Day 2

This morning I woke up and went for a run with Nancy (my roommate). We rode our bikes through the town for 15 minutes to get to the bike path in the mountains where we went for a short run. It was humid, but it was gorgeous. In some of the trees on the side of the path I saw some large spiders (the size of the palm of your hand). Luckily Nancy had warned me about them last night, so I wasn't terriffied, just grossed out.

After the run we went to a breakfast shop and we picked up breakfast. It was bread dough stuffed with vegetables and then steamed. It was actually pretty good, although the steamed bread threw me off at first. For a drink, we had hot soy milk. It didn't taste horrible, but it didn't taste like too much at all. Nancy says that she's gotten used to soy milk, but I'm thinking that I'll just stick with water- why take the time to get used to something that is not enjoyable and costs almost as much as the breakfast sandwhich by itself? After breakfast we got ready for class.

I went and observed again- it's not like I just sit there, I interact with the kids and help out when I can and when I won't be in the way or a distraction. At the beginning of every class the teacher welcomes the students and the students say "Good morning Teacher (Fill-in-Blank with teacher's name). We love you." It is totally robotic and sounds like they've been brain-washed, but it is super cute. Today I've been fairly tired, and I can't tell if the kids wear me out that much or if the loss of two days is finally kicking in. I hope that it's not the kids, because I'm not even teaching them yet, so how's it going to be when I actually have to teach?

I am being quite adventerous in my appetites. Today for lunch (I eat with the kids) we had rice with vegetables, some type of meat, and quail eggs (Grandma and Granddad, please don't disown me for eating your favorite bird). They tasted like chicken eggs, just they were smaller and brown. Last night after dinner, Nancy and I stopped by a fruit stand and I bought two things. One was a gianormous asian pear (which was way too expensive, but I didn't realize until I got home how much I spent on one piece of fruit) that I bought because I love the things and it was so awesome to see one that large. The other fruit I had no idea what it was, but it's pink color and "design" was so intriguing that I just had to buy it to try it out. The asian pear is still sitting on my desk, but I cut open the pink fruit today (it turns out that it's a dragonfruit). Inside it was a white fruit with tons of little black seeds. It has the texture of a kiwi, but hardly any flavor. It wasn't bad, it just didn't taste like much, so it's a good thing that that wasn't expensive.

Today during the break Nancy took me to a local Buddhist(?) Temple. It was gorgeous. It's apparently the biggest in the area, and it was so intricately decorated with so much detail put into everything. I took some pictures there, but not as many as I should. I really need to make sure that I get tons and tons of pictures while I'm here. I did try to take a picture of the mountains from my porch, but they were completely covered in fog/clouds/mist/whatever so they didn't show up very well.

The day didn't start out rainy, but it is ending that way. Throughout the day there has been some drizzling, but around 4pm it started coming down harder, and around 5 or so, there was som seriously heavy rain for 5-10 minutes. So, riding my bike to go get dinner was pretty scary. First of all, there are a lot more cars on the road at night (especially on rainy nights), the road was wet, it hurt to open my eyes because the rain was still coming down, and Taiwanese drivers really don't concern themselves much with the bicyclists, so they'll pull out when they want. But we made it to and from the place safely. For dinner tonight I had dumplings and noodles- I wasn't too impressed, but it was okay.

And that's been my day.