At 11am, several TNUA students (who live in Taipei) took time off from their holiday break to show us around campus and Taipei. Their (American) names are Shine, Christine, Pauline, Debbie, and Vanessa, and they all spoke impeccable English. First, they gave us a tour of the beautiful campus where we met these two:
Legend tells that some visiting professor brought them in for an on campus art instillation and never took them back, so now they live here, "mowing" the grass.
The campus has an incredible view of Taipei on one side, and of the mountains on the other. It reminds me a little of Tacoma, Washington, with it's vast view of the bay, the mountain, and the city below. The buildings are all fairly new-looking, with lots of open space and beautiful flowers and tropical plants everywhere.
Next, we went to a 2 HOUR long lunch with a few of the faculty members who are still on campus. Ping Ping is the chair of the department and the costume design professor; I will likely work with her a lot. She was a delight and so kind. Don is an American (I think), and is the scenic professor, and Joy is the lighting professor (I think, we didn't interact much, as we were at different tables).
The food was amazing, though I could not tell you what all of the things I ate were. :/ We were served a delicious sweet beer (which Emily and I bought several of a the grocery store!), sticky rice, 12 different dishes AND desert. It's 10 hours later, and I am still full. My favorite item was (in English) "Shrimp boat and pineapple". It's a soft shrimp that's butterflied (the boat shape), fried in some kind of sweet batter and served with pineapple and drizzled with some kind of sweet glaze. Everyone teased me for having a sweet tooth, which I definitely do!
The aforementioned delicious shrimp dish
After that, we rode a bus, and then the MRT (metro rail transit) to Carrefour, the Taiwanese Walmart/Costco. It was INSANE! Today is the day before the Chinese New Year, so it was a lot like grocery shopping the day before Thanksgiving or Black Friday (no fisticuffs, but a lot of grumpy pushing). I got a lot of odd looks, as I was probably the tallest person in the store (and one of 6 white people), but I was surprised at how polite everyone was about it--I could tell that they wanted to stare, but didn't want to be rude. After, we went to one of the night markets. As we walked by several busy shops, I assumed we were already in the midst of the night market. I was SO wrong. THIS was the night market entrance:
It was like a state fair on steroids! The massive crowd moved slowly, the stall owners had headset microphones and were trying to be louder and more interesting than their neighbors, and the smells were...numerous. Some were good, but most were bad (fish, raw meat, sewer, and several I couldn't name). There were cuts of meat that I've never seen before, barrels and barrels of candy, dried fruit and vegetables, and lots of garments and accessories. EVERYONE was desperate to give out samples of food--you could just walk up to a vendor, grab a piece of food, and walk away. We also went to a temple and made a New Year prayer. We lit 3 sticks of incense, bowed three times before shrines of a variety of gods, and made our prayers--Shine informed us that most people pray for romance; there were a lot of young women there. Ladies be lonely all over the globe!
Just look at that face.
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