5 years have passed since I moved to Taiwan. At times, I still don't feel like I'm at home; it feels temporary. Initially, we moved every year, but now we have been renting the same apartment for 3 years. Not being able to afford our own place has been making me feel quite depressed lately. I want to have a pet, but all I can have are my fishes. The inability to make changes to our home is also frustrating. I would like to have more colorful walls, especially since the once white walls are now dirty, scratched, and peeling in some spots. Another problem is that if something is broken, it takes forever for our landlady to fix it. For instance, the net in the bathroom window has been waiting to be changed for a year. We used to keep the window closed due to mosquitoes and other insects flying in, but during winter, mold started growing in the bathroom. Now, I just keep the window open and have to deal with mosquito bites. The landlady even told us to find someone to fix it ourselves (although isn't that her job?).
A couple of weeks have passed since our speech at Tainan Vocational High School, and the teacher finally prepared a letter of appreciation for me, which I received almost a month after the speech. Not everything went well that day; I felt so stressed and it was hard for me to speak. The teacher collected messages from the students and sent them to me a few days after the speech. The students said they were happy to learn more about Poland and encouraged me to be more open, not to be shy or nervous when speaking in front of people. I think it's easier to be that way in Taiwan, but growing up in Poland, I barely saw large groups of people. I was always shy and nervous, and I didn't like being among people. Since I lived in the countryside, we didn't have many kids around. In elementary school, there were only eight of us in the class! Going to middle school or high school was already stressful for me, as suddenly there were 25 kids in the class and over 400 people in the school. For some, it may still not sound like much, but our elementary school had fewer than 100 kids, and we all knew each other.
I thought my relationship with my parents-in-law was getting better, but it was once again destroyed. On the day of the speech, I baked two cakes for them and left them in the fridge. We told them before leaving the house, so they knew which cakes they were. However, when we came back, it turned out they ate the sponge cakes that were prepared for the next day's orders to make Polish pudding boxes. It was already late, after 8 PM, when we finally finished everything and had dinner, but I still had to bake more sponge cakes. Worse than eating the cakes, they said they weren't yummy and were so dry! Of course, they're dry, they're not supposed to be eaten that way. They're supposed to be soaked with coffee and layered with pudding (just like one of the cakes I left in the fridge for them). I was so angry and straightforwardly told them to leave the house. My husband took my side, although for many more days, my mother-in-law couldn't understand that she was wrong. We haven't had much time to meet them since it happened, and I try to avoid them.
Recently, we also enrolled our son in kindergarten. Unfortunately, it's not close to our home, so I have to walk with him there. We don't have a bike mainly because of the lack of space to store everything. Why are houses in Taiwan so expensive? I feel like no matter how many years pass, we will still not be able to afford one. The population is getting smaller and smaller, but house prices keep rising here.
Lately, I started practicing driving a scooter, although my husband still works in Hsinchu, so we don't have much time to do so. He wants me to pass the exam for a scooter license, and possibly a car driving license as well. Although I don't think I'll be good at driving, very often I feel I cannot focus on the road, especially with so many scooters and cars driving here. I think I might be afraid to be among them, haha.
June is almost coming to an end, and we will finally finish the immigration project. On June 18th, we also recorded an interview, solely for the purpose of the gala for all the people who took part in it. We don't know the date yet or where it will be held, although it's usually in Taipei. An immigration worker came to our home with a camera crew, and it took about 2.5 hours to film. They wanted to show the cake-making process, and oops... my mixer refused to work! It's a new stand mixer that I barely used, and it chose that day to malfunction. I still managed to finish the process, although part of it couldn't be filmed. They prepared some ready answers for the interview, mostly praising the immigration office.
Lately, many ingredients have been increasing in price, and I had to raise the price for my cakes, mainly cheesecakes, as the price of cream cheese rose over 50% in the past 2 years. But I barely raised the price of my cakes. I was too cheap from the beginning, and people got used to it. Now, I don't have many orders again. At least we finally had time to travel. We went to XiaoLiuqiu for 2 days, but I'll share more about that in separate posts. Feel free to check them out!
I'm still waiting for the time to go back to Poland. It's been 2.5 years already. More often, I'm thinking that maybe I won't be able to see everyone once I go back. Many things have happened; my aunt divorced a few months ago, and I don't feel comfortable meeting her with her boyfriend or my uncle with his girlfriend either. Other than that, my other aunt has cancer, and it sounds quite serious. I wanted to ask my cousin more about it, but he ignored my message. I guess that's what happens when you move abroad and live 8000km away from home with a 6-7 hour time difference. It's quite difficult to keep in touch with everyone. When I have time, my family goes to work, and once they finish work and have free time, I have to go to sleep.
Some time ago, I bought pink hair dye, although my husband didn't let me dye my hair for the interview, haha. Finally, we finished all our tasks, so nothing stops me from turning my hair pink! I bought Hello Bubble - Ballet Pink hair dye (available in Taiwan at Poya). There aren't many pink dyes available here, so I was happy to find this one. It's a foam dye, very easy to use. After a while, I could already see the hair color changing. Part of my hair was bleached before, so the color is very vibrant. The small bottle of dye was enough for my quite long hair. Although I regret putting the dye over my natural light brown hair as it made it a little peachy/orangey shade, which I'm not much of a fan of. I hope the pink stays on my hair for a longer time than when I dyed my hair at a hair salon 2 years ago. At that time, the more resembling purple than pink hair color disappeared within days. Here are my before and after pics. Now I feel like I would like to dye the upper part with some purple or burgundy color, not into the brown at all.
Little update:
I wanted to change the color of the upper part of my hair from brown to pink. I won't reveal which hair dye I bought, but I can only say it was a Taiwanese brand, and the color I chose was dusty rose, which promised to be a pinkish shade. After dyeing my hair, it turned out to be pretty much orangey and reddish. It also didn't cover my hair well; there were many brown spots. Not to mention that the amount of hair dye was really not much compared to the pink Korean hair dye I used. It looked really, really bad, so I covered my head and ran to the shop to get another hair dye. I chose a different pink, although the outcome isn't what was shown on the box, I think the result is quite nice. I didn't mean to cover my pink tops of hair, although it seems they caught some color during washing my hair.
