第三十九個星期：Fun with Friends and Family

星期二：Today my host family’s grandparents, aunt, and three year old cousin came down from Taipei to spend a week at the house and tour Kaohsiung. It was pretty fun because they were all interested in what I was doing in Taiwan and I could actually understand them. The little cousin was also fun because I never really interact with three year olds. When he wasn’t crying or doing other toddler things, he liked to come up to me, tell me he could speak English, spit out the ABCs or a few vocab words like “blue” or “apple”, giggle hysterically, and then run away only to come back a few minutes later and do it all over again. He also liked to tell me he could read the news app on my phone because “it’s just ABC’ which actually isn’t wrong.

星期五：Today the NSLIY girls all invited Jenny and Andrew out for lunch around Wenzao since we hadn’t seen them in a while. We went to a brand new Vietnamese place next door which was good and had a lovely time catching up. After lunch we went over the Kaohsiung arena where we were supposed to have a class on how to make soup dumplings. While we had a teacher and a full rented kitchen to ourselves, we were absolutely awful and making the dumplings. We couldn’t get to filling to stay in the dumplings and after we cooked them all, they all turned out dry and terrible. I was pretty hysterical through the whole class because I was probably doing the worst job, which is saying something because we were all terrible.

After getting over the dumpling disaster, I went with Mackenzie and Becca to a nearby McDonald’s to get some drinks, and I actually found McDonald’s secret redeeming menu item: a mango lime smoothie. I didn’t have any hope for the smoothie, but I almost have restored faith in McDonald’s after that drink since it was so good. While walking home, we also found a rare item in Taiwan: a public trash can. While Taiwan may be really clean and trash free on the streets, they somehow do it without any public trash cans, so when we found the one, we had to document it with a picture.

For my last event of the night, I had my last one-on-one meeting with Kripa, so, to celebrate, we went out to get some traditional pulled noodles at a place Pablo recommended. While they weren’t actually pulling the noodles when we went, the food reminded me a lot of the noodles we ate in Mainland China on my summer program, so that was fun.

(eating lunch with Jenny)

(attempting to make soup dumplings)

(the rare trash can)

(accidentally ordered pig foot, not pork, noodles with Kripa)

星期六：Today we had to make up class on the Saturday since we would be having the Dragon Boat Festival holiday later this month and we couldn’t possibly miss out on a single day of school. Though, after class, I got to meet up with a friend from Wenzao who I met through my last host family and we went out to get pancakes together. It was really fun to hang out with her as I haven’t seen her in forever, and I always love getting to hang out with Wenzao friends who I met on my own.

(eating pancakes with my friend)

(beautiful Japanese pancakes)

星期天：This afternoon Mackenzie and I got rebellious and went biking through Kaohsiung on a path that follows the whole Love River. I started at Aozihdi Park and biked to meet her at Lotus Lake. After biking around there, we started on the Love River path. We biked through a nicer part of town that actually reminds me of Europe as the bike path goes down a shady road by the river that’s lined with benches and cafes. After passing all the cafes, we stopped at Mackenzie’s favorite place where she likes the milk tea. We spent a bit sitting by the river, chatting, and drinking our tea, before heading off back to where the path loops by my house before going over a bridge and into Xiziwan. The whole path was so beautiful and lined with flowers, plus the weather was nice, though my bike brakes didn’t work very well, so I did run into multiple bushes. One we got to Xiziwan, we stopped for my favorite soup dumplings and passion fruit coconut tea and then headed home.

(pretty yellow flowers on the bike ride)

(people hanging out by the temple at the park)

(bike path by the riverside)

(The Love River)