Day Two

This evening, I am very tired again. Another big lot of stuff happened today, this time with a few pictures because I just put the pictures onto Joni, my host mothers mac. (I can barely operate this contraption at all. I am not used to using a mac and everything is in Chinese including, of course, the keyboard, so I need a bit help to get around - just like when I am out in the city.

  

   David's family and his wife's sister. 

Joni's brother, David, showed me around Taipei (in some parts belonging to Taipei country) today. (And I have been with the MRT quite some times already.) We went to danshuei laujei, a street by the river where the locals tend to go to relax. The river side is full of stores selling all kinds of edibles and "drinkables" (and that which is both.) There, I tried cooked sea snails (some little snack ones that take a very long time to eat because they are still in there shells and you have to suck them out one at a time, so I didn't eat very many of them.) I also tried fishballs which are not bad and sweet potatoes cooked with sugar, tastes very good even though most of the Taiwanese think it is too sweet. It's a different kind of potato than from home, and when you have prepared it in the way mine were (there's two ways of preparing them,) they get hollow and sticky inside, while dry and sugarish on the outside. Later David and his family took me to a snakes bar to eat baozi buns and fishball soup. By the way, if you ever talked to someone who have been to Taiwan, they will probably have told you that mango's are very good in Taiwan. I haven't had a real mango yet, but my mango icecream was very good. (Icecream, that's what the Taiwanese called it but actually it's a kind of slush-ice.)

After a lot of walking in the incredibly hot and humid air, we drove a long way up the mountainside to drink some tea and coffee with a toast next to the nice view of sanchi mountain, a nice place where the air was a little cooler. I think it was around 27 degrees Celcius compared to the 34 degrees down at sea level. Up in the mountains people keep a lot of animals, especially dogs but also usually chicken. I even saw a squirrel while there.

  

China is famous for being a place where people eat dogs, but people i Taiwan do not eat them because in Taiwan, eating dog is illegal. 

Later on that night, I went with Joni to have dinner with her parents and their badminton club at a not very fine restaurant, but still a restaurant over average standard, and we ate a lot. They served so many dishes I lost count of them, and we ate everything from raw fish to grilled frog. We are both very stuffed and it has been a tiring day, so I am really just waiting for the picture of the dog to upload right now... (I would have uploaded a picture of my grilled frog legs too but I see it is going to take a long time if I do.) .... Sorry, you will have you wait do without the dog for now actually.