2015/08/08

Host Family Part 2

Alright, so have a little bit of free time to work on this today. Write blog, nap, study, make a video for conversation class, study, sleep. Sounds like a plan!

Headed out with the new family after a wonderful nights rest to grab some breakfast at a traditional market. 

 
 Such a simple and effective breakfast. Forget American breakfast, Taiwan has us beat big time. I know I've said this before, but I'm going to have to step up my cooking game when I get back to the U.S.
Pic of Matt and I courtesy of Arlong
 Arlong has a video recorder on the window, thought that was a nice touch.
 Headed to Arlong's parent's place who really only speak Taiwanese which was a super interesting learning experience. Outside of the big city almost everyone spoke Taiwanese instead of Mandarin. I felt like I was learning the wrong language in school haha. Around 70% of the Taiwanese population speaks the Taiwanese language. Apparently there are more speakers of Taiwanese Southern Min Hokkien than Polish, so that's interesting.
 Daoist temples and rice everywhere
 
 Arlong's parents live in a traditional Taiwanese three part house 【三合院】. In the middle is a small Daoist alter with pictures of ancestors and deities. Arlong will need to correct me if I'm wrong but I believe he said that his grandfather built the house.

 


Ah-ma washing the dog Chichi haha. I learned several Taiwanese words while saying with them, "eat", "are you full?", "excuse me/sorry", and "I don't understand what your saying" which is a phrase I used a lot lol. She did tell me to sit in Mandarin. It was pretty intense at first not being able to communicate with Ah-ma at all but she was so incredibly nice to us all was fine. We ate so much wonderful food. I finally went for the shrimp that are still looking at you, Ah-ma taught me the best way to disassemble them.

Going with the family to a Daoist temple. This is a super large one in the area. I found out later that several other host families went to this temple too.

 Daoism is LOUD. Some sort of festival was going on so fireworks were going off constantly. I had taken a culture class earlier on Daoism, so it was really exciting to see it first hand in action. Some temple goddesses outside :P
 
 
 
 



Nearly every doorway had this sort of thing you had to step over to get into another room. It's an interesting reflection on changing spaces. I liked to think each time I stepped over one into another room I was a new person. Not very handicap friendly (much of Taiwan isn't I've noticed, but that's for a later post).

 


 
 
 
 
 





Photo splatter to try and give the sense of scale of the place. It was super magical. Very active, very loud, you could feel it in the air. 
My beautiful Taiwanese family!
8 Warriors ready to combat negative spirits. I'm beating myself up for not remembering the name of this particular ritual.
 
 Went to this visitor center for some chillin. Got this drink that was pretty fun. You use the pink thing to push a marble down into the bottle and then can drink it. The soda is pretty much destined to explode everywhere, so that was pretty humorous.
 
First hot pot for lunch. Very tasty but a little difficult for a newbie heh. I think I overcooked everything a little bit too much, but after hearing some horror stories from a couple friends getting sick from under-cooking hotpot I was a bit paranoid.

Ran around outside afterwards.

 Foreigners being silly

 Still lost

 Japanese style house of Dr. Wang Jin He, a Taiwanese doctor that studied in Japan for a while. Afterwards he came back to Taiwan and dedicated his life to working with black-foot disease (a form of arsenic poisoning) patients.
 Next stop is the Black-faced Spoonbill Wetlands Protection Area where efforts are being made to protect the Black-faced Spoonbill that migrates to Taiwan in the winter. The only spoonbill currently classified as endangered (Wiki) there are less than 3,000 of the birds (also Wiki stat). Unfortunately we didn't really see any birds, but I did get to eat a red bean popsicle and see an awesome view heh.

 
 
 
 Oyster country. Shells literally piled up everywhere. Now heading to a fish market to pick up dinner supplies!


 

 
 
 The crabs were still moving around, just waiting to get nom'ed

 
 I ate a raw oyster, it was actually pretty good

 

 
 The poor bastards on the right were still sucking in air, kinda brutal to watch even little fishes desperately cling to life
 
Forgot what Arlong said this was, tried to do some research and find out, but to no avail. It's like eel blood and alcohol or something, I'm really not sure. Decided to pass on that one heh.
 
 

 
 Mountain of oyster shells, I believe all hand harvested. Just thinking about the time and energy that goes into that.... 

 

 

A really small village that an artist came in and did a bunch of work like this in. It was really really hot or we would have explored some more, there were a lot of paintings. Arlong said the village was pretty much unknown of until the artist came in, and now it's a big tourist area, talk about stimulating the local economy!

Got back to the house and took a short nap (seriously going to miss being in a place that appreciates naps lol) And then saw this wonderful sight.
 

 

  I know I say this in every blog post, but I'm really going to miss Taiwanese food and eating style. The variety of dishes is always so wonderful. Ah-ma would point and tell me to eat something if I ignored a particular plate for too long haha. Though we could only speak about 6-7 words to each other I could feel the care and acceptance from her. The whole family was always making sure Matt and I were taken care of from making sure we always had water on us (it was really hot), to always pointing out bathrooms when we were walking around in case we needed to go, telling us to go nap if we were tired, and feeding us a lot of wonderful food. We were constantly learning more about Taiwanese culture and history and after hearing some of the other experiences from the Americans at host family, I believe Matt and I were the most fortunate. Staying at a traditional Taiwanese house, visiting traditional markets, I think Matt and I got a look into the real Taiwanese lifestyle outside of the cities that I don't think a lot of other Americans have been able to experience.
 Barbecued oysters and sea snails. It started to rain so we all hung out in the garage area. Sitting there with my new Taiwanese family, listening to the cadence of the ceiling fan, the soft patter of rainfall, and the cool breeze after a hot day, I couldn't help but love everything and everyone that made this experience possible.

Shower time. I'm so sorry for this Taiwan.... I really am.

Anyway, that was a fun-filled and busy Saturday, but do not despair, there's Host Family Part 3 next! (which I'll write one day...so far behind....sorry for the mega-slow update)

Thank you all for reading!!!


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