The last sixteen days of my time in Taitung will always have a special place in my heart. When I first chanced upon this little wooden house located in 小馬, the idea of having a taste of a slow life struck me - a place where I live at my own pace, a place close to the trees, mountains and ocean, a place where I can forget about the world and live quietly.
The days and people I experienced here reached into the darkest corners of my heart and filled it with love and warmth. It's almost impossible for me to describe what I've felt here with words, as though using alphabets could even come close to describing the vivid and subtle smears of colors in a rainbow.
Located within the hills, there was a gentle quietness punctuated by the rustling of trees. A pair of swings hanging by the tree facing the ocean sways gently in the afternoon wind, a curved road paved with stones led up to a house with turquoise doors and windows, and burnt out bonfire circle out the front.
There are three cats, a black and white one called 黑白, a three legged cat called 可可, and a fluffy one called 小咪。There are also two dogs, a black one called 小乖，and a brown one called Waki.
When I returned home on my scooter everyday, 小乖 would run down from the house, roll on her back and ask for a belly rub before accompanying me on the walk up to the house. And whenever we left, both dogs (and sometimes 黑白) would accompany us until the end of the road.
It may not have seemed like much, but these little moments sparked the idea of how nice it would be to have a life like this - a small group of friends, a quiet place where our dreams can run free, the ocean to swallow all our pain, and whenever we feel ready, two lovely dogs to welcome us home.
In the room I lived in, named 大海，there are full length glass doors on both sides. On one side, I could see a wooden house and the range of mountains behind, and on the other where there is a balcony with two ratan chairs, I could enjoy looking at the ocean and the sunrise. Shortly after arriving, we experienced a wet spell and the temperature dropped. That day, I spent the entire afternoon laying on my bed and watching the clouds float across the mountains in all its beautiful gloominess, with nowhere to go and nowhere to be. Days there are simple and nourishing, and they often passed without a sensing of time. Without this man made concept, I could just stay in the present, right here where everything exists right now. Not in the future, nor the past, but here in this very moment.
For the entirety of my stay, I lived there with three other girls who were there on a work exchange and we became good friends really quickly, and shared many beautiful and interesting experiences. In this cosy space, we had many fond memories of making meals together, eating together, lying down outdoors at night to watch the stars, sitting together and talking and laughing about the randomest things, having bonfire nights, long walks on the beach, letting them experience surfing, and even planting trees together.
It didn't take long for them to feel like family, and I treated them like my younger sisters, cooking or buying dinners for them on most days. Slowly, I started to know people from that same community, and though where I’m from and the way I speak is different, they treated me like a part of them, and I really settled into life there. It’s probably the first time that I felt like I belonged in a place apart from the country where I was born.
I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back to Taiwan. I don’t know how I’ll be able to live there on a longer term basis. But deep inside my heart, I already knew that my heart had found a home, and I knew that it was where I wanted to live.
虽然到最后必须要回来，但我已知道，我的心早已经留在台东了。
