Loving Taiwan

Today was glorious. It began at 11:30, first of all, which was a welcome change after this sleepless week. In fact, that's an apt description of this day as a whole: a welcome change after a sleepless week.

The morning/early afternoon was pretty chill, which was perfect: Karina and I met Brittany's co-teacher Sophie to pick up a book for her, then got lunch at a curry place down the street and browsed in the stationary/ "teacher" store next door. She got some pretty cool foam pointers--one's shaped like a pointing index finger, and the other is shaped like a fist. On paying for it, she immediately "punched" me, and I told her now we have two people to worry about in the house! (Brittany bought some slapping hand pointers a couple days ago, and now she loves to sneak up behind people and freak them out with them.)

Then, around 4:30, Samia, Lydia, Rachel, Karina, Emily and I met up with Evelyn, Fonda, Chialing and Andrew (who had all scootered/biked there) at the MRT station nearest the ferry to Cijin. We took the ferry (itself an adventure for Rachel, who had brought her own bike along and had to board with the scooters) and, once on the island, rented bikes for the rest of us (including Samia, who didn't know how to ride yet) and set off down the shoreline, armed with cameras and water bottles.

It was fantastic--we saw the sunset the whole way, and partway down the trail, we saw some stray puppies and stopped to play. (Don't worry, it's safe here--Taiwan has absolutely no rabies.) Here, for your viewing pleasure, are some of the sights from along the way.

When we got back, we were sweaty and it was dark, but we loved every second of it anyway.

We got back to the area around our apartment at 8:25, just in time to make it to our 8:30 dinner reservation at the Thai restaurant around the corner. We've been trying to go there for a few days now, but last time we tried, there were 9 parties in line in front of us. So, we figured, it had to be good.

And we weren't mistaken. We ordered 9 dishes for a table of 10, and we polished off every dish and were wishing we had more room in our stomachs so we could order more and keep eating. Hard to say what was best--the Phad Thai (usually don't like Phad Thai, but this was DELICIOUS), the melt-in-your-mouth coconut chicken curry, the uber fresh and delicious ginger fish (we stripped it to the skeleton and kept picking at scraps)--the list goes on. I will be going back there.

Then we went home and began deep-cleaning our kitchen. Time to start treating this place like we actually live here! It's nasty now, but hopefully soon our whole apartment will be clean and cozy.

This day was fantastic. I'm so glad to be living in Taiwan!