The adventures continue.

As May quickly approaches, I am reminded that my time here is more than half over. While my parents were in Taiwan I told them there was a very good possibility of me extending my stay here. Since they have left I toiled for days over ways to come up with money to extend my stay, I looked into Visa extensions, scholarships for school, and even jobs to support the cost of living. However, after thinking things over again and again, I have decided that I will be coming home at the end of August as was had originally planed. My plane ticket is booked, and the date is set. But as I start to plan for my fall semester back at UWM, I also continue to discover new and wonderful things in this place.

Sitting at school waiting for class to start I looked out upon the city and realized that this place feels more and more like my home. The buildings, although concrete and stained with exhaust, add to this city's wonderful character. You can sense the amount of people, and the flow of life by gazing at the Taipei skyline. C.K.S. Memorial Hall and Big Pink (Taiwan's second tallest building) stick out at day and night.


Walking through Shida Night market you can always tell you've found good food if there is a long line of people waiting for it. One stand in the night market always seems to have the longest line, so I decided to give it a try. The stand sells something called Lu Wei, they give you a basket and a set of tongs and you get to select what kind of food you would like to eat, they have dofu, tons of fresh veggies, meat, noodles, and tons of other stuff. You put the things you want into the basket and then the cook plunges it into the black, boiling Lu Wei(滷味) broth, made from Chinese herbal medicine. After the food is done they add chili sauce, garlic, and some other goodies. If you eat at the restaurant behind the Lu Wei stand you get your meal on a nice big plate, but if you take it to go, or as we say in chinese dai zou(帶走), chinese for carry out, all your food goes into a nice plastic bag. My basket of Lu Wei consisted of noodles, dofu, mushrooms, asparagus, green beens and fresh lettuce. The meal was incredible, and well worth the half hour wait and 140NT I paid for it; like I said before, huge lines means the food is good.


The food at the Lu Wei stand was so good that I ate it again the next night as well. Thankfully I ordered while it was still pretty early so I didn't have to wait for a half hour the second time around. Last night Matt's friend from Germany arrived in Taipei for the weekend and we decided to show him around. We started the night at the 45 our pub of choice and had a few beers. After that it was over to Longshan temple which was had a very different feel at night. Very peaceful, yet alive with energy. After Longshan temple we went over to Snake Alley and got stuffed on street food. I had some tasty chao mian (fried noodles) and watched the boys eat some awesome cuts of sashimi for the sweet price of 150NT, there never going to get deals like that back home. After Longshan temple we headed out to a club and danced the night away. All in all it was a great way to start the weekend. Not sure what will be next on my adventures in Taipei, most likely some homework. We are studying political terms and our report for this test is a mock election for ban zhang(班長), class representative. While these types of reports require a good amount of effort, its a wonderful use of new vocabulary.