5/11/10 - Ouch Not a Dancing Penguin

So I got to the airport around 6am and the very first thing I noticed when I walked out of that terminal was this strange statue of a man wearing a I <3 Taipei tshirt except his head was a ginormous tomato. It was so strange. I’ll have to post a picture of it later. Dad and I had a few hours to kill and we decided to kick it in a cafe with passionfruit and mango smoothies. The cab ride to Jhong Li was pretty short and uneventful. Once we settled into the room, we explored around campus a little to find necessities such as Seven Eleven, laundromat, post office, ATM (definitely), etc. Getting a SIM card for my phone was an absolute pain. We took a cab to the phone store and found out I needed documents. Took a cab back to the room to get my passport. Took a cab back to the store and found out I didn’t have a second form of ID because they didn’t accept my drivers license or MCard. Took a cab back so my dad could get his documents Took a cab to the store again and found out that the form required certain taiwanese documents that he didn’t have. We decided to stop for lunch in a noodle shop and it was freaking amazing. It was like a gallon sized bowl of soup/noodles for $3. I made the mistake, however, of wearing sandals (and I got quite a scolding later about it) when something in that shop either bit or stung me on the foot and it started swelling like a bloomin’ cherry tomato. Stupid foreign insects. We walked back to the room, but Mr. Foot was all ouch and no fun. When we returned to the room, my dad found his taiwanese passport. He cabbed back to the store while I took a nap cause I was not a dancing penguin (get it? not happy feet!) and he returned finally with a SIM card but they said it would take a couple hours before it was activated. We had a meeting scheduled at 5 with the dean, but Dad and I passed out for a while because of the jet lag. They called us at 5:15 wonder if we got lost. oops. Meeting over food may be the best idea ever cuz I was starving. Afterwords, we tried to find the night market, but ended up just getting lost and just walking back to the room.

Conclusion: Getting a SIM card takes 7 cab rides. Foreign insects hate me.