Picture Post #1

Sunday July 26, 2009

Well, I decided to mostly put pictures and videos up and talk about them but when I am in a writing mood there will be more journal entries. I thought because I take so many pictures I needed to focus more on them. Usually I only put a few up. I want to show you them too because there are a lot of interesting things around here. So welcome to Picture Post #1. And keep in mind that I'll make Q&A Posts too so ask any questions you have and I'll answer them ASAP.

First off may seem kind of off topic, but I'l going to start by talking about lunch boxes and food in general. There are a lot of places around Pingtung where you can get food and if you do take out the food comes in cute little boxes with drawings of...stuff. Sometime's it's kids, sometimes animals (like Hello Kitty), and sometimes there are poems on them.
This is one of the first lunch boxes I got after class. Someone will come into the classroom before lunch with a lunch menu and we can pick something from it. It always costs 80 Taiwanese dollars which is a few dollars in U.S. I usually get them, but students from the U.S. have stopped getting them and mostly go out during lunch and bring something back (meals out are 30-70 Taiwanese dollars). I just want food because usually by that time I'm really hungry. The time in the picture I had pork, veggies, rice, some egg thing, and brown pieces of tofu. It was really good (I loved the rice, tofu, and egg thing). I have gone out a few times during lunch but now I'm just ordering from that menu since I don't want to go out and have a coughing fit.

Yeah, I managed to get sick. I got sick late the second week and am still sick now. I went to the Student Health Center though and they gave me four pills (three of them were huge) to take at each meal and I got six packets of them. I have taken them all now and I don't know if they helped, or if I get worse before better. But enough of that. I'm going to tell someone I'm not really getting better and see if I can go there again.

There is a bakery and coffee shop place around Pingtung (and probably all of Taiwan) called 85 Degrees. I don't know if it's in Celsius or Fahrenheight but all of the cakes they have in there would still be melted on both of them. They have some really good cake and it's my dream come true. I got a chocolate cake with chocolate wafers between the layers and it was really good. I got a milk tea afterward at a tea shop (I was worried at first that it was a bar). I went with three male Taiwan students and a male American student named Ryan. He isn't the Ryan that I know from back home (as some of you know). It was fun going out that day; the guys played cards...something called "Rat". I didn't know how to play and I'm not that good at cards anyway (especially not new games) so I just watched which was fine with me. I was having fun drinking my milk tea anyway (milk tea is my new favorite drink).



85 Degrees is a really good place. It has tea and cake galore. It even possibly saved me because I had a coughing fit there and a very nice person named Clark bought me hot tea (the cake I had was cold and I forgot that it would probably make me cough) and didn't let me pay him back. He's studied Chinese before and he's in the class a level or two levels above me. He learned a famous song in class called Ni Shi Wo De Hua Buo (You Are My Flower) by Wu Bai and China Blue, and everyone at my house probably knows it by now since we had a WebCam Dance-Fest last night (there is a dance with the song). If you're interested I'll give you a link to the video I took of Clark and Mike and a few others dancing to it on the bus to Canting and the actual music video for the song so you can see the dance in all its entirety.





To wrap up the first part of the Picture Post and food talk I'll say that there was SO MUCH Tiramisu at 85 Degrees! I should get some next time (and eat it with a long spoon). I could have gotten a big box of it or a round cone shaped piece of it as you see in the picture but the box was a party cake box (though I could just throw a party sometime) and I've already resolved to try the Tiramisu cone next time. There is an 85 Degrees near the dorms. I should probably eat it out though because, thanks to me, whenever I eat in my room little sugar ants come. I'd say more about them but what I have to say would have to be censored. They crawl on me, they crawl on my computer, they crawl on my things, and I think they have even crawled in my clothes. But I kind of asked for it.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this Picture Post. I'll be making more in the future. Goodbye for now!

PS Wu Bai and China Blue are going to sing and dance at the World Games Closing Ceremony tonight. I REALLY wish I could be there...I totally know the dance now! I would record it for you guys but sadly I'm not going. Olivia, my roommate, is volunteering there so she'll probably see it--well, she will be really busy. Hopefully someone in the audience will record it and put it on Youtube. Thanks to mom for telling me that they would be singing in the Closing Ceremony. They'll have their own fireworks show while they're dancing too.

Well as I promised here are those videos. I'll put the music video first and then the footage I took so you can see where my friends got it from. :D Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-GJl6chhes - You Are My Flower

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwqYMWejBrE - The Tour Bus Version