My inner thighs are still sore from Friday’s weightlifting. (This is an improvement; it was my inner thighs, outer thighs, and ass.) Unfortunately I had to do it again today. I couldn’t really decrease weights more to make it easier, because today’s workout included deadlift, shoulder press, lat pulldown, lunges, and crunches on the Swiss Ball, and 5 of 6 of those are no problem. Yeah, the 15 reps of DL might leave me a leeetle sore tomorrow, but it won’t be anything like the Thighs of Doom I’ve been having. (Ted’s been highly amused at the sound effects. Walking: ow ow ow ow ow. Stairs: ow ow OW OW OW quit laughing at me!!!) Upper body stuff, no problem. Crunches, been there been doing that forever. The lunges will kill me, though. I don’t know why, but even with no weight at all as I did them today, they leave me hurting every freaking time.
Nothing like self-abuse to look forward to first thing in the morning. And the worst part is, as my darling husband points out, this is all entirely self-inflicted.
We’ve been talking about the pros and cons of all of our next possible moves. (The pro list for moving to the Netherlands is too long to count – but so is the con list.) Staying longer [than Fall 2010] in Taiwan is not an option, or rather it is, but not one we plan to take. But it occurs to me that a lot of the things I like here are in comparison to life in the Netherlands, not in comparison to the US. That’s not the proper persective, because most of those are really just ways in which Taiwan is more Americanized than the Netherlands, like being able to get a good hamburger here or being able to buy more US brands. So I was trying to think of the things I like about Taiwan that are really Taiwanese. To complicate things, there are also things I like because they match (or beat) what I’m used to in the US, but that can fairly be listed here because they’re not a matter of being Americanized, just that there are a few areas like evening store hours where both countries are good. Off the top of my head, things I really like about Taiwan include, in no order:
1. cheap taxis everywhere. So nice not to have to drive when you’re tired or to worry about a designate driver!
2. the MRT (I still miss Phliadelphia’s SEPTA too, but the MRT is cheaper and cleaner.)
3. dumplings.
4. astonishingly kind and friendly people.
5. Stores open into the evening and on Sundays.
6. Watermelon juice.
7. Page One bookstore, because it has some things I’ve never seen in a US brick-and-mortar bookstore, like Arthur Ransome books.
8. Cheap massage places, no appointment required.
9. Impressively thorough annual physicals, required by law to be paid for by employers.
10. Weather that provides occasional days off work, though I could do without the landslides. (Most places in the US do have this, Arizona doesn’t.)
11. Impressive levels of convenience. Calling about a broken washing machine and having someone come out the same night – a Sunday night! – boggled my brain.
12. The general sense that any time I go into town I will learn something or see something surreal or interesting.