It's always a relief to get through the first round of check-ins and security screenings with flying colors. It's even nicer to be ready for your flight two hours early. I'll be boarding my flight to Shanghai Pudong International Airport around 6pm, and I think the flight will be leaving at 6:45 but I'm not sure. My boarding pass shows an earlier time and half of it's in Chinese, so I'm just gonna be there at 6pm and call it close enough.
Once I'm in Shanghai, I have a three-ish hour layover until my flight to Frankfurt, Germany, at which time I have a two hour layover until my flight to Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, France. The flight from Shanghai to Germany is twelve hours long, so that'll probably be the one I'll do most of my sleeping on. I have a window seat for the first two flights (SCORE) so hopefully that sleeping thing won't be as big a pain in the butt as it was when I was coming to Taiwan and sitting by the aisle.
Taoyuan International Airport is amazing, btw. I'm at gate D8 and gate D7 is, I kid you not, a mini museum exhibit dedicated to the puppets in this Chinese drama that's apparently really popular here. I've only ever seen bits of the show in TV or pictures of the puppet characters on book covers at convenience stores. At gate D7 there's a display case with six enormous puppets posed theatrically, and up close they are incredible. My interest in this show has just been piqued.
As I was going through security, I realized how excited I was to be travelling again. Just being in an airport is exciting, it's a portal to the rest of the world. That I'm going to Paris, of all places, boggles my mind. I don't think I'm going to believe it until I step off the plane at Charles de Gaulle. Sometimes I can't believe I've been to all the places I have: Chicago, Indianapolis, NYC, Japan (a six-hour layover counts!!), Taiwan, and now France and Germany (a two-hour layover counts!!). By the end of this trip I'll have money for France/Germany (Euro), the US (US dollar), Japan (yen), and Taiwan (New Taiwan dollar, or kuai). That's four kinds of money for five different countries.
This means something to me because previously, I would collect money from family or friends who'd been to other places. All that currency is in a plastic cup in my bedroom in the US, and I never categorized it so I don't know where it's all from. But the NTD has legit value to me. It's currency. The USD has legit value as currency. And after five days in Paris, I'm pretty sure the Euro is going to be "legit" currency as well. To me, you're really getting integrated into a culture when the local currency becomes something you can quantify in terms of your daily life. In the US, I'd think of expensive items in terms of how many tanks of gas it cost. Here in Taiwan, I think of it in terms of meals, because that's where the bulk of my money goes. I already know that when I get to France, the first thing I'll do is look at how much the average meal costs and budget my money around that.
I think I'm rambling. This is probably something I should write a separate post about, costs in Taiwan and how to budget while you're there. The point is, I'm becoming (dare I say it) international, and I'm learning how to travel. Which I like, because I want to travel more. Although I'm starting to love Taiwan and could see myself living here for another year, I already know I really want to go to Japan still, and my long-term travel journey won't be complete until I've done that. But even after Japan, I don't worry about what I'll do. I no longer feel like the world is closed, or that possibilities are beyond my reach. The world is so open, so full of possibilities, so full of places to expand your life.
This Paris trip is good. I've been starting to feel trapped by my job and the cold of winter and it'll be good to remember that I have the ability to move, that I'm autonomous. I can go anywhere.
And I'm going to Paris. :) See you in Shanghai!
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