in case anyone was wondering, cockroaches in taiwan can fly.



yeah i don't even want to talk about it.

m a y b e  i'll tell the story later, if i ever stop feeling like puking when i think about it.
GAG

FOOD PICS

Just a sampling of the AMAZING food I've had here... :)

 

haha just kidding :)

homemade wontons! yum, my favorite thing @ shilin night market!

selection of fresh fruits for fresh squeezed juice, my favorite's watermelon juice :)

dessert buffet, 'nuff said.

taiwanese chicken noodle soup in yilan

desserts @ Joel Robuchon's Salon de The (for all you foodies!)

HOTPOT!!! MY FAVORITEEEEEEE 

"Party in Your Mouth" block toast @ Dazzling Cafe (basically a huge chunk of toast cut into cubes with butter and honey drizzled on the bread and ice cream on top... in other words, heaven)

pork skewers--waited 30 minutes in line for these, and worth it!!

famous soup dumplings at the famous Ding Tai Feng!!

mochi ready to be grilled and then dipped in honey, condensed milk, peanuts and red bean paste

fresh strawberries covered in condensed milk and chocolate

BBQ @ GanBei!

Beef Noodle Soup @ Mr. Chang's!

traditional taiwanese dessert: grass jelly, grass jelly shaved ice, and taro mochi

yep, i did it, the hello kitty cafe!!

SO NOW YOU ALL KNOW WHY I'VE GOTTEN FAT HERE IN TAIPEI!!!

福隆 (FuLong)／大溪 (DaXi) HIKE

Another day trip outta the city, this time for a day-long hike with this hiking group I joined when I first came to Taipei... except this was my first hike with them... 7 months later.

Anyway, dragged Leslie with me on this one, since I was too chicken to go by myself :)

FuLong: famous for its lunch boxes, though now after having one, I'm not really sure why...

DaXi: hike up to Eagle Rock (yeah, so original) for a view of Honeymoon Bay. Great view but the hike up and back down--around 5 hours total--was painful to say the least.

Me & Les @ Eagle Rock (see the beak??)

I've come to realize I like hiking, but like hiking for toddlers: no steep climbs and lots of snack breaks in between. And preferably someone to carry me when I get tired.

**Mulberries**
Taste like cherries but about 1/4 of the size. Yummy, but ultimately not worth it.

陽明山 (YangMing Mtn.)

Went to the nearest mountain to look for flowers.

Haha well supposedly it's "flower season" up on YangMing Mtn. so the girls and I decided to go on a hunt for some cherry blossoms--only to find out cherry blossom season is just about over...

So no cherry blossoms. But calalillies instead?

It's cala-lilly season here I guess, even have fields of cala-lillies, and you can pick your own :)
Fun day out of the smoggy city.

平溪 (PingXi) Lantern Festival

Truthfully, still don't really know what the Lantern Festival's all about.. I think it should be re-named Eating Extravaganza for us though, because that's pretty much all we did.

Just a 40-minute bus ride from the last stop on the Subway out of the city, and the girls and I ended up in PingXi, the site for the lantern festival. The lanterns were really cool, obviously (see picture), but equally fantastic was the display of street food, oh my god you would not believe it!

It took us around 2 hours to walk all the way down the one very, very, very long street (alley? road?) with stands and tents of street food (on both sides, of course), since we tried practically everything we saw! There were like asian burritos, fried chicken, fried shrimp with eggs, fried shrimp balls, pork skewers, fried veggie dumplings, strawberries with condensed milk and chocolate sauce, unripe green mangos with sugar, salted and spicy chicken with cucumbers, i think i'm still missing something... haha it was literally a food tour.

We got to the end of the road (quite literally) and found a stand to decorate (de-face) our lantern. With English, Italian, and Chinese written all over it (words and wishes of luck, happiness, and love), our multi-cultural lantern was definitely unique to say the least, and when as it floated up into the sky joining all the other hundreds, maybe thousands of lanterns, we all cheered with delight (partly out of sheer relief that it didn't get caught in any telephone wires or catch on fire).

Oh, did I mention I almost spelled 幸福 (happiness) wrong? (In Chinese, jeez, my English isn't that bad--yet) A Taiwanese guy definitely corrected me and then laughed--so much for all those Chinese lessons, sorry Mom & Dad...

HOT SPRINGSSSS :)

First day of the new (lunar) year (HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!) and I wake my butt up at freaking 9 AM after a day (yes, not just one meal) of feasting the night before... what a miracle.

Now, under normal circumstances, I'm sure you all know there are few things I would force myself out of bed at 9 AM for, especially during vacation.. but the invitation to a free hot springs session sounded like a good enough reason for me! :)

Soaking in the hot springs is apparently a very popular pasttime here in Taiwan! I guess it's good for your body, and good for your skin? Anyway, my family invited me to join them and I mean, a) I couldn't come up with a good excuse for why I'd be busy on a Sunday morning at 9 AM and b) hot springs, why not, right?

So anyway, they pick me up this morning and we drive up into the mountains on the outskirts of Taipei in a place called Wulai, and the weather was beautiful: clear blue skies, lots of green on the mountains, wide rivers... almost like back home except more tropical.

The place we went to was called Spring Park Spa & Resort, it was suuuuuper nice! I went into the public hot springs... and er, yes it was nude. But I mean, hey, whatever, we're all girls right! haha So it was really awesome: there were five pools: one freezing, one cool, one warm, one hot, and one hot outside right by the river! It was so pretty!

There was also a sauna, a steam room, shower facilities, a "resting" area where you can get massages and facials, they even had really nice face and hair products! For $30US you can pretty much stay in there as long as you want (the only thing is you can only go in and come out once... so if you get hungry tough luck.)!

Mm, in summary, it was super fun and I definitely hope to be going back sometime soon! :) A new Taiwan experience with good results, love it!

My First End-of-the-Year Office Party!!!

Also known as "wei-ya" in Taiwan, these are pretty much legendary. I'd heard about these from various (working) friends of mine here in Taipei, a night of getting absolutely hammered with all your co-workers and bosses, eating and drinking and singing kareoke and other drunken shenanigans.

So naturally I was super pumped when I got invited to the office wei-ya this year! (Especially when I heard it was being held at the Shangri-La, one of the most expensive hotels/places to eat in Taipei) In my head I was like "Heck Yes! I'm going to see all these people so insanely drunk, it will be hilaaaaaaarious! Plus, free yummy food?? Count me in!" right?

Until I found out a couple things (conveniently after I had already accepted the invitation):

1. Our wei-ya is always themed. And costume is required.

2. Nobody drinks at our company's wei-ya because the president and his wife don't drink

3. Everyone is required to perform

I was like ".......what." I very quickly calculated the costs vs. gains of this ordeal, and ended up deciding that good food was worth pretty much anything, so I didn't make up an excuse of why I could no longer make it.

For the performance portion, I let the other people in my group decide what to do, because hey, I know nothing about the Taiwanese sense of humor. They ended up deciding to do a re-enactment of Swan Lake (yes, the ballet) with a boy dressed as a swan and a girl dressed as the prince. Storyline: prince chases swan princess for awhile, then a cowboy comes in a shoots them both, then we all danced to a weird cowboy song by Jay Chou (super famous singer here). HAHAHA I know. Sounds so random. And it was.

Anyway, whatever, we came up with it literally the day before the wei-ya. And hey, we ended up winning 1st place (translation: $20 in my pocket)!!

To get back to the story, I dressed as a black cat (not so original, but minimal effort) because it was animal-themed, and we all walked from the office to the Shangri-La on Wednesday for the party!

In short, it was good, clean fun :) I got to see my bosses dance: bellydance, the congo, you name it. The food was excellent--great salad bar, and let me tell you, good, normal salad is not easy to come by in Taipei! Buffet style. HEAVEN.

However, slightly embarrassed when I kept going back for plate after plate, and my co-worker looks at me and goes, "You're still eating??? Aren't you full???"

To which I awkwardly reply (with another forkful on its way to my mouth), "Um... yeah.... well................ it's not everyday I get to eat such a great meal!" slash, I didn't have the guts to tell her I just have like eating...... haha

All in all, it was a great experience! I walked out with about $50 and a full tummy, definitely a win-win situation, what more can a girl ask for? :)

my little cousin & i

FIELD TRIP!!!

So last week my class and another class took a field trip to 淡水 or DanShui! The purpose of the field trip was actually to visit three specific locations so that we could go home and write about our trip (in Chinese obviously) and present it in class, powerpoint included. We were all paired off with a person from the other class, so it was nice to make new friends!

Of course, I meant to arrive on time, but was 20 minutes late. How embarrassing... as soon as I arrived (last one of course) we all headed off to the first stop: a shop selling all kinds of traditional goodies from DanShui!

This store specialized in cakes filled with all kinds of different fillings: sweet and savory, including pineapple, curry, pork, red bean paste (not like kidney beans haha, red beans are a kind of popular bean in Asia, and when you mash it up to make paste it's sweet. same with "green beans." We don't eating mashed up American green beans, I promise you.)!

Carol & all the free samples :)

David, 老師 (my teacher), and Carol!

We were supposed to interview to shop workers about the history of the place, because it's apparently famous, but none of them would give us the time of day because we were obviously students with no money to buy products haha!

Our next stop was a very, very old temple:

outside

inside

it was pretty boring inside... not much to report. except these weird red wooden pieces that you are supposed to throw on the floor and ask yes/no questions to the gods, pretty crazy. if one lands face up and the other face down, it means yes... i forget what the "no" was...

Next Stop: weird statue, but i'm going to skip over that because it was so lame, and go straight to the fun stuff, aka lunch.

this is called ah-gei, and it's basically a tofu box with yummy yummy clear noodles inside, and covered in this sweet and salty sauce, and it's delicious. And did I mention this was only $1??? It was so good I'm contemplating going all the way back to DanShui (an hour and a half ride on the MRT) just to eat it again!!!

Carol & Eric copying answers. cheaters. hahaha

After lunch we walked around, bought some more traditional snacks, and then headed to 紅樓, quite literally translated as Red Multi-Story building. hahaha! Anyway, it's an old three-story building that is now a cafe/restaurant at the top of a hill in DanShui, and you can sit up there and drink (really yummy) fruit tea, and eat, and take in the beautiful view!

We all sat down, ate, and relaxed for a bit (aka my favorite part of the field trip) and afterwards everyone wanted to go home, but since it took me SO long to get there, my friend Lucia and I decided to stay on. We basically just wandered along the water, and walked back to the MRT stop, shopped, ate, talked :) along the water there were a bunch of little snack stands as well as like carnival games!

DanShui was beautiful, definitely going back. Especially because word on the street is there's a great MEXICAN FOOD place there!!!!!

Facebook Games?

One thing that I find particularly strange about people in Taiwan is that they love--and I mean LOVE--their Facebook games.

Now let me just say that till about... a week ago, I didn't even know Facebook had games. But then, having since then added some local friends (yes, I have local friends! so exciting!) my home page has been LITTERED with updates like "... is playing Happy Farms" or "... is now a Cooking Wizard in CafeMaster" or "... just stole 10 chickens from their neighbor's farm and has won the 'Plumpest Chicken' award at the county fair" oh, and did I mention that most of this is in Chinese, and accompanied by cheesy colorful cartoons?

WHAT THE HELLLLLL?!??!?

Apparently, these games are like, SUPER popular. Go figure, right? Asians and their computer games. This is doing absolutely nothing to fight the stereotype.

Typhoon Season Has Arrived.

UUUUUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO....

The rain is here. And it won't go away.

In fact, I can't even remember the last time we had a sunny day around here. Seriouslyyyyy... having spent the last four Fall seasons in LA, this is definitely not something this California girl is used to. Even at home in Nor Cal, the rain isn't this bad so early in the Fall! At least... not from what I can remember anyway.

It started raining late Sunday evening, and literally did not stop raining continuously until Tuesday morning. And it wasn't just a little drizzle or light fuzzy rain, it was pouring. All day. There was a cat outside my window that didn't sound so happy, and you bet I was glad to be indoors on such a rainy day!

Shamefully, I admit that when it comes to rainy weather, I'm a California girl through and through, and, as I usually did in LA, rainy days meant no class for me :) but since it seems that the rainy days here will happen much more often than in LA, skipping class every time the weather isn't to my liking isn't an option...

Time to invest in some rainboots!

家人: Family.

The thing about being Chinese, when it comes to family, is that it seems to never end. Now, this is--for the most part--a great thing. Being around family gives you the feeling of belonging, and a sense of safety somehow. But at the same time, being with distant relatives even if we are "family" just isn't the same as being with family from home.

I spent my lazy Sunday with family, to be specific: my Mother's aunts, cousins and their families, and in the evening my Dad's cousin and his girlfriend and their friends. I overslept by accident :) so I got to my great-aunts' house at around noon. My great aunts still live in the house my mother grew up in, which was really cool to see. There was a big yard with a bunch of trees, the same trees (I'm guessing) my Mom told me she used to climb as a kid. The house is pretty big, so I guess everyone used to live together? As a kid Mom told me she used to drag her younger cousin Paul around with her whenever she went to play baseball or climb nearby trees--I obviously did not inherit any of her athletic/tomboy genes... I call all my mom's cousins, including Paul, my "Uncles" in an effort to avoid the complicated Chinese family tree terminology (there are different terms for EVERYONE depending on their relation to you, including whether they are from your Dad's or your Mom's side of the family!!).

So anyway, I had a very healthy lunch with my Uncles Paul and Henry, Paul's wife, Paul's 5-year-old daughter, and my two great aunts. One of my great aunts is like a yoga/meditation master, but I think I may have mentioned this in one of my earlier posts (God... I'm turning into my Mom, repeating all my stories 3-5 times to the same listeners... haha). Then I went to the park with my little "niece" ? Ting An haha and my yoga master great aunt. She climbed trees with me and Ting An like it was NO BIG DEAL!!! I gotta ask her for a lesson or two! After running around and sweating bullets in the park all afternoon, we stopped in the Astronomy museum to cool off, and Ting An played with all the gadgets. When we got back home, Enchanted was on, so we watched it, and I helped translate what was going on to Ting An :) then we had some cake, and Ting An ate a whole slice of her favorite, strawberry cream vanilla cake with pink frosting! She had her first experience writing Chinese characters with a brush, and the silly little girl spilled literally half the ink bottle (of VERY VERY THICK AND BLACK INK) all over: my legs, the chair cushions, and the floor. Haha

After I left my Mom's family, I went straight to a BBQ with my Dad's cousin. At first I felt really awkward because I didn't know anyone else at the BBQ except my "uncle" and his girlfriend. But then he gave me a glass of wine and of course conversing and meeting people became easier after that. His girlfriend's daughter, who's 16, and her friend overheard me speaking in English to a friend on the phone, and looked like they were SO in awe of me haha! So then they sat by me at the dinner table, and they were so cute! They kept whispering to each other in Chinese, like "does she speak Chinese?" and then they asked me and I said yes and they whispered back to each other like "oh my god! she can speak!" and then they looked at each other and were like "i wonder if she understands" and then before they could ask me i answered "yes, i can" haha so cute. Then I met some other people who I can speak Chinese ONLY with! Success. I need to meet more non-English speakers so I can practice my Chinese, even it WILL be so hard to converse with them..

Anyway, my Sunday passed by very enjoyably :) meeting and hanging out with my "new" family here in Taipei makes my life here a little more familiar and comfortable, and safe. Even if there is still a little wall between us. But being with distant relatives here made me miss my aunts (hi Auntie Olivia & Auntie Nancy!!!) from home, and all my cousins that I grew up with, and my mommy, daddy, and Sam. It's always nice to meet new family, and expand my family tree, but there's no replacement for the original :)

I love and miss all you guys! Big Hug & Kiss from Taipei!!

The Swiney in Taipei.

So apparently H1N1 is like frighteningly rampant here in Taipei. NBD right?

Until I started getting a sore throat and other BS last Sunday. Then I woke up Monday morning, not feeling too bad, and made the poor decision of googling "H1N1 symptoms." Like I said, bad idea.

As my eyes moved down the screen, I got more and more scared: sore throat? yes. headache? yes. coughing? yes. HOLY CRAP I HAVE H1N1 WHAT AM I GOING TO DO OH MY GOD OH MY GOD. This is exactly what was going through my head at that exact moment. But I stupidly decided to read on: "Doctors suggest staying indoors, and staying away from others for at least 24 hours until your fever goes down." Fever?!?!?! OH MY GOD I DON'T HAVE A THERMOMETER WHAT AM I GOING TO DO. So obviously, I googled "how to tell if you have a fever without a thermometer" duh, I mean I DID go to USC.

Unfortunately, the people who answered all the Yahoo! message boards didn't seem to have gotten the same education I did... because answers ranged from: "put a cold glass of milk on your stomach, I say milk because afterwards if you still can't tell at least you'll have a cold glass of milk to drink" to "THERE IS NO WAY TO TELL. THE HAND ON THE FOREHEAD DOESN'T WORK" to "put the back of your hand against your forehead." Bottom line: there is no way to tell without a thermometer, jokes on you retards!!!!

So, freaking out, I made some quick calls to excuse myself from class--I mean, they should be THANKFUL I wasn't going to infect them, right?? And decided to spend the whole rest of the day indoors. The only time I left my tiny, tiny "apartment" was to get food & ravish the nearby 7-11 for any vitamins I could find... and also look for something, ANYTHING, resembling emergenC (oh, how I miss you, Pink Lemonade EmergenC...).

Totally thought this was a good idea.. until two hours later, at 12:00 PM when I flipped through all the channels on my TV and realized there was NOTHING GOOD ON TV BECAUSE IT WAS A MONDAY AT NOON. I subsequently had nothing else to do. for the whole freaking rest of the day. AWESOMEEEEEE, can you say cabin fever??

Anyway, the rest of the day was extremely boring: I took a nap because I literally had nothing else to do, woke up, watched the last half of Braveheart on TV, watched some CSI:NY, ate, went online... ate again.. slept..

Update: one week, a lot of rest, and lots of medicine, and NO PARTYING later, I feel much better. I found out later I did NOT have the Swiney, aka H1N1, because I never had a fever. This would have been useful information at around 9:30 last Monday morning, but ah well. C'est la vie. It was just a cold... actually more just a cough than anything else... Thanks to all my friends for enduring the coughing sounds coming from my body.. that sounded like I was going to cough up a lung... :)

David with his safety mask

*fun fact: these masks don't prevent you from GETTING anything, it is actually to keep you from SPREADING anything. So I suppose I should have been wearing it..... haha

I Miss You, beaches of California...

Today I went to a beach near DanShui (pronounced "dan shuay"), about 2 hrs north of Taipei. It was so nice to get out of the city and see the water, and be around fresh, clean air!!! The beach was beautiful, and there was a small crowd, but funnily enough, most people were clothed (because you know how much we Asians HATE tanned/dark skin, it's all about the white here)! It was a perfect day to go to the beach because it was sunny but a little windy so it wasn't too hot. The water here is the perfect temperature, though the waves were a little big for my liking, since I just like to float around in calm, still(er) water, so I only went in about butt-deep. haha

Even though I had so much fun at the beach today, it was still so different from our beaches in California! First of all, Santa Cruz is like a 30-minute drive from my house, and here it took me 45 minutes on the MRT (Metro) and another 45 on a bus to get to the beach! What a tiresome journey! There were lots of beached logs on shore, and some garbage, too, which was disappointing. But even though it still doesn't compare to my beloved California, it was much better than expected. The water and the beach in general was cleaner than I expected! I can't wait to go back to enjoy fresh, sea air again sometime soon! :)