20!

Hi

Today went mountain climbing with the mountain climbing group, then dragged my mom along with Jenny* (aka Jing wen) and Kai* and went with them to Yilan (hour drive) to eat and have tea.

Mountain climbing...since my Auntie and Uncle are away, I became the head of the train. Ohohoho. Ahh the feeble self-confidence in athleticism  one can temporarily gain when living in a month in a country where 80% of the girls don't do any exercise at all. >D

Breakfast

Looking from the mountain afar

Looking up at the trail

An abnormally long biscuit that Jenny brought (wrist to  elbow)

So I did that bit of exercise, then went back, picked up mom, then went out to Yilan for lunch and afternoon tea. Kai is a really big fan of this place at Yilan so he went out of his way to drive us.

I really like Kai and Jenny. Like just their personas are really bubbly and bright and helpful, and they are really lovely people. I would probably view Jenny as a sort of a role model; she's honest, helpful, considerate enthusiastic, smart, outgoing, always has something to say...etc etc. I reckon whoever is her husband is a freaking lucky guy to meet such a positive girl.

Anyway yeah, so we went to this Jap restaurant. My mom ordered a set meal and I ordered a salmon rice, which was a bit of salmon on top of a way too big bowl of rice.

Jenny and Kai ordering

Quadselfie shot courtesy of Kai's long arm

Their tea; aka matcha

Homemade tofu with mackerel and savory sauce

Tuna and Salmon sashimi

My rice with a built in chopstick holder

Soft shelled crab

Jenny's rice triangle

Mushroom chicken soup

Sweet caramel pudding

So filling. It was nice, but Jenny had a vegetarian set, which was all mushrooms. It was kinda funny, Kai and I started paying her out.


Then afterwards we went to Kai's favorite tea place, which is stylized after one of those Japanese tatami places with sliding doors that you hang your feet off the side towards the outside. I reckon their food was kind of average (although I don't know about the cake, that was Jenny's), but their coffee was a bit too hot, and rather bitter.

Jenny's cake

Latte...not that pretty top xD

Dried bean curd

Those selfies

Yay nice outside spot

Got bit by a mosquito whilst snoozing. Zzz.

But yeah, then afterwards I fell asleep in the car, and then got dropped off at dance. I really liked the teacher for this dance! He looks Japanese, but his style had so much power. One of the guy students had stars in his eyes after the first 16 counts:

I hope I've improved. :o I can't wait to get back to dance in Brisbane...and I hope I'll have enough time and energy to keep it up with studies. Like I'm almost doing dance class everyday here...at first it was tiring, but now it's something to look forward to everyday.

Oh yeah, the girl in the far right corner was good, but she has one of those...pretty girl auras. Maybe it's my instinct to find her annoying, but make-up to class. O.o'' And I saw her hitting on one of the guys...lololol.

I wanna learn more routines!!

And I had a loooonnggg listening session about my cousin's boyfriend and everything they get up to. The first 30 minutes is interesting but it never ends. ._.

Night~~

Day 19**

Ahh. Counted the days wrong. Sigh. >>

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So today was a pretty chill day at my dad's, had brekkie/ lunch, watched a lot of Big Bang Theory (On season 5 now! Not sure if I should be proud. Pria is really pretty zomg.), and then went out for dance and had dinner with Dad, then had an after dinner snack with Mom.

Homemade udon. Photo orientation courtesy of blogger.com

The Taiwanese are doing yogurt with jelly right. 

Where is everyone tonight? My msn is so lonely. :O

BUT DUDE today's teacher was a fuzzier more Asian version than the teacher at home! (About the same height bahaha). The style was about the same, the sort of slow poetic style,...and when he started saying 'Boom...boomcrack!', I was like luls.

Have a look:

And then afterwards, my dad brought me to this awesome Japanese restaurant. Although their aburi was lacking (i.e. the fish slice was too thick to be properly toasted and made buttery, instead it was like a piece of slightly toasted sashimi) , their fresh fish slices for sashimi and nigiri were really generous, fresh, and juicy.

Looks really dodgy from the outside, very cozy on the inside, but very nice. 

Aburi Salmon

Thickness of the aburi

Nigiri

Aburi...something

Blurry squid  nigiri

Sashimi platter

Assistant chef

Sideways salad

Dessert cut

Taiwan beer, tis not bad. >D

~~

Days 17 and 19~

At Yangmei~

Hi~

So yesterday I sent my auntie off to the airport and then chilled with my cousin. There wasn't really much to do, so we kinda bummed around at home; I was watching Big Bang Theory and she was watching her anime. We bought dinner early so I wouldn't be bloated for dance:

Yess we are awesome

Cuz

Chicken rice

Then for dance, had Mr. Afro.

Then I went down to yangmei after dance. I stopped by the sushi place to get sushi for my mom. Pffsht. She was originally going to give it all to my uncle because it was so late and my uncle is a big eater, and she came out with some bs excuse that 'it was kinda awkward because food was brought out in front of him', in which she was the one to do so. I was kinda annoyed , because I found that kind of offensive as I had bought the sushi particularly for her because her flight was today and she wouldn't have gotten a chance to go*. But in the end she ended up eating some so. ^^ Alls wells that ends well.

Breakfast

Shopping Market

Fried Fish balls

Then as there wasn't much to do at Yangmei, I had a kind of dnm with my mom, just chatting about stuff, my cousins and their relationships, marriage, new years courtesies, and even palm reading.

What is kinda depressing because apparently my relationship and love lines are kinda screwed. LOL. T_T.  (disclaimer this bit isn't implying anything, it's just what my lines say)

Like apparently I have too many/ my later ones are both curved down. Like the longest deepest one is to signify marriage is like...really long but curved down and stuff. I have some fainter better looking ones that are facing nice and up..but they're really faint and branching off that long line(down is bad, up is good)

So pretty much it's like bad lines in regards to marriage and my stronger relationships. ._. In addition, I have numerous lines, which my mom also said means that I am more prone to having confused or mixed feelings regarding relationships. (i.e my mom only has 2 lines, but I have like..1,2,3,4abc)

Although that being said, palm lines are definitely not your life and they're always changing. Like from what my mom has said, they seem to be somewhat accurate, but also to keep in mind that they're not edict and are merely a cautionary sort of omen.

So I need to keep a cautionary note to myself to consider and view my relationships carefully.



--

Japanese pancake for a snack

Apple passionfruit tea with pearls and Japanese pancake

But yeah. Then pretty much chilled at Yangmei for the rest of the day, went out with an auntie for a bit, chilled at home watching tv and Big Bang Theory, then went out for dinner, then sent mom to airport.

Trololol her passport expired so she's staying in Taiwan for another week.

But yeah. Pretty much.

Just finished watching later half of Devil Wears Prada. One of my favorite movies. <33

I dunno. Hahah all the hour long bus rides with nothing to do gives you a lot of time to think. It's good. :)

Night!

Day 16

Hi

So today...went out, had lunch, dance class, went to a temple, then went to some Chinese New Years Night market with Dad.

For lunch, we went to the same ramen shop that is kind of close to my dad's work place. We ordered some different ones; my dad ordered a seaweed ramen, which you can guess was full of:

Seaweed Ramen

Then feeling rather full, I headed off to dance class. This time it was an LA style, and this was the first instructor to play a song that I knew (during warm-up), which was Payphone. And he was also the first teacher to not have a song on continuous for warm-up, which was a nice surprise. 

Here's our routine for today, ,instructor in white. He reminds me of some Singaporean guy I know back at home.

Then afterwards, my Dad brought me to a really popular temple to kinda...Asian pray? (aka bai bai -fourth tone-). There were a lot of old obasamas trying to sell us prayer incense, and they seemed really desperate because they were actually giving them out free at the temple anyway. 

Anyway, my dad said to pray for 'ping an', which is like...peace? I wonder if it's because of the family situation, but I did the little bai bai and got a peace card which is now in my bag that I carry around. 

Temple

whee

 Then afterwards, we went to the new years market. It was choc full of people, and there were so many free samples of lots of fried and dried new years foods. A lot of people were also selling like...fish eggs or something? Scallops, shrimp, idk, lots of expensive unappetizing new years food. Then we had dinner at this corner shop, played a round of shot the balloons (hey I actually hit quite a few >D), and then now I'm back at my Auntie's house.

Night market fun. Pop!

Dinner. 

Roast pumpkin seed bag

Going to do some courtesy travelling tomorrow. Meeh.
Night!

15

Ni hao ma?

Night markets...mmm.

--

Today woke up at 11:30. Slept so well. Then went off to dance class. As I'm trying to use up more of my dance classes, I've been exposed to more teachers. The class today was Girls hiphop, which I though would have been a more slutty hip hop, but turns out it was a more...detail sort of hip hop? Like sort of shuffling and heel toe moves, and lot of little things. It was really hard, but really refreshing to normal hip hop.

I'm kind of annoyed that I didn't record it because some other girl asked me to record for her on her phone before I could pick up my camera. I said yes but not next time. Hmph. I want to practice the routine this teacher does because it's so cool and different, but really hard.

--

Then my dad and I went to Ximending, which is like the young adolescent sort of area with ruder shopkeepers and lots of young people. Also, most of the merchandise is sold in many shops and slightly overpriced, thus it's easy to haggle a little bit. I'm still learning how to, but I managed to cut off 40 dollars off a belt that I bought, but I'm sure I could have cut off more if I tried harder. >>

Chips!

Sausages

Bleh fringe

We ate a lot of random food. Like we had fries, sausages, and cherry tomatoes with dried plums. (So good).  Oh, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but the Taiwanese are a group of people who love lining up for things; the more people lining up for something, the more enticing it appears. So naturally, my dad and I decided to line up at this one noodle shop that had a hoard of people standing outside eating; it was that good. We bought a bowl; it was good, though I don't know if to the appeared standard.

People standing up eating outside shop

Soft tender noodles

Tomato and plum

I also bought a pair of potentially ugly yet stylish dancing pants. xD

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Then afterwards my dad brought me to two night markets. The first was a food based night market, where I had one of my favourite Taiwanese foods. I don't know what it's called, and I just pointed to it when I ordered it, but it's like a really thin yet stretchy rice paper wrapped around peanut candy powder, and has 3 scoops of light ice cream, and a bit of chinese herb. It's sooo good.

We also had some soup, tofu, and I finally got my takoyaki. =D

Ice dessert

Ice cream dessert

Ice cream dessert wrap 

Mr

Smelly tofu

Takoyaki!

Then afterwards, we went to another night market, shopped, and ate more food.

Preeeetty much.

I wish there were more people online to chat too. xD I feel like I've been cut off from home, and everyone's always too busy gaming or doing whatever, or sleeping to talk to me. :(


Bonus performance we saw today. These guys are amazing...too bad the crowd was pretty stale.

Night !