day 24! zhongxiaoxinsheng, ximen

Gah!! More anger. So today was Saturday morning, and I had repeatedly mentioned that Saturday was the day of this weekly flower market that my mom had found some nice gifts at before, that WE needed to go to to get gifts for the aunties/uncles that we'd be meeting in Nantou soon. Despite that though, and setting an alarm, and getting up early, we...*ahem* didn't manage to get to the station til about 3pm. :/ and the market is only open til 6, and no guarantee that any of the gifts that we wanted would still be available! So yes, I was a little grumpy heading out. Also cuz I had to do all the research and find out where it was, and how to get there from the station...just gets old.

But we did make it and I did get less grumpy.

The flower market is quite nice, it's under this overpass and is surprisingly large! Took us maybe 20 minutes to walk from one end of it to the other end, and we didn't even stop to browse very much. It attracts a lot of crowds (mostly older people) and is a really refreshing sight after being surrounded by dirty city for so long. :)

It's mostly live, potted plants, as opposed to freshly cut flower bouqets as the name might sound. There are all varieties of plants, including these bonsai trees...

many many stands of just orchids...(so pretty!)

other assorted flowering plants...

as well as my personal favorite, baby succulents and cacti!! X3 look how teeny. :3

There are also other non-living stands, but most are within the arena of home decoration. Cow!! I so rarely see cute cows, which kinda makes me hate being an ox....

Some aquarium-type stands. :) This one had a ton of different fake fish you could add to your aquarium.

This orchid stand had REALLY cool hanging orchid collections. Almost caved and went for these cuz they're more unique, but I'm not a fan of the flower...it's too yellow and floppy lookin (yessss twss). Also more challenging to transport. Really affordable for a gift though, they're all ~$8?

Coupla fruit stands -- here's guavas!

damn it, the name of this one's escaping me right now... :( some help??

Too many other pics of pretty flowers to include all of em so I'll just sneak in one last cactus one -- eeeeee! XD

Lol also this pics of a lady awkwardly shufflin along with a huge plant. I'd feel like a dick for laughing as I crossed the street, but she beaned Michael in the head a few times as she walked by so I'm less sympathetic.

So we finally located the stand, and nabbed 3 cute gifts! :D I'm really happy with em (orchids in pretty pots) but sadly did not remember to kodak the moment.

Afterwards, since we were at our grandmother's station and hadn't dropped by for a visit in a few days (ever since my parents left), decided to buy some food and bring it over. Ran all around the neighborhood getting lunch foods for us, some coco mango green tea (she likes sweet cold consumables), watermelons and some plantains. By the time we were done we were swimming in plastic bags of stuff. D:

She was happy to see us, I think. We chopped up the watermelon right away but she said she was too full to have any.

My lunch: dry beef noodle soup. Errr I guess those two words negate each other, leaving you with just "beef noodle". It was not bad. :) I just don't like soupy foods......

Michael's lunch: dumplings in beef noodle soup's soup.

After eating, we walked to the tech market (GuangHua technology market, we went there earlier this trip) to get some headphones for me, and some for my mom. Got a pair of decently priced ones, I spose. :)

When we got back, our cousin was home. We helped her take out the trash. That was a pretty interesting experience. Instead of the garbage truck coming to take your trash every week, a garbage truck drives by more or less every day, and you bring your trash to it. It's an interesting system. On one hand, it's inefficient to require a member of every household to be home at a certain hour in order to take out the trash. On the other hand, having daily trash runs might make more sense in a humid, warm environment where trash sitting in a bin for a week could lead to disastrous results. :S

Hung out a bit with cousin/grandma and watched tv. Then we decided to go out to watch the Avengers, which came out in Taiwan a few days ago. :) Apparently the international version comes out two weeks before the US version so we get a sneak preview. Despite my unadulterated hatred of movie theaters...it was surprisingly good! Also despite the 3rd row imax 3d vantage point. Never been a fan of action movies due to the lack of content and the overflow of cheesy tough-guy declarations but, somehow they were able to catch you with off-guard humor and maintain a decent enough flow of relevant action sequences to make it worth watching at least the one time. ;)

People walking to and from the theater, located in ximen. Not surprisingly, a lot of dates happening. :) Phew that chick on the left is skinny.

A display for Johnny Depp's next movie that I've never heard of, Dark Shadows. The cute lil girl from Kickass is in it!!

Mmmm imax.

The theater experience in Taiwan was actually...almost identical to watching a movie at home. It did feel like home, other than the Chinese subtitles.

We didn't manage to catch a show til 10:40 cuz all the theaters we tried had only the front 3 rows available, and by the time we reached the last one, there weren't even opening in the earlier 9, 9:30 showings. With about 1.5 hrs to kill, we got some snacks, played some claw machine (Michael won our cousin a Totoro plushie), took a break in that giant plushie cafe that I took pics of a while back, and walked around.

By the time we got out it was already 1am, so we had to cab it back. Meant to sleep early cuz we had to get up early the next morning for Nantou -- oops! :3 Threw some clothes in a bag and jumped into bed but still had some trouble sleeping. Avengers on the brain, perhaps........