Full

Living in Taiwan, "full" is a regular part of my daily vocabulary. In a culture whose local language, Taiwanese, says "have you eaten?" for "hello," eating and over-eating are regular occurrences. Today, however, my title doesn't refer to food--or, at least, not principally. No, I mean the day as a whole: SO SO full!

It's 1am now. I woke up this morning at 7am. In the intervening 18 hours, I...

Went to school, where I dyed eggs with the 5th graders at Qingshan amidst what began as chaos and ended in gorgeous colors and very few messes;

Explained to countless students, teachers, and administrators who Alex and Melanie were, and that Melanie was, in fact, American;

Lost the race against Alex and Melanie's taxi driver home;

Revealed the wonderfulness of Ali's burritos and the corner shop's milk tea to Alex and Melanie;

Took advantage of a few hours break from today's drizzle to eat shave ice at Siziwan, take the ferry to Cijin, rent bikes, glimpse the lighthouse, explore the fort, ride bikes, and discover that basically the entire seashore at Cijin is under construction;

Helped Chialing cook some fantastic noodles which Alex and Melanie obviously ADORED;

Took a window-shopping stroll with Melanie that resulted in some cute stationary for her and a nice little conversation with the adorable owner of the adorable Nini store down the street, together with some delicious cake despite my protestations that we were full;

Walked along the Love River with Alex and Melanie;

Found Alex some cold medicine;

Made a brief stopover at Ruifeng Night Market, where we saw some hilarious Angry Bird and "Angry Sponge" shirts, as well as some gorgeous leather bags;

Made plans to hang out with my host family tomorrow, after a stop at another stationary store and Dream Mall, and made tentative plans to KTV afterwards.

So "full" is not an understatement--this is just the outline! In other news, my plans for tomorrow begin at 10am, and I am therefore going to sleep.