Simple Twists, Great Day

Today was a great mix of new and established, and Western and Taiwanese. It was my ordinary routine, with a few necessary tweaks that simultaneously confirmed and utterly transformed my day.

To begin with, I started the day on the couch (Kaitlin's still jet lagged and I have a twin bed), awakened by the unfamiliar sounds of Brittany's alarm clock and Analicia asking if I needed to shower any time soon. I then got ready for the day in the living room and bathroom, and went down to 7-11 for a very Taiwanese breakfast at the counter.

Then I went to school. After what began as a hectic morning--until this morning I had forgotten to prepare some pictures of people wearing different items of clothing for an in-class game, so I came to school with blank pages, a fistful of markers and sheer determination--classes went wonderfully, and I was even able to nail down the details for tutoring the son of a home room teacher at Hanmin. Just a great day, really, as my memory lapse taught me the (perhaps not so great) lesson that I am still capable of pulling things through at the last second, if need be.

Also at school, I was the very grateful recipient of my very own set of wedding cake! See, in Taiwan, that's the tradition: when a woman gets engaged, she gives all the women she knows a box of cake. (Incidentally, the groom is the one paying for this, yet his friends get nothing...) And, since Hanmin's principal's daughter got formally engaged this weekend, I was somehow included on the list! And it was quite the box of cake:

The box is probably 10" x 10" by 5" or so.

And the contents: candy, cookies, and a large "cake" which seems to contain some sort of meat/seafood and onions, based on Rachel's label-reading...

At home, I met up with Kaitlin, who'd had a great recovery day and even ventured out into the city unarmed to explore and buy coffee, and we took a stroll down to Wu Pao Chun bakery (the line was too long, though, so we left), then grabbed some delicious tea (Kaitlin's first real Taiwanese bubble tea!) and set out for Chialing's for sumptuous noodles.

Then came Chinese class where Kaitlin, good sport that she is, was willing to sit with us for 2 hours before we set out for the night market.

An hour later, we found it. A combination of miscommunications--my mistaking which market would be open tonight, and a wrong turn on Zhonghua--took us nearly to Zuoying, then back to our starting point at Sanmin, then to Zhongshan as far north as Kaohsiung Arena. Eventually, I found the night market I had meant, Rueifong--and discovered that it was closed. By a marvelous stroke of luck, though, our ride home took us straight past Liouhe--aka the market my teacher had tried to direct me to, the biggest in Kaohsiung and one that was actually open on a Monday night.

So, fail-fail, win-win. All in the course of an hour. And at least Kaitlin got a nice little tour out of it!