This weekend did definitely not turn out as I had expected. But that is not negative, cause it has been another brilliant weekend.
Friday evening some Rotary students and I had arranged to go to the Snake Alley (a creepy night market known for its snake shows and snake restaurants). However it turned out that one of the girls (Taylor) had to go and eat dinner with her Rotary club, so she invited me to join her, and then we could move on to the Snake Alley together after on – well, we never made it to the Snake Alley. After chatting on the backseat while her mother drove the car for about a quarter the car suddenly stopped and Taylor and I looked out the window to realise that the car had stopped in front of Taipei Grand Hotel’s restaurant. For those of you who don’t know Taiwan Grand Hotel I can tell that it is a landmark in Taiwan as it is known for having the biggest traditional Chinese roof in the world. So, very famous and very expensive place… Yeah, kind of problematic as Taylor and I hadn’t planned to stay – and as Taylor wore shorts! Well of course we could not just walk away from a very formal dinner party at Grand Hotel so we had to call our friends and tell them that we couldn’t make it to Snake Alley – sad because it would have been fun. The dinner was formidable though, and I’m glad that Taylor invited me as I loooooooove food…. :)
Saturday I thought I had to go swimming with all the other exchange students, but that arrangement had been moved to next weekend. Instead my host mom took me to eat traditional Taiwanese breakfast at one of the many breakfast shops. It is very normal that people stop by at these shops and by their breakfast, and I was supposed to do that too when I go to school, but right now I just eat oats… :) Well, the breakfast consisted of a lot of different mostly a little oily breads with vegetables or spices, some kind of omelette, steamed buns with meat stuffing and a special kind of milk (tasted like rice or soya). Delicious, but not what I associate with breakfast (better than burger though, which is also normal to eat in the morning).
Busy breakfast café
In the afternoon we went to a porcelain museum and to an old pedestrian street with lot of ceramic shops. At that place I was introduced to another special dish: noodles with ice! Not ice like ice cream but like crushed ice cubes – hmmm, special :)
My host mom at the porcelain museum
Eating noodles with ice!
So – the arrangements were not the ones that I expected, but it was all worth it! At least I’ve been eating a lot of food (it is really important to me to find a place to dance – otherwise I’ll get pang (fat in chinese) VERY quickly with all the delicious food).
Julia :)
