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.

Digging Deeper in Kaohsiung

I've mentioned before that when friends come to visit, I get to play the tourist again and rediscover all the things that make Kaohsiung so great. I've visited all my favorite places again whenever out-of-towners come to visit, showing them what I consider to be the best of Kaohsiung. What I hadn't done before, though, is take the opportunity of their coming to stretch my own knowledge of the area. Until today.

Today, after taking Kaitlin to school with me and enjoying delicious lunch at Ali's and then a quick nap/rest (see, we are Taiwanese!), we went to Cijin and Siziwan. Now, I've been to both of these places often; they are easily among my favorite places in Kaohsiung (though also among the most touristy). Yet, even so, this trip was entirely different, because....

• We took my scooter! Odd though it may seem, I had never before driven to Siziwan. There's an MRT stop nearby, and getting there doesn't even involve a transfer, so it's pretty simple to just go that route. However, it just so happens that Kaitlin, like myself, absolutely loves scootering, so I figured, why not? It turns out it's amazingly easy to get there, and, it being a Tuesday afternoon, parking was a breeze, too. (Unintended pun, given the wind today.)

I don't take pictures while scootering...here's the ferry, though!

• After renting bikes (admittedly at the same place I always do, but with the caveat that it's cheapest there and we did get different types this time...), we set out, not along the sea shore where I usually take people, but to the right, where I had never been. It was absolutely GORGEOUS!...until we were stopped by apparent construction, that is.

Sometimes I forget how gorgeous the ocean is. Then I see places like this. :)

• We went to the lighthouse! Somehow, I had never made it up there before. I've seen it from afar from the ferry, from Cijin beach, from Zhongshan Dashue, from the old British Embassy, but never in person! A call to Fonda that got forwarded to Dr. Sun helped us figure out where to turn off to get there, and we arrived just in time, 5 minutes or so before they kicked us out. But that was okay, because...

 

In other news, it is officially HOT in Kaohsiung again...

• We went to the fortress! I'll be honest, before today I didn't even know there was a fortress on Cijin. It was fantastic. As we walked through the crumbling outskirts, I told Kaitlin it reminded me of the fortress I would have loved to build and never leave when I was 10 years old; when we got to the main building, I thoroughly enjoyed walking around on the roof in the gusting sea wind: adventure and a view!

Seconds before Kaitlin was attacked by a fire ant...true story.

That's about it for original explorations on this trip; the standards of buying delicious fresh fruit juice on Cijin and then delicious mixed fruit shave ice back at Siziwan were the same (though I did spring for the sweetened condensed milk variety, which was new and DELICIOUS), because you just can't lose on some things.

Like this.

And also this. :)

Whenever I travel with visitors here (or alone, for that matter), I find myself stretching my Chinese skills in fun new ways, but I honestly hadn't thought about the similar possibilities of stretching, or rather deepening, my knowledge of known sites. Today proved to me, however, that there are few things more rewarding than finding a new gem in an already known treasure.

(Bonus: cooking with Chialing!)

Just a quick note

...to say that today was fabulous. Not raining, for the first time since Sunday, and my mom and I saw it all--okay not all, but Sizihwan (took the cultural tour bus, only to discover that the British Consular residence is under construction...sad), Cijin, and Lotus Lake, as well as sampling the delicious fare of the potsticker-and-dumpling place behind my apartment for lunch and the life-changing Thai food of the place I always talk about for dinner. Wonderful.

And....that's all for now. Just a quick note to say that I'm alive. :)

Rediscovering Kaohsiung, part 2

Today, I got out of school at noon, leaving me ample time to show Dan and Danny the sights, such as they are. Still not enough time to see everything, unfortunately--not even I have seen everything yet, and I've lived here for two months so far--but at least we got to most of the staples.

1.) Cijin Island. This happened yesterday.

2.) Chialing's noodle shop. This also happened yesterday. And also today. Because she's just that amazing, and her food is just that delicious. We couldn't stay away; I firmly believe that no one who tries her food could possibly feel any different. She even had rice and green bean noodles for Dan. She's amazing.


3.) Wu Pao-chun bakery. It's kind of a big deal--beat out pastry chefs from around the world with its French bread--and it just so happens to be roughly 6 blocks from my apartment. We bought a loaf of red wine and dried berry bread (can't remember the kind of berry, which is embarrassing but true), still warm, and brought it back to the apartment for a sample, where both Dan and Danny declared it to be the best bread they had ever tasted. The statement "I could eat only this bread for the rest of my life" was definitely used.


We then hopped a Kaohsiung Cultural tour bus (itself an adventure, between figuring out where it was, fighting off a betel-nut-chewing cabbie who wanted to take us instead, and listening to the tour guides alternately try to explain things in halting English--maybe once or twice--and speaking in rapid-fire Chinese), and set out for the higher coastal area; that is...



4.) The Former British Consulate. Easily one of my favorite places in Kaohsiung, it was used in roughly the 1860s and it sits atop a hill which can see the entire city on one side, the lighthouse on another, the whole broad stretch of coastline on a third, and the lush greenery of ZhongShan on the last. All complemented by a constant light breeze, and set to the backdrop of a charming brick building with huge arches and white-painted wood doors. Lovely.


5.) 國立中山大學 (ZhongShanDaShue) After a leisurely stroll after the passing bus, which somehow succeeded, we discovered that it only took us the very short distance to the bottom of the university's sprawling campus. We (and by we I mean I) decided we simply must climb to the top, which had gorgeous views--including the one which is currently the background on this blog. On the way we saw lots of foreign students, lots of feral dogs, a terrifyingly large spider, lots of great views, and disappointingly few monkeys (read: none). Seriously, though, this mountain is gorgeous; in my view, no trip to Kaohsiung is complete without it.


6.) Thailand Burma Restaurant. It's 3 blocks from my apartment. It's the best Thai you've ever tasted. Enough said.


7.) Kaohsiung 85 Sky Tower. I've posted about this before--2nd tallest building in Taiwan, 13th tallest building in the world. Still has its uber-awkward Tokyo photographers exhibit. Still a cool place to visit, though, with fantastic views of, well, everything.


Other moments of note today: I randomly met another American on my way to school! A guy pulled up to me and said "hello," and I turned, expecting it to be a Taiwanese person practicing their English. We both did double-takes. Turns out, he though I was his co-worker at the cram school down the street from Han-min. We got stopped at 5 lights in a row, so we got to have a nice little conversation! Gotta love random moments like that.


Also, I was the navigator in taxis to and from Kaohsiung 85. And both times, the cab driver knew what I was saying. Chinese lessons ftw.


Well this has been one of my most random, rambling blogs, the apparently straightforward formatting notwithstanding. But hey, at least it covers all the staples!

Rediscovering Kaohsiung

When I told Danny and Dan to come to Kaohsiung on Monday instead of Saturday (due to pending--and ultimately nullified--inclement weather), I was thinking that I would get out of class at noon, and then have the rest of the afternoon to show them Kaohsiung. Which just shows how clearly I was thinking at that point in time: I don't get out of class on Mondays until 3:00.

So I taught all day ("ng" and "nk," which the kids loved to imitate and to laugh at my demonstrations), then headed straight home, picked up Dan and Danny, and headed off to Cijin Island. It was surprisingly un-busy--the joys of going on a weeknight, rather than a weekend--and we sampled fruit juices, walked around the beach, and forced Danny to try some squid. (I also tried the roadside squid for the first time--another food to check off my list of things-to-try-in-Taiwan.) About halfway through our walk, right as the sun was setting, my camera battery died.

Which was a real shame. In addition to the sunset, we saw a horse. Just, you know, chilling by the side of the trail. It took us a while to figure out if it was a runaway or not, but eventually we figured out it was staked down by the path.

Which leads me to the question who takes a horse to Cijin, stakes it to the side of the path, and walks off? For that matter, who in the thriving urban setting of Kaohsiung owns a horse? And where?

Shortly thereafter, we headed back for the Cultural Center and grabbed a bite at Chialing's, which was, as always, delicious. Then it was back to the apartment to play poker and High 2, which Dan introduced to us.

And now I'm blogging, which, as you may be able to tell, I have no desire to be doing. But I'll be up again tomorrow, ready to go again with my packed schedule: school, then rediscovering Kaohsiung with friends!

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!