Saturday Outing

This Tuesday will mark my two months of being in Taiwan. It's hard to believe it's been that long. The time oozes together eventually. I've learned a lot here, that's for sure. This week school starts back up at SIUE. I know because I still get their newsletters and emails inviting me to register for classes even though I'm graduated.

Between lesson plans, outings, and student evaluations, I haven't had much time to update. I want to get to bed a little earlier tonight, but I promised my mom I would try to update, so here are some pics from when I went out on Saturday. Steph had gone out to see Taroko Gorge with a family she knows (without me, hpmh!) so I took the day as a Sanity Day (in which you have one day to check up on life and do whatever you want). I biked down by the ocean and went to the store to pick up cleaning supplies and a few ingredients to make Longan/Dragon Eye fruit juice. We got a bunch of them from someone and I don't like the taste of them raw, so I'm hoping the juice will make them better.

I ate at a McDonald's because I was craving something American and fatty to clog up my veins. I've heard that in some Taiwanese McDonald's they serve a hamburger patty between two rice cakes. Sadly, I saw no such thing. I ordered a Mig Mac, fries, and a coke and loved every freakin' minute of it!

This is the entrance that Steph and I usually take to get to the ocean. This seems to be a night market. Unfortunately, I've never had the chance to explore it at night because it's way too far away from home for me to be biking around at night.

At a fruit stand I stopped by, they had characters carved into watermelons. I'm pretty sure these characters are "liang guo," which means "couple fruit." If anyone knows for sure, correct me if I'm wrong.
These characters are "hen tian," which means "very sweet."

And of course this can't be a blog of mine without a bunch of pictures of the ocean.

I saw a closed off, rusty bridge that some dogs were using as their hideout. When I whistled to get their attention, they got up and ran off, at which point I hastily took a picture of them. I expected more from a doggie gang.

And here we have some good, old-fashioned, abandoned slums that I saw while I was riding to the store. Not many of you know this, but one of my books-in-progress takes place in some Asian-style slums so I thought taking a picture would be good for research.

In a previous post, I mentioned a tower near the coast where people could hang out and have a picnic. Well, upon closer inspection of its pillars, I noticed markings and drawings that I hadn't before. Here are a few of them: