16 Days. In Taiwan. With Susi.

第十六日

2009-05-29T11:17:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am in my house. In America. No night markets here, no meals under $5, no good transportation infrastructure. No bubble tea. Do I sound like I'm happy to be home?
But I guess that's Day 17.
Here's how Day 16 went.
Woke up after 2 hours of sleep to throw last-minute things into the suitcase in a sleepy haze. Went down to 7-11 to grab a final meat-bun for breakfast and some Hi-Chew for the plane. Loaded up the bus.

Hung out at the TP airport for an hour and a half waiting for the plane to Tokyo.Anti-smoking emotional blackmail!

I was conked out for the plane ride to Tokyo. No flu-inspectors this time because all of the inspectors started getting really sick from being inside those tin cans full of germy people we cal planes. Serves them right for trying to quarantine me! Nah, I hope everyone's ok for real. But serves them a little bit right.
Then it was time for a 13-hour flight to Detroit! They showed two awful dog movies and one good movie (Frost/Nixon). Guess which one I slept through? Hint: not Hotel for Dogs!
But it was better than the flight to Taiwan, so I guess I shouldn't complain so much all the time.
We had a SEVEN hour layover in Detroit, which was spent napping and eating hamburgers. ~How American~

But yeah, so it looks like my trip is all over. It's now two days later and I miss it so much. Yesterday was spent wandering around in a semi-depressed jet lag haze and today is only slightly better. In a week I should be able to leave the house!
Exaggerating, but you better believe I'm going back at the first possible opportunity.

Since I don't think I said a single bad thing about Taiwan this entire blog, here's something I wasn't a fan of.Yeah, that's right, crouch down, put your head right next to the uncovered trash can full of nasty toilet paper that we don't flush. A fine system!

Ok, there, that was negative. Fair and balanced! But really, I love Taiwan and everyone should go.

Thanks for reading!

第十五日

2009-05-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

Last full day in Taiwan, but I'm not going to dwell on that. Que sera sera.
Christine - still being the nicest person ever - brought me breakfast! It was something like a wrap with bean sprouts, apples, cranberries, wasabi, and all kinds of other things that I didn't notice because I scarfed it down in about 15 seconds.
Ming Chuan has a ton of campuses in and around Taipei. We're in the Jihe campus, which is actually just a building that's in the best possible location if you like night markets, but today we went to the Taoyuan campus, which is much bigger and college-like.
We got to see an all-girls dorm (where one of the girls I went with is staying right now! So lucky)

Be prepared to put those hands over those hearts and get patriotic y'all because we're visiting the ***American Classroom***
Stop pinching yourself: that really is a HUGE flag behind a podium with the seal of the President on it in a room filled with colonial-style furniture and American historical figures hanging from the ceiling. Felt so at home.

We also visited the Japanese classroom where we promptly passed out.

These classrooms are used for language and cultural instruction in order to make the experience as immersive as possible - cool, right? They have kimono lessons, tea lessons, and all kinds of other Japanese-y things to do in the J-Classroom and I don't know like burger lessons in the American one.

This wouldn't be Taiwan if they didn't give us the most ridiculous meal ever. I actually have problems with eating too much because I forget that, after the initial 4 or 5 dishes set out on the table they bring about 10 more. So I end up gorging myself on the first few and am unable to resist the other dishes too! So full, all the time.The first course.

Back at the hotel it was packing time!!!! The exclamation points are there because packing is actually really boring. I was being facetious. It took forever and I'm sure I forgot things that fell behind the couch.
But! We had dinner at Din Tai Fung again! The day is saved! On the way we saw the taking down of the flag. It took about 20 minutes. To take the flag down. Military efficiency!
Now usually I would have food pics here, but you guys. We ate so much, so fast, there was no time to snap any photos. To give you some idea of how much our table of five (Go Team Godpig!) ate, we spent nearly twice as much as a table of eight and another table of five combined. Ooops. Apologies to whoever was paying for that! It was insanely delicious, though.
After dinner we met up with our People-to-People...people from the first day for some coffee, or in my case hot chocolate.
It was really nice to see them again. Hundreds of pictures were taken and emails were exchanged, it was all very fun and sad at the same time, knowing we probably won't ever meet up in the same group again.
After they left, Christian, Jane and I sang Karaoke with Christine, her sister Fancy and Annie. I can't believe the last night we were in Taiwan was the first we 唱了some KTV, it was so much fun! You get your own private room so you don't have to watch drunk old men gettin' their Queen on, you can just chill with your friends!
Taxi home, stay up till 4 being depressed, go to bed.

第十四日

2009-05-29T07:10:00.000-07:00

Back in home sweet home Taipei and down to the last two days. I can't even believe how fast this trip has gone by; the first few days felt like weeks and then it was like they were tripping over each other to go by as fast as possible. I'm not even going to think about leaving, I can't even imagine going back to a place that doesn't have a night market.
But enough about that. Breakfast!
The thing that looks like a plum has the consistency of an apple and the flavor of a peach. 100 NT to anyone who can tell me what it is and where I can get it here. The lady I bought it from sprinkled some red stuff on top that I can only assume is cocaine, given how addicting it is.
We had a class in the morning, the Cosmos lady again. She's ok, but dang are we not on the same wavelength when it comes to thought processes.
She took us to her favorite vegetarian restaurant in Taipei, I got the curry and (woah Susi likes Taiwanese food??) it was awesome!
The rest of the day we hung out with Christine, a girl who works at the hotel we stayed at. She is the nicest person, took us shopping and to Taipei 101 and even to her house for dinner!
I went back to TP101 to search out some quality plane reading material, and boy did I find it.
Then we took the bus to Christine's family's apartment for the most delicious meal of the trip. Behold:
The four of us (Me, Jane, Christian, and Justin) ate until we looked pregnant and were then allowed to take home doggy bags! So awesome. After dinner it was game time! We played a chopsticks game (not to brag or anything, but I beat 2/3 Taiwanese people. And the whities, of course) and some card games. What made these super fun, however, was the punishments that were doled out to the losers.Christine has the deadliest head-flick known to man. They also had a cat. It was shaved because it was too hot out. I want a shaved cat.
Everybody look at the nicest family in Taiwan (and Annie)!
It was really nice seeing a typical family, especially such a welcoming one! We rode an abandoned train back to the hotel and hit the hay.

第十三日

2009-05-29T05:44:00.000-07:00

~~FIELD TRIP Day 2~~
An early early morning, a breakfast of french fries and other assorted foods, another bumpy bus ride.
First stop: Yilan Center for Traditional Arts. Mostly a really huge gift shop, but I did see some cool things!

Would I pay to go again? Eehh. But it was interesting to see once. We had Italian (??) for lunch - very good though. My dessert was mango cake!
What we did after all this was probably one of my favorite things we've done the whole trip. We got to bike through the tea plantations in Pinglin! It was so beautiful and hilly - sharp curves meant near-death for me many times. Christian and I went way faster than anyone else and thought we were lost for a while in a jungle full of angry bug sounds. It all ended up fine, though. I love love love bike riding!

See the tea?

This little girl absolutely killed everyone else at playin' hoop: future Olympian, no doubt. A long bus ride later, we were back at home base, reeking of sweat and ready for our spa-quality showers. A dinner at Heineken (what we called the restaurant across from our hotel) and it was time to hit the night market!

第十二日

2009-05-28T13:28:00.000-07:00

~~FIELD TRIP!~~
A late night + an early morning + one of the most harrowing bus rides I've ever experienced = headaches and bellyaches galore!
But who cares about all that when you're driving along the coast of Taiwan? Not this girl!It was insanely pretty, but also insanely dangerous because carving a road into a mountain is hard work and they stopped after one lane. This is usually ok, it's not a huge thoroughfare or anything, but sometimes two tour buses play the slowest game of chicken ever in order to establish who will back up and let the other pass. Our noble driver, whoever he may be, didn't lose his cool even once, not even when we bumped into a rival tour bus full of waving Japanese ladies.

After 5 hours of bus-ridin' fun we stopped by an aboriginal (I feel awful but I don't remember which tribe!) restaurant for some of the sweetest views and yummiest food.Where it was.What was eaten. With the exception of the fish head. Old habits die hard.

After the grub, we wandered around the hillside for a bit and came across this little fella, mewing like a cat!

I didn't touch him for fear of starting the monkey flu. Everybody back on the bus! This time: all the way to Taroko Gorge. After sleeping through the introduction video it was time to hit the trail!We did not cross this bridge. But pretty sweet, right?Cave of the Water Curtain! The ponchos helped for a bit, but then mine ripped halfway up my torso. Not very effective.

A pretty place, Taroko Gorge. I wish we would have had more time to explore, but I am not complaining considering we got an amazing dinner for free (or at least I didn't pay for it).
The way dinners are done is often on a huge lazy Susan, so you have to be quick to grab what you want. The next time it comes around it may be gone.
The hotel we stayed at was not as nice as our Jihe one, but it was more than livable. The worst part? The shower.
No shower curtain to speak of, so everything in the whole bathroom got completely soaked every time a shower was taken. Hualien is a pretty city, though!

Since it was raining pretty hard we all piled into a hotel room all night and played cards.

第十一日

2009-05-28T07:36:00.000-07:00

Woah, Susi, you seem like you're slacking in your resolution to explore Taiwan to the fullest! Getting up late, going to Taipei 101, spending vast quantities of time in the hotel? Lazy!
Yeah, I KNOW, so today I got up early again and took to the streets in a direction I had never gone. What did I find? A little templenext to some Port-a-Potties (this is where you wash your hands. hygiene!) both of which found their home in a park full of old people and curious hybrids of exercise equiptment and elementary school playgrounds. Rather than be a creeper and take pictures of the old people, here's one such contraption.Also: a night market during the day in the same park - a little depressing!

I got some brekkies at a fruit market that had everyone's favorite part of the grocery store's produce section (THE MISTERS OBVIOUSLY) on at full blast constantly! Win over the 6-year-old, win over the 19-year-old.Ignore the thalido-hand for a minute and marvel at the size of these watermelons! If you are in to that sort of thing (which I'm not, unfortunately), Taiwan is the realm of the watermelon gods. W-Ms and tiny forks were dessert for at least 6 meals. Pukesville for me, but everyone else seemed pretty pleased!

There's about to be a picture drought in this post because what we did after my morning exploring we went to the President's Residence, where no photography is allowed. What was allowed, though, were guns: the first I've seen in Taiwan. Not guns for visitors, but for the guards. Huge ones. Pretty intimidating.
The PR was pretty cool, though, although I would have liked to have seen the actual President's office. No could do, though, Ma was in and signing things. We couldn't even get our guide to tell us in what part of the building the office was so we could sneak in, Spy-Kids style. Oh, well.

Remember the beginning of this post where I was doing my best not to be lazy. Weell. A good chunk of my afternoon was spent in the Land of Nod, our trip to the Museum of Formosan Aborigines having been cancelled. Embarassing, but sometimes I just don't have it in me.
I did manage to drag myself out of the depths of my subconscious to go out that night and have the best time ever, so all was not lost!
Here's some pictures.

第十日

2009-05-25T18:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Taipei:
So fond, in fact, that I will honor you by doing the touristiest possible thing: ride the world's fastest elevator to the 91st floor of the world's tallest (completed) skyscraper!
And, let me tell you, this elevator is fast. With disbelief in our hearts we watched the numbers tick away, but when it hit 91 the doors opened and there we were! I'm not entirely sure how they do it (without ear popping!), but dang if it doesn't do its job!This yellow behemoth is the stabilizer, something which I also don't completely understand but that plays a big part in the building not falling down. My thanks, stabilizer!

All this was after a day full o' classes (survival Mandarin - still fun! andcontent="Microsoft Word 12">US-Taiwan and China-Taiwan Relations - informative and vaguely saddening!), so we were all pretty beat. At this point in the trip, we're all feeling the effects of a week and a half or constant busyness (completely different from business) and, as a result, chilling more often than going out. We did manage, however, to take a stroll to the night market for one of Taiwan's most infamous culinary works - stinky tofu! And boy howdy, is it ever stinky.
There are actually two varieties, fried and boiled. The boiled is the rankest, unmistakable from up to 20 feet away, more if you're downwind. I'm a little ashamed to admit I only sampled the fried 臭豆腐, but at close range it also stinks! It is still legitimate!
A fun fact about the character 臭，pronounced chou, meaning stinky. The top radical, 自, means oneself but can also refer to the nose because when you refer to yourself you point at your nose. The bottom half, 犬, means dog. So! Nose -> dog, stinky! Fun, right?

第九日

2009-05-25T17:29:00.000-07:00

Where am I headed in this video? Hint: it's Taizhong, obviously, also known as Taichung. There is definitely some pinyin that could stand to be normalized in this country.

We weren't that excited about Taichung, to be honest, mainly because our teacher the day before said, "Oh, Taichung, that's where all the prostitutes are!" Yaaay.
But once we got there there was nary a prostitute in sight, rendering our wildest imaginations null and void. We did see a giant Buddha.And cows. Lots of cows.These were at the Taiwan Museum for the Fine Arts in celebration of (duh) the year of the cow. It was a really cool museum, from the fancy paintings down to the chairs!And a little bit of non-museum art for ya:After we came back to the hotel a bunch of us went out to explore the nightlife a little. Verdict: so cool, so well dressed, so cheap. All in all, a really good day. But how couldn't it be? I'm in Taiwan!

第八日

2009-05-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

Taipei feels enough like home now that I'm not even guilt-ridden at the prospect of sleeping in instead of rising with the birds and street-sweepers. It was probably for the best if I didn't want to collapse in the middle of the day.
Another class with the Cosmos professor, but this one was more about down-to-earth Taiwanese culture and was actually pretty interesting! After our culture class we met up for group lunch with a girl who had done the program last year and now taught English in Taipei. She was pretty cool, but did not use any contractions at all, which was a little disconcerting. Still extremely jealous that she lives here, though! Here is what the food was:"Dry" noodles, some form of greens, fish ball soup (way more delicious than expected!) and some salted pork. Ate until my stomach gurgled menacingly.All was accompanied by the ever-present bubble milk tea. What am I going to do without it in the states? Oh, probably sob for days or something. We'll see.
This was a classy day, the second being "Culture and Lifestyles in Taiwan" which was the BEST CLASS, really. She taught us so much not only about Taiwan, but the difference between collectivist and individualistic societies in general. I honestly learned a lot about why I respond to certain things in certain ways just by finding out about how being raised in an individualistic society leads to certain a cultural consciousness. She even went into the theory behind all of it! I took four pages of notes instead of doodling. That's how interesting it was.
A good thing about today is that it was chock full of free meals (free for me, anyway)! We supped at a place called Din Taifung (鼎泰豐), a restaurant so famous it has its own wikipedia article. It's a dumpling house where all the big movie stars go when visiting Taiwan. I didn't see any, but the food sure was good! A shame that we bankrupted the Taiwanese government in the process of buying it!
Not many good pictures, we were eating the food as soon as it hit the table. A hard life.
After dinner we went and explored the Shida night market, a smaller and slightly classier version of Shilin. I bought a shirt with an owl on it. Instead of showing you that, here's some arty pictures for ya.
This last one is the wall of an ice cream (not really ice cream, more like shaved ice with condensed milk and flavoring on it, ridiculously good) joint we ate at in Shida. It was like Gino's East in the category of write-onable walls. We even got the coolest seats of the house in a little booth!
Leaving you with this thought:Reflect~

第七日

2009-05-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

Taiwhat? A whole week here already? Feels like months, and I mean that in the absolute best way. I'm loving my time here and am already not worried about capturing everything on film or on memory because I know I'll make it back by hook or crook.
Aite cheese factor off you guys get the picture.
Today was a pretty chill day, mostly classes and sorting out money problems (solved now! no worrying!). Our first class was titled "Taiwanese Culture and Society" which was misleading to say the least. Maybe a better title would have been "An incredibly detailed look into the religions of East Asia oh wow close call I almost said something about Taiwanese culture let's talk about inner cosmos!"
Wordy, but accurate. This class was ok but I am not so excited about having her two more times in the future.

Ok breakin' up the text wall with some pictures!Here's how the trees outside of the school our hotel is near grow! This tree is not a lonely freak, the entire row is like that. That's the last time they let the 3rd graders do the landscaping, I guess.Taipei: home to about a billion stray dogs. Seriously, they are everywhere, just chillin' and doing their own thing. I've never seen them bothering anyone, anyway. They even follow the traffic rules! There are also a ton of stray cats who are adorable and great. Guess who's a cat person in this blog!

Anyway, the next class was "Taiwanese Business Practices", much more to my liking! No inner cosmos here, just really fantastic information about how business is conducted in Taiwan, focusing especially on their struggles with the PRC. Did you know, for example, that in 2010 when Japan, Korea and China officially join something called ASEAN+3 Taiwan will be the only country 'round these parts without incredibly reduced tariffs in all the other countries? This is a huge reason President Ma is making nice with China at the moment, which is also a huge source of protests in Taipei and Southern Taiwan. Complicated! Economics vs Nationalism.

The rest of the day was spent chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool until evening, when a bunch of us decided to go to Snake Alley! Sounds pretty sweet, right? I mean, snakes! Sketchy alleys! Shady figures drinking snake blood!

Yeah, no, turns out it's just a night market like our own Shilin, just really depressing. It was full of sad-looking people desperately yelling "Snake soup! Very special!很好吃!" at our retreating figures and ayis glaring menacingly.
Cage o' snakes.Nobody in the world looks that happy when their back is being cupped...while drinking beer. With a fully clothed friend.
BUT on the way home I saw this:

Trip verdict: worth it.

第六日

2009-05-21T23:07:00.000-07:00

Another day devoid of plans means a train trip to Fulong Beach for a group of us and a plethora of sand flea bites for my legs!

And I don't want to type a lot so HERE'S A VIDEO. Embarrassment city, but if you can stand ramblin' wobblin' me I guess I can live with it too.

Yeah, salt water and sand are not for me, I'm afraid. More beach space for everyone else! It really was a tiny town, though. When I was walking around I kept seeing the same people around, receiving quite a few curious looks and slightly fewer "Hello!"s.

It was a really chill day, ending in a downpour and a drowsy train ride home. The high point?
The guys across from Jane and I were playing 14 (that is what it's called right Max?) and making the loser perform feats that included stammering out a conversation in English with Jane and walking up and down the train car 20 times (we counted). The one shown here is the aftermath of my favorite dare: this poor guy in the purple had to take a half-full water bottle, walk to the front of the car and dump it over his head. Being the loud Americans we are, Jane and I laughed uproariously while everyone else in the car sat dumbfounded. One of the many instances in which I wish I could be a little faster on the draw when it comes to the video button!
Sorry that this entry is so short, but if a picture's 100 then a video counts as at least 20,000 and that's a pretty impressive length, right?

Right?

第五日

2009-05-21T21:46:00.000-07:00

7-11, you are dead to me. At least for breakfast. In my early-morning excursion today I stumbled upon the geriatric counterpoint to everyone's favorite night market: the Shilin Morning Market! Full of fruits and meats I would eat only after giving those around me a dubious look and putting the hospital on speed dial.
Sorry about the earthquake-cam, I have an unsteady gait!

The bounty:

The fruit that is not a mango or a peachy juice drink is something you can only find in Taiwan, I think! It's really good.
A good beginning to the COOLEST DAY. Really touristy, but so incredibly much fun. To get to our first activity, we loaded up onto a bus. But would a normal bus be good enough for the coolest day? I think not! No, the only bus deemed awesome enough to transport us around Taiwan was the KARAOKE BUS!

Many rousing choruses of Country Roads, Let It Be and Knock Three Times later, we arrived in Beipu to make some Hakka Tea. The Hakka are a group of people who migrated from the Mainland to Taiwan a few hundred years ago and make up about 20% of the population. Their tea is incredibly famous 'round these parts, so we were naturally pumped about pounding some ourselves. Here's how it went down:

Here we have our ingredients: in big bowl there's peanuts, black and white sesame seeds, dried tea leaves, and pine nuts. The plate is filled with delicious tea-snacks and the cup is filled with ground tea powder. Oh but what is that big stick for?
It's for the best part of making tea, of course! You pound and grind until all of the sesame seeds are invisible, which takes about 10 minutes. Then you add the green powder and crush it some more until it looks like tea I guess. The tea lady seemed impressed, anyway!
The tea is served in little cups with crispy rice in them (for texture). You stir it with a stick I'm pretty sure we weren't supposed to eat and then drink up! It's really more of a tea-soup, very thick and nutrient-rich because the Hakka farmers would drink it out in the fields. We, on the other hand, remained firmly planted on our bums and feasted on mochi.Full of pounded tea and pounded rice, we hopped back on the K-Bus and took the scenic route to Yingge, ceramics capital of Taiwan. Yeah, I know, ceramics sounds like it has no place in the coolest day but hear me out! Actually let me just show you:

We got to make our own pottery! I use "make" in the absolute loosest sense of the word, I never quite got the hang of that dang wheel. Master potter - another off the prospective job list. But being able to play with the clay and glaze some mugs brought me right back to the days of my childhood and I am just fine with that!
Arms stained with clay residue we hit the streets with a newfound appreciation for the work that goes into ceramics.
This guy was really cool - as soon as we stopped and he finished he proudly showed us pictures of himself in various venues playing the thing that he is playing. Any clever music people want to help me out here?

An elementary school! That and the matching electric green uniforms are the makings of the banginest school.
As it was getting late we packed up and went back to the hotel to sleep.
JUST KIDDING we went to the night market and had the best time! The temple in the middle of the market had some sort of traditional concert going on with full-on face paint, the authenticity tempered somewhat by a very modern drum beat. Still ridic cool. Here is what I ate:That's right! A tiny, horribly dessicated pancake screaming in pain! Blueberry was my favorite. That's all the news from Taiwan that's fit to print.

第四日

2009-05-21T01:39:00.000-07:00

First of all I really want to apologize for not updating this thing on time ever, I'm terrible at deadlines in the best of circumstances and while this is an awesome circumstance it's not one that's terrible conducive to spending an hour making a blog post. I will try to catch up and stay caught!

A free day! No classes, no plans, no grad students. What's a group of undergrads to do? Catch the first train out to Danshui, of course! Or at least that's what we did.

Welcome to fabulous Danshui!

See! The fishing stoves!

Experience! The bangin graffiti!

Fear! The wrath of anime Poseidon!

Danshui was a pretty cute town, it's at the very edges of what people still consider Taipei, the last MRT stop. Made quite a dent on my Easycard, but I'd say it was well worth it. Being outside of the main city limits meant we, with our strange pale skin and wide dog eyes, were an anomaly not to be missed by the schoolchildren!
These young ladies followed us for about a block before throwin out their bravest "HELLO"s and holding up their cameras, smiling and nodding. We obliged, of course (so smug right now). It'll be weird to be back in the states, being ignored by kindergartners.
Oh yeah we also went to some fort buuuut. I've done more interesting things in my life. Ha, one cool thing was we paid with 7-11 receipts! I'm sure the poor guy was just dying to tell us about how there's a national lottery using the numbers on the receipts so businesses collect them and try to win in his broken English but he missed his shot. We found out later from some other people.

Lunch! Squid-ink spaghetti: black teeth, but worth it.

We still had some time to burn so we moseyed through the shopping district. It was pretty cool to begin with, but it was quickly made cooler by a temple we found hidden among some shady-looking meat booths in a back alley. It was pretty surreal, just walkin through the chicken heads and BAM temple. Now as I've probably already said, temples are not generally a thing that I enjoy, but check out some of these guys.

Awesome!The day still being young, we hopped on the MRT to Beitou for some hot spring action. Now I'm not sure what kind of magical chemical reactions are going on under the ground but they are not exaggerating when they call these springs the hottest thing ever. Actually nobody except me calls it that, but boy were our feet an angry color of red the rest of the day!We tried to find some legit whole-body hot springs, too, but instead got hopelessly lost, which was also fun! Everybody was so incredibly helpful - shoutout to my boy Mike at the hotel and the lady going for a walk with her kids who walked with us for 20 minutes. There are countless examples of people going out of their way to help these touristy 美国人 everywhere we go, it's so great!

Remember everyone:

第三日

2009-05-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

Another day, another chance to view Taipei through the rays of the early morning sun instead of being unconscious in bed! 6:30 this time, Lag is letting up slightly. PIC TIME.

Milkhouses – a bakery! Bought breakfast from here yes sir.

So after all of my touristy ogling, it was back to the hotel for a survival Mandarin class! I was not too excited about this initially, having taken a year of it already. But boy was my smug and snooty demeanor shattered when our teacher turned out to be the funnest guy! He had made a multi-page guide of common phrases that he illustrated with these adorable drawings and was just a really great teacher. I still knew most of the material, but that’ll learn me to make snap judgments about things! After the quickest 1/8th of a day it was lunchtime! We headed off in a big group but some lame butts wanted to hit up the 7-11 (or The Sev as we call it. We go there a lot) so me and some other cool people split off and went to a little sit-down place. We wanted authenticity, and what did we get? That and more!

There was no English menu and the waitress didn’t speak a word of it, so the ordering process mainly consisted of me saying “Well this one is Fragrant Fish Flower, does that sound good? Ok well this involves pork in some way, how about that?” Eventually we decided on Roulette-style pointing and hoped for the best. A risky business, but it turned out to be ~~awesome~~. Behold!

Delicious as it looks, naturally. Also if anyone knows what the dish on the bottom is let me know! After lunching adventure we met up at the campus to go to the National Palace Museum. And boy, was it ever a museum (I do not generally like museums). The crown jewel (sorry for the crappy picture no photography allowed!):

A cabbage made of jade. Yep. It sure did look like a cabbage! Although the interior wasn’t my thing, the gardens were really cool!

Reenacting the classic Chinese tale Lao-Tze sells or buys geese or something. A Chinese Literature expert I am not.
By the time we went back to the hotel it was around dinner time, so we took to the streets in great packs of ravenous white kids, scavenging amongst the night market stands until our eyes alit on the holy grail of all kitschy theme restaurants:

Oh ho! A humorous mistranslation in an Asian country? Say it ain't so. Well it's NOT!

The seats.

The food.

The dranks. All in toilets! Granted, the food was not as great as it could have been but it was in toilets so all was forgiven.

It was getting pretty late at that point so we headed to a little bar across from our hotel to meet up with some people from Georgia (THE COUNTRY) for some Taiwan Beer! Attn Parents and guardians: it is legal here, it was safe, all is well.

第二日

2009-05-15T05:07:00.000-07:00

If getting up at 5:30 am and wandering around a foreign city for 3 hours doesn't sound like something you would do on your first day in said foreign city we're clearly not on the same page.
Truth be told, I wasn't planning on doing anything quite that extreme, but who am I to argue with The Lag on my first day? So get up I did, riding the elevator down from our 8th floor hotel room and facing early morning Taipei head-on. And what to mine wandering eyes should appear but what would turn out to be the first of hundreds of 7-11s I would see in Taiwan!

Said 7-11, shown here with Melissa, my roommate. The rainbow-headed marsupial (??) is the 7-11 mascot.

After bewildering the morning staff with my extensive tour of the store I set out again, picking a direction and walking until I felt like turning. Annoyingly enough I didn't have the presence of mind to take any pictures on this first excursion, but the sights I saw included

Employees in matching uniforms doing their morning calisthenics in time to an incredibly loud radio.
A great fruit stand! I bought a fruit that I had never seen before and it was delicious! Like a peach with the texture of an apple.

Scooters scooters scooters bus scooters car scooters

I'm sure there were massive amounts of wonderful things that went unnoticed, but sensory overload and delirious happiness are cruel masters and sacrifices have to be made.

After a stroke of pure luck I ended up back at the hotel and bought myself some brekkies in the 7-11 - a pastry of some sort and some chocolate milk. Hard to go wrong there.
No picture of the food, but here's our hotel (right) and the apartment building we face(left).

In the morning we had some orientation with the MCU staff and a session on Foreigners in Taiwan, which was interesting. But even more interesting was the lunch we were given after that! The dishes were set on a huge Lazy Susan and shared - these picture don't even show half of the dishes we ended up getting.Our table -the two staff members with us were really great about explaining how to eat everything (harder than you might think)!

Later we met up with some students from MCU's chapter of people to people for some sightseeing. Our group (led by the super friendly Wendy and Abby) went to the Museum of Contemporary Art. Pictures incoming, cap'n. Sorry about the quality, the mood lighting was pretty extreme.Anyway, I thought most of the art was great and hanging out with Wendy and Abby was super fun! All in all, a raging success. We headed back to campus and after some group discussions we were set free for the rest of the day!
Q: What do you do in Taipei any time from 4 pm to 3 am?
A: HIT THE NIGHT MARKET
Shilin Night Market is the biggest in Taipei and it is absolutely insane. Imagine a huge festival full of booths and games and food that thousands of people flock to every night. Seriously, this was Wednesday night, not exactly party central most of the time. It is, dare I say it, a school night!! But this place was just a crazy whirlwind of colors and sounds and smells (STINKY TOFU my olifactory nemisis) from dusk till well near dawn. Again with the sensory overload excuse for a lack of pictures but here's a t-shirt I came really close to buying that counts because it was at the market.
And as the shirt says, we did! First dinner in Taiwan, the only logical option for sustenance is a whole octopus flayed and grilled!

This isn't the whole thing, it was chopped up. BE IMPRESSED.

Also notice the ever-present bubble tea in the background. A+ for the bubble tea, but octopus remains noticably absent from my index of favorite food.

Dazzled as we were by the night market, it was only about 10:30 so it was decided we would all take a trip to Taiwan's tallest: Taipei 101! We hopped on the train and after about 10 minutes it shone out like a beacon amongst dozens of smaller beacons, all putting on light shows. Pretty dazzling, but nature called and we decided to pay a visit to the bathroom inside the mall in the bottom of TP101.
Oh wait, Susi, (you may be saying) did you get the impression that we cared about your BMs in Taiwan? Well I'M GETTING TO THE POINT so be patient for about 20 more words, it gets good. Anyway, the bathroom had not only non-squatting toilets but also toilet paper, so I thought things were going pretty well. The problem started when I left the bathroom and noticed that nobody from my group was still around! I checked Swatch and D&G and all the other classy stores that populated this mall but alas, nary a white person in sight, much less one that I knew.
So, after waiting around for about 20 minutes, Susi's Great Solo Adventure began! Sure, I could have gone straight back to the hotel, but what kind of lame butt would that make me? Off I wandered into the night and in I wandered into 7-11 for a snack. (I'm probably not exaggerating when I say you can't wander for more than 10 minutes without hitting a 7-11 in Taipei.) Getting a kit-kat or choco milk wouldn't have been appropriate for SGSA, so I decided to experiment.
The experiment: Asparagus juice.
Hypothesis: GROSS

Conclusion:Hypothesis confirmed!

After some more aimless wandering I managed to find the metro station and headed back to our corner of town to hit up the night market a bit more before seeing if the others had made it back to the hotel. It was here I realized that what I had thought was the night market was, in fact, only a tiny portion thereof! This thing goes on for aaaages.

IT IS GREAT AND I AM GOING EVERY NIGHT

After some more wide-eyed exploration I remembered that I should probably check in to the hotel so nobody would get the impression I had been murdered in a ditch so I headed back to the hotel where everybody was very pleased to see me and we all had a good laugh. THE END of day 2.

第一日(en route and arrival)

2009-05-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Taiwan where the air is sultry, the shirts are besequined and the slums are fantastically shady!
At least that's what I got from the bus ride here (here being our sweet hotel IT IS CRAZY).

But before I tell you that story, let me tell you about the time I almost didn't come here and was going to be quarantined in Japan for 10 days. That's right, after 14 hours of breathing recycled air along with a few hundred strangers we were told to stay put for a little while longer so they could make sure everyone on the plane was healthy. Yeah, ok, H1N1 is a valid concern, fair enough.
So as we're all sitting there obediently some airport officials in full surgical scrubs and galoshes (along with the ever-present flu mask) get on to the plane like they're about to explore some distant planet. They even had a heat-detecting camera that they pointed at every person to make sure they didn't have a fever - pretty nerve-wracking.

I thought everything was going pretty well - I got my yellow document of healthiness and a nod from the inspector after only about half an hour. HOWEVER only minutes after I heaved a germ-free sigh of relief an agitated looking health inspector came speed-walking down the aisle to hand me a flu mask and slap a red dot on my seat and the seats of those around me. It turns out the old man in the seat behind me had turned up red on the heatcam -- a possible case of the swine flu????

Had this been the case, I would now be sitting in a cheap hotel room in Narita Airport, quarantined with about 10 other people. Luckily, the poor guy just had a case of old age.
So, after two hours of sitting on the tarmac we were finally allowed access to glorious Nippon, or at least our terminal. It didn't disappoint: anime everywhere, mistranslations galore, and dubious-looking snacks that turned out to be pretty dang ok. I know we had a rocky beginning, Japan, but I hope we're still cool. Thanks man.
After a four-hour nap (and flight) we hit the ground in the ROC! It was about 11:30 local time, 72:234 in our travel-addled brains. After literally walking straight through customs, we loaded up onto the Ming Chuan bus and took a 45-minute long ride to the campus, during which I made the observations I immortalized at the beginning of this post.
We made quick work of unpacking and squealing about the hotel rooms, took showers (this shower. THIS SHOWER. Not coming home because of this shower.) and fell into bed after watching TW music videos for a few hours.

And so ended the first day.