so ive been here in taiwan and every day is a new adventure hoho

right now i just ate a ricola cough drop guy but not because i have a cough or cold or anything - i think the last time i had a ricola was like... a few years ago. i used to eat them like candy because there was always some infinite source of them at the shop...

earlier today for lunch we were at this seafood restaurant where host family ordered this huge crab guy for me. it was also the last dish to come out so i pretty much stayed there after most of the family had gone home ahead and took my time devouring mr crab guy. it was a tasty dish!

what ive been doing since ive come here >>

i got here on 21 sat dec 2007 and the highlights of my day are most definitely the meals. the seafood is awesomely awesome. i know thats not a good description for anything, but... i cant really convey how good the eats are here. ive been pretty /sigh all the time in japan at the kinds of chinese food they crank out. its not it sucks or anything in japan, but when you want like real chinese food... jp chinese food just doesnt compare.

i ate at a vietnamese noodle eatery the other day at the 101 tower. i put a lot of faith in tw cooks being able to cook pho 10 times better than any jp chef would (lol totally not racist here but, come on...) and i wasnt disappointed. i think i hadnt had vietnamese food for a good half year before eating that soup the other day.

ffxi update keeps failing and while its kind of frustrating, it's all good~ the only thing im worried about is 1) if i do manage to get in, ill be all logged in to a WotG area and therefore ill be stuck floating in zone limbo like what happened when i went to jp internet cafes... 2) i need to retrieve secret santa gift...... >_> people are going to think im a fuddy duddy for not following through with the secret santa LS event >< hey, at least i sent out my gift before i left, so no worries!

ive noticed that tw people have a different 'idle pose' than jp people. jp peoples' idle pose is *check watch and/or *mess with cell phone, while tw peoples' idle pose is *eat bun. i kid not - it really is very funny to watch. everyone here eats on the go where in japan eating anywhere other than a restaurant or your house means youre some kind of weirdo. they really will stare at you... especially if youre not some innocent high school kid riding on the train after school eating a cute onigiri thing... because the public seems to think of the school kid eating homemade food thing is somewhat more ok than anyone else eating anything else... if that makes any sense... i wonder what the american idle (not to be confused with American Idol) pose would be. maybe /dance hoho

host family mother's mother took the kiddies to southern taiwan on a great bus ride. we stopped at so many temples - it was great. i took a handful of photos that ill upload sometime somewhere when i get back. it was such an awesome experience temple hopping. those temples must have been standing around for such a long time. and along the freeway you can see like tons of them near and far. we even saw this huge ass golden buddha guy lounging on a hillside. i took a blurry photo hehe. man, so cool. the architecture was totally over the top too.

there are a lot of random wild dogs here. both in the city and in the lolcountryside. we saw a lot of doggies just chilling at the temples too - dozing in the shade and such. host family tells me that a lot of native women and children are kind of afraid of dogs here because the majority of the dogs living here are those wild ones. i think theyre cute, though - even if their fur looks ugly haha.

i havent done any shopping at all here. host family females keep taking the kiddies to all these inexpensive strip mall places but i havent really found anything to buy yet. ive seen plenty of funny stuff though! there is this place called a "night market" here which is like a scene from a movie - lots of people/ shoppers, lots of food street vendors, lots of shops all along the side, everyones' wares hanging in out and everywhere, a good variety of music blaring from all the different shops, and a smell that would wake the dead. the experience of just walking around and looking at everything was cool, but the smell was the worst kind of smell ive had to endure in a long time. i remember when i was cleaning an old grease trap from an italian restaurantwith my dad... and we accidentally knocked it over... and a million year old italian food smell spashed all over us... yeah... i never thought anything besides the smell of dead rats + frogs in the LS wing could rival that... but oh man, the smell in that place was the worst ever. it gave me a headache and i had to {run away}! before i threw up. i couldnt eat anything that night lol.

tomorrow is new years eve! and we're going to stare at 101 for its awesome firework thing. all the older people have been telling me for the past few days is "oh man, the 101 firework display is like 600,000+ dollars! im looking forward to it in any case. sure ive seen the vegas firework extravaganza every year, but i want to believe that the fireworks were will be better just because we're closer to mainland china hohoho - it makes it more authentic hohoho actually, im interested how much of the world's fireworks really come from china... do jps get their fireworks from china or do they make their own?

i had a cream cheese + bagel brunch for the first time in a long time like a week ago when i fist got here - yea that was great too.