Saudade

Normally I do one blog post per one day, but I'ma throw two together on this one because I didn't do a whole lot haha. Mostly pictures of food, so enjoy!

老師 brought us these in class to try. They're like shrimp pork rinds. Not too shabby. 

 Mapo dofu curry egg thing filled with rice. The curry sauce was way too sweet (learning that Tainan in particular makes all of it's food really sweet) and the thing was seriously just filled with rice, so this was not one of my favorite meals. Plus it was kind of expensive at NT$180. Probably not going to go to that place again.

 My partner for Conversation Class gave me this while we were doing homework. Also found out their dorm came with a broom and mop! Gonna have to snag that sometime.... when I'm not busy or lazy or writing blogs :P

 蔓越莓 is cranberry, or literally "spreading vine strawberry" heh. Got this from above-mentioned friend's roommate.

 Some Japanese soy sauce and butter Pringles lol. They actually only tasted like butter. (cue "I can't believe it's not butter" skit)

 A Japanese place pretty close to our dorm. I was happy to discover this fish was mostly de-boned. I didn't even end up using the sauce, just adding the lime juice was fantastic.  

Guava Green Tea, my newest addiction since leaving Milk Tea behind. I can actually order this now at the local fruit drink shops, so I get it a lot. 

So that was day 1, looking back I must have been feeling pretty brutalized to not have taken many pictures. It was a Monday (7/13.... really far behind on these lol) so that makes sense haha. I think everyone was pretty dead after the Taipei trip.

So let's see what was in store for Tuesday!

 Really love both the Chinese and English fonts they used for this sign

 The hair stick I got with dangly beads! Actually got a comment from a classmate about how fantastic it was that my hair stick matched my outfit haha. It really is the small things in life that make me feel better.

 We discussed the buttons to the air conditioner in class today. Similarly in our dorms the remote is all in Chinese. No one is quite sure what the "Fuzzy" button does.... 

 Two separate word games people like in Chinese, kinda like the whole "Peter piper picked..." thing. The first one is from 媽 to 馬 and the second 吃 to the end. Basically say them as quickly as possible with the correct tones. The first one translates to Mama rode a house, the house was slow, so Mama "cha!"-ed the house to go faster. Not sure on the second one really haha.

卓琳 (Katie) was ducking so we could take a picture of the board, couldn't resist.

 Lunch! Fried noodles :). There was actually all sorts of stuff in here, the more I went fishing the more goodies I found like clams and a squiddie thingy.

 Got brave and ordered some 芭樂綠茶 (guava green tea). Unfortunately I was a few minutes late making it back to class. I also unfortunately didn't take any pictures but it was "Popular Taiwanese Culture and Film" culture class. The lady was amazing. We first talked about some pop icons of Taiwan like Jay Chou and 五月天. I kinda like Mayday, but Jay Chou is a bit too pop-ey for me. I've found a pretty decent collection of Taiwanese music I do like (other than just 草莓救星 haha, though they're still the best). If you haven't listening to them, I seriously recommend you check them out (link goes to YouTube).

We discussed a lot about the search for Taiwanese identity being expressed in music, movies, T.V. shows, and theater. The theater examples were especially revealing. The original conquest of Formosa, the Japanese occupation, the KMT government ascending into power after the Japanese left, the over-influence of Western culture and ideals. It was all wonderfully amazing. In fact, I had to halt my blog writing to message the lecturing professor how to find some of the examples she gave. There was one particularly beautiful theater piece where dancers would do various movements to interpret different Chinese characters. She also showed us screenwriter Tsai Ming-liang, who has done some interesting work. Specifically we watched some scenes from "The Wayward Cloud" a pornographic modern silent film that explores high density population societal issues (i.e. being surrounded by people but feeling completely alone), and social perversion all under the story line of a drought in Taiwan so people only eat watermelon. Here's the cover poster of the film: 

He actually hired porn stars to work in the film heh. I have yet to watch it, but I did watch another one of his films that had super limited dialogue and it's super interesting stuff. It was quite funny, during our mid-class break the professor even said "after the break we're going to watch some erotic pornography" and everyone thought she was joking. After the break, she got to explaining it further and asked if anyone wanted to leave the room. Several people did, and while in the U.S. one might apologize for making them leave, she basically said she's sorry that their ideals are such that they can't handle seeing sex and nudity and to come back to Taiwan in a few years haha. By U.S. standards she would have been horribly offensive but things are a little different over here. Similarly one of our other culture class teachers was making fun of gays like it was nothing. A lot is the same over here, but then again a lot is different. 

Anyway, tried another coffee drink, did not like this one lol.  

Went back to the place near my dorm where you can ask for more rice. This dish was pretty good, but there were still bones with the meat, so it was quite difficult to eat and not look like an animal. When I go there I typically order the stuff that's easy to eat with chopsticks lol. 

 

Well, another day another..... lesson learned? As always, hope you enjoyed the read. Should break 1000 views on my blog after this one, I'll post on the next if so. 

Tomorrow.... Chinese painting!!! I attempt to do landscape art to some success and some failure. 

謝謝大家！