The Smells

Another month here. Six months in total. I've said this a million times but sometimes it feels like we've been here forever and sometimes it feels like it's been just a few short days. Whenever I get a whiff of some smell that takes me back to the first few days...that's when it feels like forever.

When I walk by "The Love Hotel" aka our first home here, I get that feeling. The whole alley has the same smell: one of really thick flowery perfume covering up sewage. It changes smell ratio, too. Sometimes I smell the perfume more and sometimes the sewage. Everything comes flooding back when I smell it. I see John and I in the taxi just an hour after we landed, staring out the windows and staring at each other, not knowing what to say. I see myself saying "xie xie" (shey shey) for the first time and noticing how weird it felt to make those words. I see myself looking out the hotel window, trying to will the sun out from behind the clouds, hoping it would make the world outside feel just the tiniest bit like home.

The smell of head office does the same thing, too. It makes me think of those days when I made a mental note of everything I saw on the way there, trying desperately to familiarize myself with Roosevelt Road, always forgetting where the good dumpling place was. It makes me think of looking dumbfounded at my bank card for the first time. There's a cartoon character on there! Crazy!

The 7-11s all have a distinct smell. I think it's the eggs. They all have these crock pots full of black-shelled eggs. I think they were once white-shelled, but become black after stewing in the black liquid for some time. You would think they'd smell awful, but they actually smell kind of cinnamon-y...like Christmas. Christmasy or not, though, I still haven't mustered up the strength to fish one out and give it a try. I'll stick with just smelling them. For now.

I've heard that smell is the sense strongest tied to memory, and I believe it. This city is full of smells. Smells that creep up on you slowly and make you think, "Wait, what am I smelling? Are you smelling that?" And others that stomp right up to you and slap you on the face making you say, "Oh, man! What IS that?!" Even though most are strong, not all of them are bad. Just different--SO different. I think some of them I'll never be able to describe in more detail than just, "Wow, it totally smelled like Taiwan just now."