How to watch a movie in 4 to 10 easy steps

My husband and I are in Taipei this week locating an apartment, visiting the American school, and generally trying to learn our way around the city with assistance from a relocation company. Because we are comfortably ensconsed at the Grand Hyatt downtown, it is tempting to see this as a vacation--children safely and happily staying with the grandparents in the States, room service breakfasts each morning, beauty salon on the 5th floor for his and her cuts and manicures--and truly, I am taking advantage of the second honeymoon aspects. It's just that, well, things are so different here. Simple tasks tend to take me three times as long to complete.

For instance, after a few jam-packed days of apartment hunting, we took some time off to see Pirates of the Caribbean last night. It took us several attempts to purchase our tickets and combo snack from the kiosk. My husband couldn't seem to get the touchscreen to work for him beyond the first screen. Thankfully, the first screen was a language option, allowing us to select "English" so that we could not know what we were doing in our own language. He would get to the next page and then in trying to choose our movie, send it back to the beginning page all over again. My theory on the touchscreen? His giant American meat hooks overwhelmed the computer. After several tries, he let me try with my smaller fingers--I would peck away at the screen while he read off the instructions. We still pushed some wrong button and had to start over at least one more time, but finally with our movie selected, we viewed our seat selection. Should we change our assigned seats? (Nope, we'll keep them. No way would we risk messing up and having to start over.) Now, we were zipping through the Snack options. What exactly is a churros? we wondered as we selected combo 1 from the menu. (Don't know but we'll take one...and only one because trying to buy 2 combos was "Sorry not an option.") Payment time. Why won't it read our ATM card? (Just keep swiping until it finally does.) "Your ticket is printing." As we stood there, dumbly staring at the machine that seemed to be doing nothing, hubby McLeod muttered under his breath, "Please let them be in there," and tentatively reached into a little slot at the bottom. Success! Two tickets and a Combo voucher. It felt like winning the jackpot of a slot machine.

Of course, we then had no idea how to get to the right theater at the multi-plex (understanding the Chinese movie stub was not happening), so with our "dumb American" looks plastered on our faces, we simply held out the tickets to various staff people who waved us in the right direction. Arriving outside the correct theater, McLeod approached the snack counter with the Combo Voucher. The teenager at the register fired off something in Chinese to which McLeod responded hopefully, "Coca-Cola?" The young man efficiently filled a cup and asked something else. This time McLeod gave the deer in the headlights look and the guy shifted to English, "Sweet or Salty Popcorn?" Sweet! And the mysterious churros turned out to be a kind of cinnamon stick similar in taste and texture to a funnel cake.

Inside the theater we settled into Row L, Seats 9 and 10, and I felt quite a sense of accomplishment. We watched as 10 or 12 other patrons wandered in and dutifully took their seats in rows K and L, all of us huddled together in these two rows against menace of 24 empty rows around us. I laughed like a crazy woman at the series of service announcements and advertisements before the movie. (Strange anime characters passing out from green sewer gases as they descend into manholes without the proper oxygen equipment, etc.) I then checked out of reality for a few hours as we watched our movie. Afterwards, I was overcome by the strangest wave of shock as I exited the theater and suddenly remembered that I was not in fact at the AMC movie theater back in Texas and had no idea where the exit was. Ahh, there it was: the exit sign with the green stick figure running for his life for an open door. Evidently when you exit here, you exit with gusto. And so, we did just that, rushing with the crowd into the steamy night air, thankful to know how to do one more thing in our new hometown.