Life Outside America

A few weeks ago a group of us from work gathered for a BBQ party at Jason’s house.  We had been wanting to have some sort of party, so it was nice to finally be able to have one.  I had volunteered Jason’s place for the party which didn’t thrill Jason too much but his place was the best to have it.

Before starting the party we had to to the grocery store and pick up supplies.  The only downside to all of this was that all the food needed to be prepared to cook. Annie, Robert, and Wenxiu spent a lot of time in the kitchen preparing all of the vegetables and meat to be cooked.

Most of us would stay downstairs in Jason’s apartment while 2 people were on the roof cooking for the party.  The food was quite good, except someone on the roof had no idea how to cook vegetables and they kept ending up burnt.  Robert and Wenxiu cooked dumplings and meat in the kitchen and it was great.  I think it was better than the stuff coming from the roof.

During my trips between the roof and the bedroom, I eventually stayed up on the roof with Wenxiu to help her cook. By then the fire was dying down a lot and we had no more charcoal to get the fire going.

Andy enjoying his time in the kitchen and the mess we made eating his food.

After eating, we decided to play a random assortment of games.  At first we tried to play a pokemon drinking game where we have to do certain drinking tasks based on what square you land on.

That was taking too long so we ended up playing a dice game where we had to do certain things based on what we rolled for the dice.  Colton got the task of dancing so he had to a little dance for us.

In the end we started playing a card game where each number on a card required us to do a task like all girls must drink, all boys, tell someone to drink, etc.  After playing for about 15 minutes I think everyone was getting bored with it and it was getting late so the party started to wind down so people could catch the MRT.

Before leaving we had to get a few more pictures, especially a group one.  After all of us parted ways Wenxiu and I made our way to the MRT as well to head home.  We snapped up a few photos together while riding.  Hopefully we can do another small party together before a few people are set to go home.

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Once again I’ve neglected the website for a bit, but I’m finally back and updating it with a bit of what’s been going on.  Taipei has been under a constant rain so it’s been hard to really do much of anything cept try to stay dry indoors.

Andy and I had been wanting to get a work dinner thing going and get people to hang out together.  We tried to invite the foreigners as well as the Taiwanese teachers.  It was a pretty fun evening of eating hot pot, but sadly we couldn’t get any of the Taiwanese teachers to come out except for Annie, the new Taiwanese teacher that has recently joined us at work.  Hopefully we don’t scare her away too quickly.

Wenxiu and I also finally made our way over to Jason’s house not too long ago.  In the 6 months or so that we have both been living here, I had never taken the 20-30 minute journey to his city.  Taishan isn’t all that different from Luzhou except it appears to be more spacious and a lot less people.  Jason’s house for sure is a lot better than mine as he lives in a place that is probab 5 times or more larger than my place.

A few weeks ago Andy, Seth, Lauren, Wenxiu, and I went to Baishawan Beach which is located about an hour or so north of us.  I think we ended up picking a not so great day to go.  The weather was pretty cold which doesn’t bother me too much but it was extremely windy that day.

We also managed to go right after a storm had come through I believe.  This had littered the beach with hundreds of dead puffer fish scattered all around. This was coupled with a lot of trash and other debris that had washed up from the storm.  It made walking around on the sand not so pleasant trying to avoid all the dead and decaying fish and trash.  But it was still nice to get out of the Taipei area and walk around for a bit.

After going to the beach, they had decided they wanted BBQ.  We tried to go to one place that is supposed to be good but the wait was gonna be more than an hour long so we decided to not eat there and go somewhere else.  We stopped along the road at this little shop but it turned out to be a big disappointment.

We were probably there for almost 2 hours because the place had no idea what they were doing.  They ended up switching around the orders and giving people different things than what they had actually ordered.  They oven was also not working correctly so food was taking a lot longer to cook.  In the end, it took Andy like 3 times of having his Chicken cooked before it wasn’t pink in the middle anymore.

Wenxiu recently went to Japan for about 5 days, which I was a bit a jealous of.  I’ve been wanting to go to Japan for a long time but have never had the opportunity to do so.  She was lucky and her work paid for the trip so she was able to save quite a lot of money, but I think she spent a ton of money shopping which I expected.

She brought me different snacks from Japan was great.  I had asked before she left if she could get me some green tea kit kat bars since I had seen them online but had never tried them before.  I’ve never been able to find them in the US or in Taiwan so I figured this was a great chance.  She also got me a banana pastry thing which was good but awkward cause it tasted like very soft banana cause it was pudding inside.  She had also bought me some clothes while she was there, and I think my closet is gonna explode soon.

After returning from Japan, Wenxiu had to prepare for midterms which resulted in hanging around Taipei in coffee shops while Wenxiu leaned over her books for hours at a time.  I don’t know how she manages to stay focused on studying for so long.  I try to work on my papers or study for more than an hour and I’m starting to go crazy.

In between all her studying, we had a chance to go out to lunch with Wenxiu’s 2nd sister.  We ended up having sushi since almost all the other places were closed during the time and we were too hungry to sit around and wait too long for food.

I don’t know how we did it, I think it might have been Wenxiu going a little overboard on the ordering, but we ended up eating close to 40 plates of sushi all together.  I think I ate enough sushi to last me several months.

I received this the other day from one of my students.  I guess it is from a famous place in another part of Taiwan but it absolutely disgusted me at the thought of trying to eat it.  It’s a pastry with a chocolate covered bee stuck dead center in the middle of it. He had also brought one from my Taiwanese co-teacher and she was afraid to go near it for a while.  A lot of us weren’t 100% sure if it was real or fake but the detail in the chocolate made me think it was real.  

Another thing that I received lately that I wasn’t too happy with was this haircut.  Wenxiu wasn’t happy at how long my hair had gotten so she took me to a salon to get my hair cut.  The massage part of it was nice, but the end product….

I think it looks a little too taiwanese for me and I actually have no idea what to do with my hair half the time anyways so now it just looks terrible on most days I think.

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Well once again I’ve been a bit slow to update with things going.  I blame it on being somewhat busy along with actively trying to read my books.  So far I’ve finished 2 of them and started on the 3rd one.  Reading 1000 page books takes a while.

One thing we did recently was going laser tagging in Taipei.  It was a group of about 6 of us that decided to go play one Sunday afternoon.  It was quite fun, but I hadn’t played in probably at least 14 years so I was pretty terrible at it.  It didn’t help that girls kept cheating and would use their long hair to cover up parts of their vest.

Another place I’ve found out about from my friend Andy is a place called E7 Club. It is an all you can play place that features video games, billards, bowling, and other assortments of fun.  I’ve gone several times so far with coworkers and enjoyed my time, aside from when I’m bowling.  I’m absolutely terrible at bowling and I don’t think I’ve gotten higher than a 75 on any of my games so far.

After laser tag we made our way to Chilis.  Once again the food was pretty good but the most impressive thing was how much Seth had ate.  While everyone was getting full from their food, he would continue to eat whatever was offered to him that was left.  He probably at least two to three times more than anyone else.  Oh and also there was a random door that appeared to be part of an old exit in the middle of the mall.  Jason got some funny looks from Taiwanese when he’d go through the strange doors.

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