day 11!

Today was a pretty low key day, since we arranged our schedules around Kevin and Jennifer leaving. They spent the morning cleaning and packing. Jennifer brought her whole apartment with her, so it took her quite a few hours...and even then she wasn't done. :p She also was helping carry stuff home for my mom and me so she was trying to carefully pack all those too. We had a lunch appointment with the whole family though, so we had to leave so as not to be late....

Lunch! We went to some restaurant that was affiliated with my dad's college. If you have an alumni card, you get some sort of discount on food. It was quite nice inside though actually, and I liked all of the food that they had -- it was really good! Pictured above from left to right is my grandma, my cousin (Wanru), and her dad = my uncle.

We had xiaolongbao (love these! :D) and mmm lettuce....burritos. Lol chinese food sounds so stupid when you try to say it in english. Those xiaolongbao have mmm ....squash filling? Which sounds bleh but it actually tastes really fresh and good.

Oooh and who doesn't like fatty pork and steamed buns? :) Or as my other cousin put it, "Taiwanese hamburgers". (See how dumb it sounds???) He was really sweet though, actually. He never talked to us much, it was usually just his younger sister (in the pic above) that interacted with us. But he kept serving me and Michael stuff during lunch, cuz we sat next to him. Either cuz he's nice or cuz he thought we were too incompetent from growing up in America to do it. :) They DO keep asking us things like "do they have this America??" "i bet you don't get that in America...", which I can see as being valid assumptions to make but, it KIND of cracks me up since we sort of grew up in Little Taiwan. O_o So it's like...yes...we do have dumplings there....yes...we do use chopsticks there....lol. It kind of perversely made me want to prove that we weren't TOTALLY ignorant of our heritage. But that also was made harder by Kevin/Michael only being able to stare blankly at people when spoken to. (sorry rong and doh but i'm just tellin' it like it is :/) They must think we're so dull here....

Dessert. :) Fried dough with red bean paste inside? I actually didn't like this one very much.

After eating, Jennifer and I went back home so she could finish packing, ....and then a few hours later, we took a cab with the luggage to our grandma's.

Jennifer, Wanru, and Kevin before leaving. :) I gave Wanru one of my knit buns, she said she really liked it.

Hung around for an hour or two, and then had a quick dinner nearby. SHUT UP, WE ARE NOT CONSTANTLY EATING. >< Hehe. Jennifer and I split a "sauce noodle" dish.

Michael got dumplings in soup...

pig's ears for appetizers...

and there was some liang mian. :)

After eating, my uncle came to drive Kevin and Jennifer to the airport. Kinda sad, our family won't be together for the next coupla months. :( Michael and I mourned together by going home and reclaiming our rooms. ^^v