I woke up Saturday morning at about 8am after only about 3 ½ hours of sleep. The continuing teachers were up and made us eggs and toast for breakfast. One of the school secretaries came up to check us into our rooms and give us our keys. I ended up being the last one downstairs to pick out a bike so it looks like I might be stuck with one that has a broken seat...bummer. Gerald gave us our food stipend in cash to get us through the 2 months it will take until we get our work visas and can get paid legally. It was $10,500 NT which I am told is about $300. Apparently food is really cheap.
Alicia- a teacher who has been teaching here off and on for 3 years took us through the streets of Taichung on our bikes to a photo store to have more passport photos taken so we can apply for our work visas. Here's the thing...my picture looked really bad but Alicia told us that they airbrush the passport pictures. So later when I got my picture- I was amazed at how much better it looked. I think they even removed the mole on my forehead. What's funny is Jessica has a beauty mark above her lip that they completely removed from her picture.
After that, we went to a restaurant for lunch. Here are the Japanese thick noodles I ordered.
Well- actually Alicia ordered because none of us know how to order and we're really going to have a tough time ordering food at restaurants when she leaves.
Pictured from left to right is Laura, me, Whitney, Tammy, & Jessica.
Then we walked across the street to a 7-Eleven which they have on almost every corner here. I bought a phone card for calling home. Here we are riding our bikes around Feng Yuan- the city we live in.
Later that day, Alicia took us on our bikes to a huge Walmart-like department store called Asia-Go to buy groceries. Since this was our first time grocery shopping, Gerald arranged to have us call him once we finished so that we could load our groceries into the van. The store and parking lot had Christmas decorations and signs that said, “X-Mas and Happy New Year!” They have lockers up front that you have to put your bags in to prevent shop lifting. To get a grocery cart, you have to put a coin in it to unlock it and then it gives you the coin back once you return the cart. Inside, people stared at us and kids pointed. We all congregated around Alicia and bombarded her with questions on what food to buy. We can't read any of the signs telling us what an item is and how much it costs. There were ladies there that walked up with samples and pointed to the food on the shelf for us to buy. It was kind of weird getting a more aggressive sales approach from sample ladies at a grocery store. There is almost no food that is remotely familiar so it's kind of hard trying to decide what to buy. When we were done, we loaded our groceries into the van and rode our bikes back home.
The streets at night are lit up with neon signs and people just park anywhere they want and pretty much drive wherever they want. Scooters and cars weave around each other on the narrow streets. There are no sidewalks for the most part. It's kinda' crazy.
That night, five of us decided to go to the night market. It's this open market that is open 2 nights a week that has food, games, clothes, jewelry, go-carts...anyway it was fun walking around and seeing the weirdest food I've ever seen in my life. There were whole squids barbecued on a stick that Elisha said are really good. There were booths with all kinds of weird meat in strange shapes from who knows what kind of animal parts. I was pretty grossed out at the cooked chicken feet laying in a pan, ready to eat.
I wanted to film it all with my camera but I felt self-conscious because again we were pretty much stared at by the crowds of people there. The smells were pretty gross. People like to eat this fried tofu that they actually call stinky tofu. It smells sooooooooooooo bad. A breeze will blow by and hit you with this stench that just stays in your nose. Apparently, they really like it. Here we are ordering food from a booth at the market by pointing at what we wanted.
I also bought some candied strawberries...fresh strawberries with a hard candy shell.
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