A Few Updates.

I am learning new Chinese words everyday, some are more useful than others. I have also found that I am learning many words that other foreigners are not taught in school, mainly because I talk with more Taiwanese than they do. It seems many foreigners here have few Taiwanese friends and tend to stick to themselves. It's not all that surprising really because the Taiwanese make it kind of hard to interact with them, even with each other, in addition to their many stereotypes.

There are many things to eat but my Chinese makes me a little too frustrated and/or shy, at times, to get the food I want. I have to have photos to point to or be able to use my limited Chinese. I will be studying the menu that my Co-Worker gave me, with all the common items labeled in romanized Chinese and a translation.

Due to all my walking and eating less, and maybe a little more healthy, I seem to have lost a little fat and gained some muscle, not a huge change, but I can see it.

You may also be surprised to hear that in Taiwan you can't find much in the category of canned foods. You can get canned corn, and maybe canned beans or something, but that's it. If you want western style canned foods you need to go to a western style grocery. The French Carrefoure that I go to doesn't even have anything more than that.

I don't need to boil water for drinking, it's not expensive or difficult to buy a huge jug of water from the store. I have a kettle- but I never make tea, so water is just for drinking or instant noodles (pao mien) which I cook using a rice cooker.

Taichung has many night markets, I have been to two of them. One is near the university, Feng Chia, and it is very big and crowded, many college age people there. Another is near the
highschool, Yi Zhong. This place of course is smaller and has more HS kids, but you can still get many of the same items, people have told me that Yi Zhong is a little more expensive.

Taichung is also famous as a culture city with a few museums and many Tea Houses. I think it is the most famous city in Taiwan for traditional and unique tea houses, but since I don't really drink tea, I can't say that gets me too excited.

The weather is warm, hasn't really been cold for a few weeks now. I am getting more and more mosquitoes as well, and getting more crazy about making sure to squash them. Maybe I will need to buy an electric bug zapper or something. It's nice though, I think summer will be insane but at least the nights will be nice and warm. Also I think we all know that warm weather means girls wearing less clothes, and for a single guy, that's never a bad thing.