture as good or bad based on these things, it's simply what Phil and I have observed.

Here it goes...
(Sorry about everything being underlined...we were having a formatting issue we weren't able to fix.)

Things you don't usually see or hear or do in Minnesota, but things that are definitely seen, heard, and/or done here:

---Fish flavored Quaker Instant Oatmeal
---Palm Trees
---Mountains
---A family of four on one scooter
---Lizards crawling under your door
---A family of four on one bicycle
---Humidity that's so intense that it causes a haze that prevents you from seeing the mountains most days
---Humidity that's so intense that it can cause our hands to be "pruney"
---People with two names...a Chinese one and an English one
---Garbage trucks that play music (songs like "Fur Elise" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen") :)
---Drinking hot tea when it's 90 degrees out and the heat index is even higher!
---"I like your nose, I think it's beautiful."
---"You look like a movie star."
---No cents...everything's in dollars here
---No tax when buying anything
---No tipping...anywhere...for anything!
---"How much money do you make?" (This not an inappropriate question to ask here.)
---"What year are you?" (The Chinese calculate their age a little differently than we do so they'll commonly ask this questions instead of "How old are you?" They are pretty obsessed with age here and it's completely appropriate to ask anyone about it.)
---"How many children do you have? Why don't you have children? When are you going to have children? How many are you going to have?" (The Taiwanese are very curious people.) :)
---Squat toilets versus what I used to call "normal toilets"...I now call them "Western toilets" :) (Western toilets are still around here, there just not nearly as common.)
---Tissues used as napkins
---Adult children who are not married living with their parents regardless of their age...for example, we've met two women in their 40s who both live with their parents (This is not looked upon poorly, it's simply what most single people do here.)
---No sheets to sleep under (People here just have a fitted sheet to cover their mattress and then sleep with only blankets.)
---People covering their mouths when they're talking on their cell phone
---People napping at school (even my director...she'll just put her head down on her desk for awhile) :)
---People responding to sentiments of appreciation with what would be equivalent in English to saying, "No, no, no...please don't mention it." (As you know, our respond to someone saying, "Thank you." is often, "You're welcome." or, "Sure, no problem." We've found that a lot of Taiwanese people would be uncomfortable responding in that manner...they don't feel it's appropriate to take credit for what they did. Even though as Americans we view these responses as kind, most Taiwanese would feel more comfortable with a response that offers a little more humility.)
---Individually wrapped EVERYTHING...cookies, crackers, etc... (You think you're simply buying a box of crackers only to open it up and find out every single cracker has its own wrapping!)
---People running barefoot on outdoor tracks

---Houses that look like apartment buildings and/or office buildings
---Houses with absolutely no carpet in them
---Only full grown carrots...no baby carrots anywhere
---"Triple W..." (instead of "W, W, W, dot...")
---A significant amount of women with armpit and leg hair
---People burning money in the streets and at some temples (Some Taoist believe they have to do this for their relatives who have passed away so they have money to spend in Heaven.)
---Dogs responding to Chinese commands
---Buildings that all go up instead of out (Because of the limited space here houses, stores, restaurants, etc... are all narrow and tall. We've also been told that property taxes are based on the amount of land a building takes up, so it's more economical in terms of taxes to build this way.)
---Little blue trucks that drive around loudly advertising different stores (We have about three to five of these trucks go by our apartment everyday.)

---Little girls squatting over street drains to go to the bathroom
---People insisting on paying the bill at restaurants not only as a way to be nice, but also as a way to "save face" or prove their status (We've been told that when this happens, often the person who pays doesn't have the attitude, "I just gave away my money." Instead, they often have the attitude, "I just gained respect.")
---Everyone not thinking twice about giving up their time, money and resources in order for their guests to be comfortable
---Plates, bowls and cups never being allowed to be empty in a social eating situation
---Men and women sharing the bathroom at school (There's a few pieces of fabric hanging in an attempt to make the urinal space more private...the hanging fabric doesn't do much though...I'm hoping I never have to use the bathroom when my principal's in there!) :)
---People eating out more often than cooking in (Because of the heat people don't often cook in their homes in the summer. Also, buying local food from a vendor or from a restaurant is often very inexpensive.)
---Maps with Asia on the left/West side and North America on the right/East side
---Most people not owning a dryer (Everything goes on the clothes line.)
---Most people not having ovens in their kitchens (Baking is not something that's done here often...you can't find any muffin mixes, brownie mixes or anything like that in the grocery stores.)
---People treating every meal like an occasion
---People gesturing for another person to "come here" by having their palm facing the ground and then moving their fingers towards themselves (As you know, typically in the US we gesture for someone to "come here" with our palm facing up. If we were to do that here, it would be thought of as an offensive gesture because the Taiwanese people usually only gesture that way if they want an animal to come towards them.)
---People never showering in the morning (Apparently showering in the morning is something only people from Western cultures do.)
---Kimchi pizza (Kimchi is a food from Korea. It's kind of like pickled cabbage. In my opinion, kimchi pizza is surprisingly good!)

(A jar of kimchi)

---People ordering their words and names by what they feel is the biggest or most important thing first (For example, their name order goes like this: family name (last name), middle name, given name (first name).)
---People stamping their names on important documents instead of signing them
---Every receipt from any store or restaurant in the entire country having a lottery number at the top (Apparently they were having trouble here with people throwing their receipts in the street. So, in an attempt to stop this they put lottery numbers on all receipts. Every two months they broadcast the winning numbers. The amount that a person can win isn't crazy high, but something like 5000 USD...a good chunk of change, though.)
---Dust pans that look like this