day 39! zhongxiaoxinsheng, shilin night market

Ooooo SUCH not a good way to kick off things haha. So like I mentioned I had barely slept at all the night before, and then with mother's day celebrations going til relatively late at night, and me having to get up at 4:30am to catch a taxi+bus to the airport to pick up Kurt...we're going on two nights of not much sleep. :( That would be ok except that with Kurt only in Taipei for 4 days, we had lots of ground to cover and I knew that meant no naps during the day either. T^T Not gonna make it!!! I had really wanted to get a good night's rest while I still had time to spare, and start things off right but............such is life.

Caught a cab ride from the sweetest cab driver ever, to Tokyo station, where I then got tickets to take a bus to the airport. It was all pretty seamless I guess. :) Yay! I've mastered Taiwan.

And there he is! hehe. Welcome to Taiwan. ^^v Made him take pics by that same statue that Michael and I did even though he doesn't like doing the whole tourist thing.

So I lied. After getting to the apartment, since I don't know what there is to do in the mornings and we were both too exhausted to walk around or want breakfast or anything, we did get to pass out for about 2 hours before having to get up and go to my grandmother's place for lunch. I mentioned that Kurt was coming to visit, which I originally was not going to bring up since it's more complicated for them I guess, but then I realized that they would know one way or another when they came to take me to the airport or when we had goodbye dinners...so I brought it up and they insisted on taking us out to lunch as I knew they probably would. They're pretty busy this week with work and the baby, so today is the only day they had available. So off to lunch we went.

We were originally gonna go to the xiaolongbao place by my grandmother's, but it was packed cuz of Mother's Day plans, so we went to a Thai place nearby instead. And here come the food pics....

Thai curry. This might have been my favorite thing... ^^;; I love curry!  It was like the Taiwanese version of Thai curry though, in that it was not very spicy, and it was really thick, almost goopy :o

A fish that I did not try but is very lovely.

These were little appetizer things but they came during the meal. Mmm, it's like, bits of fried shrimp? wrapped around a piece of sugar cane! So you eat the outside part and then you're left with a sugar cane that you chew at to get the sweetness out. I remember trying sugar cane before and not liking it but it was actually quite nice, a little bit warm and stuff.

Kurt shows us his technique (first sugar cane experience!)

There were quite a few other dishes (they ordered a set menu with like EIGHT dishes, and only 6 people, and one of them was my grandmother who barely eats) but I didn't snap any photos of them. Here is my 2nd favorite, dessert :D coconut milk-like soup with tapioca and bits of taro.

All in all it was a really nice lunch, and it was really sweet of them to take us out for lunch, completely last minute, on super busy Mother's Day, and dragging the baby out too. :) Poor baby, the restaurant was too cold for it, so they had to sit with her outside, which meant that at any given point in time someone had to not be eating, and just sit outside holding the baby. :(

Sooooo Kurt decided to try his hand at it! (This is back at the house.) Sousou or Gugu asked if he wanted to hold the baby and he was like "Sure!" and I was like "O_O!!!?!?!? Are you crazy?? Do you even know how?!?!? YOU'LL DROP IT" but of course he was a natch.

Gotta include all the pics cuz I think it was pretty cute.

The little baby was so content! And the relatives all thought it was adorable. They were like "take pictures!!" because it is the little baby's first exposure to a white person, I think. They're gonna show her these pics when she grows up and be like "look! random white uncle is holding you here. do you remember???"

There!! There it is! Proof that the baby enjoyed it. Hehe how cute, she seems to never smile (doesn't cry much either, she's very docile). Actually come to think of it she didn't smile when I held her. >( HEY!! What's the opposite of yellow fever?? She has white tuberculosis. >( >(

We left after a bit more socializing cuz they had to go meet up with their other side of the family's mother. So we went to the internet cafe near my grandmother's house (after much deliberating between that and taking a nap) since that was on our bucket list of things to do aaaaaaand while we stayed WAY longer than intended (we originally were just gonna go for an hour and check it out) it turned out to be another "favorite part of my trip". XD

The seats are just so cushy here and the screens are so big. :D And and and they didn't have hon installed, and when I asked if we could install it they were like mumblemumble something about it will take too long? but then we did it anyway.

And it was glorious.

It's kind of silly to be spending time in Taiwan playing hon when I'll probably be playing it lots at home anyway but....but...I just miss hon so much. T^T I've been watching honcasts and whatnot in my free time in my room and been dying to play. Plus they added in a new all-mid game mode (which can be really, really fun), PLUS we dragged the rest of the dream team on (my name for them, it's me+kurt+kevin+michael+edwin) and we played for the first time in months and months (since Edwin's finals finally finished). OMG return of dream team + all mid was just amazing. I was sososososo happy. Can't express it well enough but I was. :')

We were only going to stay an hour but of course that quickly became impossible. But we'd slowly start running out of time while a game was still going, so we'd have to pause the game, I'd run up to the front desk and throw some money at them, and we'd have a whole new hour of playing. :D This went on for about 4 hours, when we eventually had to leave to get things done, and also they had to leave because it was 5am at home.

Next up on the bucket list: shilin night market! Decided to take Kurt here because it's one of the most well-known night markets, and of the most well-known, definitely the biggest. It's kind of the go-to night market I guess. :)

Here's Kurt getting a drink at a fruit drink stand. He got a banana milk and I got a mango juice (yay for mangos just coming into season!)

Tried some mini sausages....I want to get one of these, and one of those HUUUGE ones that Michael ate and do a side by side comparison shot. (It would be like east meets west lolololol no I'm totally jp :o)

We headed for the underground food court first cuz Kurt was hungry. Here he is double fisting a green onion bun and an oyster pancake (at me and Michael's favorite oyster pancake place!), which he really really enjoyed. :)

MMMMM nomnomnom bing!!! It's so nice to finally have a subject for my pictures. This was mango+strawberry+pudding (we asked for the pudding since Kurt likes pudding, they don't normally include it with that fruit combination because it is a little weird).

Big random pot of stinky tofu! I think that's how they cook it, anyway. The soup is all red from being spicy, so I'm wondering if it makes the stinky tofu spicy. They don't give you any of the soup when serve it to you....

Hehehe Kurt is touchin' the penis. I made him do that for you Janet. :3

Kekeke foodstuffs!!!! (didn't eat here just took the pic) but for the rest of the trip, Kurt and I kept saying kekeke foodstuffs....

We did pick up a green onion pancake though from these two very dubious ladies, they both looked two old to move properly much less be manning a stand in Shilin O_o Their....craftsmanship was also...lacking.

Also not pictured here was a BUNCH of shopping in between. Shilin does have quite a few shops for guys apparel and I was pretty keen to go look at them cuz the guys clothes/fashion here is pretty cute. 

So Kurt did a bit of shopping, and I did some work as translator, conversationalist, buffer, and haggler. It was really really hard! I mean everyone was pretty nice about it (guys are way nicer than girls/way more curious about why I have a horrible accent) but they all kept asking the same questions over and over: "Where are you guys from?" "He's American?? But he's so skinny, aren't Americans usually really big?" "How did you guys meet then?" "Oh so you studied abroad over there? Oh you grew up over there??" And on and on. And all of them kept saying "Ohhh he's so suai" which means he's so smart/sharp-looking/handsome. It's really just "handsome" but for some reason it's not gay-sounding to say that in Chinese so I have to add the other translations to make it seem more innocuous. :p Anyway they were pretty nice about it but on the other hand sometimes it got a bit old to be focused on so much, since Kurt is white and I'm guessing they assumed he's rich.....

After a few hours of shopping/eating we were done. :) Day 1 success! We were both super exhausted and out of it by the end of the day though. He still had jet lag (and had been in the airport/on a plane for like 15 hours before the day even started), and I had just not slept. So. Sleep was welcome........