around

I get a lot of my food from a convenience store, which isn't as bad as it would be in America, although it's not fine dining, either. Most people here eat out for every meal, so there's a wide variety of cold and hot foods in convenience stores for people to buy. Most even have little eating areas, usually a raised bar with seats by the window. Close up are the cold foods (many of which are microwaved for you in the store) and the rows upon rows of drinks.  Fruit! Here we have papaya, apples, and guava. I rarely see papaya in a fruit pack, so this was a treat! These little babies are tea eggs. They're literally hard-boiled eggs that stew in tea all day, so they get a kind of rich, salty taste. They're NT$8 each, which makes them very  inexpensive and a good source of protein.

More than travel books or tourist review websites, I've always found I get my best information about a place by reading personal blogs or written biographies by people who've lived there. Personal accounts should always be taken with a grain of salt, because the perspectives aren't unbiased, they're opinionated--human experiences. But they touch on the "sense of living" that books describing vacation spots and the online reviews of tourists can't give, because they're only giving an impression of the surface. Take, for example, my readers' experience of Taiwan. It's though this blog, which is a personal account of one individual's experiences in a small corner of the country. My accounts can't give readers a clear expectation of what they, themselves, would experience if they came here, or what they'd find if they lived in a different area. But my stories and descriptions are from a "ground zero" level--they're from ...

Lady Gaga: Fashion After hotpot, the group split up. I, being insanely full, had some difficulty with decision-making when it came to defining what, exactly, I'd do next. I wanted to stay with Amelia and Susan (both because I like them and because I view friends who've been here a while as security blankets) but I also really wanted to go shopping. Clothes shopping. I'd been dying to do so since I came here and saw all the clothing stores. Sensing my uncertainty about what my options were, Susan told me there were a lot of shops in Ximen. "You'll love shopping in Ximen," she said. She was so right. I hadn't given Ximen credit for the number of little shops it has. When you start going into places and looking through the racks, you realize there's a lot. You also realize that half the stores have all the same things, and most of them carry the exact same styles, but sometimes you'll find something different or for a better price or of ...

Guys, I did the hotpot thing again. Amelia is leaving Taiwan very soon, so she and I and the two other teachers from our school, plus Susan, all went out for hoptpot on Sunday morning. I was so excited about this that I ate a minimal dinner the night before, a small breakfast that morning, and I also woke up at 7:30am to go to the gym before  we went for hotpot. Our reservation was for 11:30. When we finally sat down and started eating, I could tell I was really hungry because almost an hour went by and I realized I'd said very, very little. Like, I hadn't contributed to any conversations at all. I'd already shoved two plates of food into my soup and eaten it, and my companions were just going back to the bar for seconds.   You can see the ice cream bar from here; look at the red/white containers with the little signs that say Haggen Dazs! Worth it, though. I enjoy being hungry, because it lets me really enjoy food, and knowing that I was hungry eno...

Having been teaching classes for almost a month now, I thought it was time to wax some philosophy on the subject. Teaching is hard. As much as I thought teachers (and all educators) deserve high salaries before, now I believe it even more--and I don't even mean myself, I mean teachers like those who taught me in pre-school, elementary, middle, and high school, and all the teachers who teach at other levels in public, private, and other schools. Teachers who have maybe five or six classes each day, often teaching the same thing in each one, and having to grade all that homework  each night (if they don't have the kids do it in class) and then making sure the kids can pass all the tests and, depending on the subject, divide by i  or speak the foreign language or not blow/melt their hands off with chemicals or  competently   discuss what the glasses on the billboard sign mean in The Great Gatsby . I'm teaching maybe 3-9 kids at a time; some teachers, I'm sure, teach...

Behold, my friends: the burner. It is the crucible from which all delicious things come. It warms the food above it, makes raw meat into something safely edible, infuses vegetables with juice and wrings spice and flavor from all that is placed upon it. What you are about to witness is an adventure in food like no other. Those with weak hearts or stomachs should either refrain from reading, maintain a safe distance, or just fly to Taiwan and come with me the next time I go. This, my friends, is hotpot. Here is, in short, what happened: The setting is a restaurant in Ximen, some 30 minutes from my house by bus. Although the restaurant entrance is at street-level, the restaurant itself is one story above, accessible via a flight of stairs. Inside, the lighting is  warm and dim, the decor decidedly  imperial;  understated elegance in red, gold, and black.  Each table, dark and solid like marble, has a large burner  embedded  in its c...

On a day when the increase in humidity is making your sinuses go haywire and you're recovering from a good night's sleep after a busy day when you got almost no  sleep, there are few better places to be than at home, on your bed, on your computer. I had a random thought I wanted to share. I was on the Vlogbrothers' merchandise website looking at the posters, and I wondered if I should put something on my blank walls. Or, for that matter, what I might want to put on these walls at all, if anything. I kinda like their blankness. Makes the apartment feel big. But what struck me was that I didn't know what kinds of things people decorated their walls with here in Taiwan. If I went to a home decor store, what would I find? What patterns, what items? And this thought lead to me wondering if that's why I like Asia so much. If you go to a Western country, you will certainly find some new things, no question. But it will also be a bit familiar, in tastes or language or...