day 19! zhongxiaoxinsheng, guting

We got up "early" today to meet my mom before her lunch appointment with a friend, because we wanted to get some vision stuff taken care of in Taiwan. It's a lot cheaper to do most medical stuff here, either because of the lower cost of living, or because it's hella ghetto and not thorough. I suspect it's both. But I will turn a blind eye (pun?) because buying contacts at home really is way too expensive. :( I had originally told my mom I wasn't gonna do contacts at all, since I'm pretty happy with my glasses but.....I guess it doesn't hurt to have both. :) And to be perfectly vain, I got some of those fake fob glasses that I'm really starting to think are cute? And since they have no lenses I'll need to wear contacts if I want to wear them. :x So vain. :( I am ashamed.

Anyway after hearing me ask my mom to take me, Michael decided he wanted to get a new pair of glasses too. Which is fine except he took his time getting ready in the morning, which made me angry and stressed cuz I knew my mom had a lunch date and I didn't want to make her late. Grrrr.

The guy that owns the shop is a family friend (?) or relative of my mom's. :) He was funny, really reminded me of my uncle. Here he is staring at Michael's eye. Eye stuff kinda grosses me out. :/

The contacts I got were some weird off brand I'd never heard of. I'm feeling less and less certain this is worth it. :p But it is like half the cost so...I guess I can afford to lose one eye. Right? :)

I also asked for some of those colored contacts or pupil enlarging contacts, but he said that he stopped selling em cuz of legal issues. Too easy to damage your eye, or something? :( Was a little disappointed cuz I've always wondered how they'd look but I spose it's for the best. I'm slowly turning into one of those girls I used to hate. :p Haha.

Finished placing our contact orders, and said we'd go back the next day to pick it up. We were pretty hungry and my mom said she'd find a place for us to eat lunch (we requested xiaolongbao!) before she headed out to her lunch. We walked to the nearby Dongmen market (it's near my grandmother's apartment). Here's one of the entrances.

Found a place that was pretty cheap -- 60nt for every set of 8. They were yummy and what you'd expect for the cost. Definitely not the best, but for the best you'd have to pay more. :) At Ding Tai Fung, that famous (1 michelin star) restaurant we went to on the first day, they're like 180nt per set of 8.

Actually what I like best about xiaolongbao is having the ginger. ^^ It tastes really refreshing, cuz xiaolongbao are a little bit oily. Plus it's been sitting soy sauce so it's really fragrant. :3

Oops I spilled again. Sigh, I eat like a wolf. Nope. A pack of wolves. :(

Points for attention! Leave your birds at home when riding the metro.

Omg this was soooo awesome. Stopped by Coco's (a near-daily ritual), and look who we found manning the station. ASIAN SHIRLEY!! FROM COMMUNITY!!!! lolololololol

Then we headed home. I never know what to do in Taiwan during the day. I'm sure there's stuff?? But really our only method and place of entertainment is night markets, which don't open til like 5 or so. What do people do during the day?? I don't like department stores. You can only eat once every few hours. I guess we could go see sights, and museums and stuff.......

But we don't. We go home. :) Take naps. We're sposed to meet back up for dinner at 6, since my grandmother wants to take us all out to dinner for my parents last night here. For once, we're on time! (5:57 booyaaaaaaaah) but my dad isn't there. And doesn't show up for an hour....and won't pick up his phone. :/ My grandmother tends to get anxious at the drop of a hat, and her incessant rhetorical worried statements drive my mom crazy so tensions begin to rise. So instead of going out for dinner, we decide to go around and buy foods to bring home to eat (it's easier for my grandmother that way too, she's not super mobile anymore).

I wish I'd taken pics of the food but I didn't. :( But you can still imagine it! We got a bunch of food. When my dad finally got back, we ate it.

My mom said she'd treat us to some cold drinks, so we went to Dante coffee down the street. It's a chain here, and we'd seen a bunch but I hadn't actually tried it yet.

Sitting in Dante's coffee, waiting for our drinks.

If you get a drink, you can add a dessert for $1 (USD). The rest of us didn't want any, so my mom got this cheesecake tart thing for us to share. It was actually pretty good. Asian cheesecake > Western cheesecake D: so light and fluffy!!

Our drinks. :) Michael got some frappucino thing (with that big ice cream blob on top), my mom got some chocolate thing, and I got something called "vanilla chocolate" but it tasted just like frozen hot chocolate, and my dad got an espresso.

It's rare these days, but when my family gets along, we're really happy.... :)

Headed back for the apartment, where we then destroyed that family happiness by helping my dad put up this film on the living room window? It's supposed to shield from UV rays and keep the temperature down. It was for a good cause but, if you know my dad...............doing any sort of home improvement/manual labor project with him is like having Hitler project direct a bunch of Jews. :| We all want to gas chamber each other by the end.

Even though we started at 11, by the time we finally finished it was 12 -- which is about when the last metro car comes. So I was like oh shiiiiiiit, throw my shoes on, and I start running down the street. Michael was like "why are you running?? we can make it!! i can't run with all this stuff!!" so I grabbed his leftover drink and kept running. We were both laughing pretty hard because the scene was pretty absurd. I was shouting "Oh noooo i have a lot of moooneeeeyyy" as I ran down the street, (I'd exchanged a bunch of money with my mom earlier that day and I was super worried about losing it/getting mugged) and Michael was like "SHUT UP DONT SAY THAT" lol. Anyway we DID make it to the station, and as we entered the gate, I took Michael's drink and chucked it into the garbage. I had ASSUMED he didn't want it anymore, cuz he'd been complaining that it wasn't very sweet, that the ice cream was aggravating his lactose intolerance, and plus you can't have drinks on the metro so?? I assumed. The look on his face though ahahahahaha. He was like D8 "YUEN! WHY DID YOU DO THAT!??!?!?" and I was like "eh??" lololoolol. He was pretty mock-pissed. First for making him run, cuz he insisted that we'd have plenty of time to make it (we had no way of knowing since neither of us knew when exactly the last train was, AND we had to make 1 transfer), and second for chucking his crappy drink in the trash. :3

X3 trololol.