january | team soell | The View From a Taichung Flat

Wednesday, 18 February 2009

This past week has been a whirlwind of complete craziness filled with working, cleaning, sicking, visiting, more working, more sicking, shopping, packing, and finally flying half way across the world to Taiwan on what has to be my longest and most tedious travel experience to date. In stroke of pure luck, I managed to catch that awful life-sucking flu going around the northeast portion of the country in the middle of all the other craziness going on. I’m starting to feel better now, but being on a plane breathing moisture free recycled air for three days really doesn’t help anything.

The short story attached to my impromptu international travel extravaganza goes something like this: A few weeks ago, while Andy and I were still enjoying the sun and surf of Southern California, my dad called to let us know my little sister had been in a minor scooter/car accident in Taiwan, where she is currently living. Fast forward to last Monday when Team Soell was trekking it’s way back across the continental US, Julenna called with the news that three hospital visits, numerous internal photographs, and several non english-speaking medical professionals later, she learned that she had torn both her ACL and meniscus and would require surgery as soon as possible. Since my father doesn’t have a passport and his wife has never been on an airplane before, I was the obvious choice to hop on over to accompany her on the wild and crazy adventure of surgery in a foreign country.

So here I am, after three days of vertical sleeping positions, in Taichung, Taiwan snapping photos on the balcony of my sister’s flat. I got in late last night after a crazy flight that went Columbus to Chicago to LA—missed the connection to Taipei so I spent the night in LA—LA to Tokyo to Taipei and then a train ride from Taipei to Taichung. I have today to get caught up on as much sleep as possible before we head to the hospital Friday morning for the surgery. I’ve heard rumors that acupuncture is on the menu for today. This should be fun.