5/30/10 – Lion Dog!

Hey y'all it's been a while. So, I've been completely immersed in the culture here (sort of) and have picked up a Taiwanese drawl when I speak my Engrish now. So some strange / cool / interesting things that have occurred since my last posting. I finally moved into my apartment which is a single and it's pretty ballin. Surprisingly enough, it's bigger than my room at home which I suppose just shows how small said room is ... It did not come with toilet paper (which I found out the annoying way) and some other bathroom items, so I ended up going to this store similar to Walmart to get stuff. This leads to my next topic: Shopping carts! Shopping carts in Taiwan are SO freaking entertaining! first off they're small and fun sized and add to that, all four wheels are swively as opposed to only the front ones. This is just a recipe for myself standing out as a tourist as I push my shopping cart sideways through the entire store . I win! Next topic: Lion Dog. No, seriously: lion dog. The place where I usually get breakfast has this dog with a haircut like a lion. It's close shaved on the body except for a huge poofy mane around the neck and a nice tuft of hair on the tail. He's super friendly though and occasionally likes to nudge my legs when I eat =) Motorcycles. Almost everyone here drives motorcycles. Did I also mention that there are basically no traffic laws? A guy from the lab, Mitchell, took me to Zhong Li downtown on his motorcycle and holy crap I nearly crapped my pants. High speeds, weaving in and out of traffic, and liberal use of the horn was very tramatic. So my dad's already gone and left me in this strange country and that first day alone, WOW, I was relieved, but at the same time kind of nervous without a translator to help me find all the awesome food. No worries though! The people in the lab are too nice to me and show me all the cool places to eat and what to order which is pretty awesome. I also had a little adventure yesterday and went to Taipei to meet up with my aunt and uncle who were staying there a couple nights. I sort of knew how to get there via train and sort of did not know how to get back, but I was ready for some fun! Ding! Funny Story! I fell asleep on the way there and woke up at a relatively busy stop and just hopped off. I went up the escalator and asked if I was in Taipei. They said no so I ended up sprinting back down the stairs and across the Platform, barely making it back into that train, and clearly marking myself as a tourist/idiot. Yay! So I got to Taipei, found my aunt/uncle and we ate dinner/hungout at the night market for a couple hours. To get back, I ended up asking pretty much every person I saw which train I had to take to get back to Zhong Li. Eventually I made it though and got home safe and sound (Phew!). That's ALL for now I guess. Peace!