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. :)