day 8!

Another free day! The last of our free days for a while, I guess, since we're getting close to crunch time, i.e. kevin and jennifer going home so we have to cram everything into the last few days. We hadn't seen our mom in a couple of days so we decided to meet up with her in the morning for food. We went to an area called ShiDa, named so for the college located there. "Shi" means teacher, so a lot of aspiring teachers go to school there. Also their language program is sposed to be pretty good, so there is a high concentration of foreigners there, studying mandarin (according to my mom).

We went there kind of early, like around lunchtime, so a lot of places weren't open. There is a night market here but of course most of the food stands hadn't set up yet. Here's a random pic of a cute little bakery/dessert shop called I baked. Would be a cute pun if they were aiming for munchie foods..........actually it does sort of work out doesn't it. :D

Picked up a random drink, yogurt tea with lemon, it was only soso :( I should stick to milk tea instead of being adventurous....

Found a sit down restaurant to eat at, for once, instead of little snack foods. Forgot to mention that Kevin joined us today but Michael sat this one out cuz he was too tired. Anyway Kevin got beef noodle soup, and I got...

Errr saucy noodles?? Za jiang mian. I always preferred dry noodles to soupy. :)

Kinda cute, the kitchen was on the first floor but the seating was on the second so they moved things back and forth on this dumbwaiter.

After eating and looking around ShiDa a bit more, Kevin headed back to the apartment, and me, mom, and sis went back to -- you guessed it -- ximending. Jennifer and I had planned to finally get some shopping done there, without certain brothers dragging their feet. :x I wanted to get my eyelash thing redone while they were shopping, but for some reason they ended up staying with me for an hour and watched them do it! Obviously no pics of that, though Jennifer took a bunch. The girl that did mine worked HELLA fast though! And they did it a little different there. It was cheaper, and overall I'd have to say better than at home. The quality of the eyelashes they used were nicer too. :) Now I'm gonna be sad when I go home and I can't get them as nice as this. :*( Will have to go in for a touch up right before Japan.

While walking through ximending, Jennifer looked up and saw a GIANT plushie in the 2f window. Curious, we went upstairs to see what it was. IT WAS ADORABLE!! There is a little tea shop up there that doubles as a plushie store. :D SO CUTE!! They had tons and tons of em. The cafe seats were like swings, suspended from the ceilings. I wish I had gotten pics of them but one of the workers caught me and said no pics allowed. Fortunately I managed to snap a few before she told me...

So many!

And my personal favorites. ;w; THEY'RE SEALS DRESSED IN ANIMAL HATS!! XD XD omfg I wanted all of them so badly. :( But I knew I shouldn't buy anymore trivial little things. And I couldn't think of any relevant person to gift them too. BUT BUTBUT ;_; they called to me....I miss them....

So the weirdest thing happened while we were shopping, but I didn't capture a pic of it or anything so it can just be a standalone paragraph. We stopped at a little booth that was selling keychain charms, since my sis was looking for small presents to give to people. We were oohing and aahing over pooh's, totoros, etc. when suddenly the smell of rank smoker's breath fills the air, and someone says "do you like these?? take a look, pick the ones you like". I look up and RIGHT next to me, like 2 inches away from my face is some dude, presumably the owner of the stand, talking to us. I'm like uhhhh O_O personal space much? I mean I know Chinese people tend to ignore social rules and all, but this was like creeper status. And he was. Which I am getting to. Anyway so he keeps talking to us and asking all the usual questions, Oh, you're not from here. Where are you from? How is it that your Chinese is so good? Wooow America. yakyakyakyak. And he somehow, unbelievably, is drifting CLOSER and CLOSER. Jennifer is kind of oblivious cuz she's lost in keychain land, but I'm like steadily backing up cuz this dude is in my face. But he's like You don't want to look?? Take a look! So I'm forced to scoot forward and bend down to look at keychains. I should have mentioned but the whole time we'd been talking his hand kept like...brushing me. Like it would brush against mine, or against my arm or something. I waved it off as him being on a nicotine high or just not understanding how human interactions work, but it started happening enough that I was like uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

And then his finger starts hooking around my pinky. I tensed up but didn't know what to do, what to say? And stupid Jennifer is STILL deliberating over fucking keychains. So I sort of pretended I didn't notice and would move my hand around for different things, like to check out a different keychain or something. While he was doing this though he was still pointing out various designs to us. SOOO WEIRD. He was also breathing really hard (again, either he was on drugs, or he was really nervous) and just being kind of a freak in general. O_o Eventually I manage to make eye contact with Jennifer and I tell her Pick. Now. she does and we gfto. 

Even now I'm like...WTF WAS THAT??? Was he trying to hit on me? In the weirdest way possible? I mean, how about asking what I'm doing tonight or something normal??? Or did I send some signal that I wasn't aware of? Or was he really high????? Or trying to make the sale lol. I dunno. Anyway it definitely felt like a foreign experience.

Eventually left ximending (after getting a few things) cuz we figured the boys were getting hungry and we should find them and get food. Man, I feel like all these posts are getting so repetitive. Eat, shop, eat, shop, eat, shop.....damn it Taiwan. :) You are ruining us. So we ended up going to the Taipei central station, cuz they have a shopping mall area underground. The pic shows you what it looks like! Good place to hang out/shop/eat when it's rainy or hot outside (protips).

And just when I thought I'd seen it all....the shops here were kind of different from ones in other places! They had a lot more little trinkety tiny things, like this one store that had cubicle after cubicle of tiny little earrings to browse. The next cubicle over might have phone accessories, the next one has boob mousepads, the next one has glasses....really fun to browse through. :)

Of course when we're shopping, the boys look for little things but are mostly bored. The one joy they have are the claw machines that are scattered intermittently between stores. :D Me and Jennifer love them too. We go into every mini-arcade we find and try at least one machine >< haha. This one had really sweet attendants. So I dunno if I mentioned before but, for some reason in Taiwan, they're really keen on helping you get your item. So if you try it and fail, they'll re-position the plushie so that you can start back at square 1. After a few more tries they'll position it so that it's really easy for you to get. You can also ask them for tips like, should you be aiming for the head or the body? Of course this all depends on which attendant you get, some are nice, some clearly hate their jobs. :) These ones were super sweet though!! They saw me struggle to get this little octopus, and then one came up to me and was like "...what's up?" and I just stared blankly at him and was like "...???..." cuz I don't know how to answer that question (he said "gan ma?"). So he was like "...do you speak chinese?" and I was like "a little......" then he shouts out to his coworker "hey!! ABC!!!!" and his coworker comes running. I facepalmed. /)_- so shameful.

Anyway his coworker had pretty decent english, and was pretty attentive. :) He helped me get the lil octopus. Then Michael really wanted a gloomy bear hat, so he helped us get that, too!!! Man. I feel so bad when they help, I always want to thank them more somehow. It feels so good when the plushie falls into the slot. :D And they really don't *have* to be that helpful.

Anyhoo, look how happy Michael is. :D lol.

Oops...took too long browsing and all of the food places had closed. Exited the station and found this sitdown place (in an alley).

Had wonton soup, and we were done for the day!

OOoooo my fewest picture day so far ;) Not much exciting stuff happened I guess, sry!