Fili’s world

"Thai what?", she stares at me with a silly look. "Sima… Sima! over here! did we ever have anybody go to - what did you say that country was again? Thai wand, he says… what’s the capital of Thai wand?" and then I hear that Sima girl proclaim - "I checked, there’s no such country".

Yep, been there before. Those who know me and my obsession with Taiwan and China are already fluent with the local politics and can repeat the names of the university cities if asked at 2am, but all those people I had to deal with in the past two weeks to prepare for my departure to Taiwan always had the same null face when they heard where I’m leaving to.

"Going where?! why?!", "they’re the ones with the issues against China, right?" / "Isn’t that China?", "I’ve never heard of anybody who went there", "why on earth would you leave Israel to go there?!", "couldn’t get accepted to Harvard, eh?" are only some of the comments the friendly Israelis handling my affairs felt like they had to share.

I didn’t remember there were so many things to take care of - Tickets, VISA, national insurance, health insurance, travel insurance, taxes, car, authorizing certificates and it just goes on and on… I’m sure I forgot to take care of something.

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So, yeah, I’m off to Taiwan with a stop in Bangkok. I’ll probably be spending a few days in Taipei before heading down south to see Hsinchu (Xinzhu) and Tainan. School starts at mid-September so I also have some time to explore around and settle down.

There’s not much that I know about what’s going to happen, but if all goes well I might be spending a few years there. Buddha knows I’ve been looking for something like that for over a year now, and I’m both excited and nervous now that it’s here.

In the past few weeks I realized that it’s much harder for me to leave than I thought it would be. There’s my family and close friends that make it much more difficult for me to say goodbye than it was last time. So…

That’s it. Last minute packing, nothing seems to be in order, but I know everything will work out fine.