The Hills Are Alive

The weird thing about writing is that sometimes your mind can be full to bursting with topics to write about, but you can't for the life of you figure out how to start. You find yourself caught up in the dry and barren land of writer's block, when all you wanted to do was to write down your blog for the night and go to sleep.  If this last sentence sounded a little personal, that's because it is. I wanted to start off my blog tonight with something that was at once clever and poignant, but, alas, it would seem that that is not going to happen. So, I will just start my post right at the beginning.

The Beginning. (other wise known as, the chapter in which the I discover the greatest thing since sliced bread)

Now, I know what you all are thinking, and no, this post isn't actually bread related. At all. The greatest thing since sliced bread is this language called Esperanto. It is an artificial language that was invented by a doctor in Polynesia who was tired of all of the bloodshed there that resulted from misunderstandings between people who spoke different languages. The idea is that this language would be easily understood by everyone in Polynesia, and that it could become a common language. The doctor named the language Esperanto, or hope, because it was his hope that this language would end the bloodshed. Esperanto is like a mixture of Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, and German. It is an internationally accepted constructed language, and it is even used at the United Nations. If you are interested, you can download a free course from kurso.com.br. But, either way, I encourage you to look up Esperanto online, it really is fascinating. 

Now, I am going to post, yet again, about the food that I ate today. So, for lunch, we went to a traditional Chinese-style buffet. Think school cafeteria, but without the mystery meat. You get a tray and you go down the row and point to what you want, and you pay for what you buy at the end of the meal. It's super cool. Here is what I ended up getting:

Broccoli, fried chicken, rice, and some kind of steamed vegetable

This soup was free with the meal!

The food was really good, but the part that they don't tell you is how you are supposed to eat it without looking like a Cro-magnon. You see, when I was preparing for my trip, one thing that I didn't have to worry about was learning how to eat with chopsticks. I learned how to eat with chopsticks from an early age, and I had always thought that I achieved the highest level of chopstick eating that there was: eating rice. But boy was I wrong. Eating rice is simple. Eating a large piece of chicken without a knife is hard. I, frankly, still don't know how the Chinese people manage to tear pieces of the chicken off WITH THEIR CHOPSTICKS without having to resort to stabbing, hacking, and generally mauling the food. It is impressive. I have to take a chopstick in each hand and maim my meal to break it into pieces that will kind of fit in my mouth if I get the angle right and shove. By the end of the battle, I have made a complete mess and I look like I was taught table manners by a wolf who hadn't eaten in weeks. Yet, my aunt and uncle, manage to eat their entrees in a civilized manner while watching TV. It's incredible! Lets just add "learn how to eat" to the list of things that I want to learn before I leave. 

For dinner, we stopped at a kind of outdoor market place where a lot of food stands were set up. Watching these people cook is really something to behold. They are incredibly efficient. Every move is purposeful. For example, we stopped at a stand to get these fried oysters:

The stand also sold several other fried things and we got to watch as she would take the raw item, dip it in the batter, put it in the oil, take it out, cut it, and put it in the box to give it to the customer. All of this was done very quickly, and it was an impressive sight. This same woman also sold these: 

                                         

These are called Tempura. They are a kind of fish that is cut into strips and then fried. You eat them by skewering them on a small pointed stick. I am quickly discovering that the Chinese eat everything on a stick, whether that means using chopsticks or a skewer, but never their hands. That would be unsanitary, especially because the city has a lot of pollution in the air, and those germs get on your hands. Speaking of sanitation... the garbage trucks here all play classical music when they go on their rounds. They sound like ice cream trucks. This is so you can hear them coming down the street and remember to put out your garbage. Clever, isn't it?
Also clever is the way they pack up drinks around here. Remember back to my post called "Food, Glorious Food" in which I mentioned something called Frog's egg tea. Well, I still don't have a picture of that particular drink, but I do have a picture of what the "frog's eggs" look like. They put them in this drink called milk tea, which tastes just like you think it would. Apparently this milk tea with the balls in it is so popular that all of the McDonalds in Germany have it on the menu. Anyway, when the barristas whip it up, they put it in this machine that shrink-wraps a piece of plastic on to the top of the cup. This is the cup's spill-proof "lid." The barristas then proceed to put the drinks in a bag, and to make them fit the bag better, they turn one of the cups UPSIDE DOWN. I kid you not. Obviously, the drink is shrink wrapped, so it won't spill, but it is still cool. It is like what Dairy Queen does with their blizzards, except better. So, now you may be thinking, "how does one drink the tea once it has been shrink-wrapped?" It's easy, all of the straws are pointed on one end, so when you go to drink your beverage, you simply poke the straw through the plastic. Like so:

Also for dinner, we had these noodles that were cooked with bean sprouts, (my favorite!), and some kind of green, leafy vegetable. They give you this in a plastic bag so it won't spill, and when you get home you untie the top of the bag and pour it into a bowl. They do the same thing with soup that you get to-go.

This is a soup that has little pork dumplings in it:

And, this:

This is stinky tofu. Stinky tofu is very famous. It is made with fermented tofu, so when they call it stinky, they aren't kidding. It smells like rotting garbage, so you can only find it at out door food stands, as the smell would be too overpowering in an enclosed space. The tofu is fried, and then served with a spicy sauce and topped with cabbage. Most people around here love this dish, so I had to try it to see what all of the hullabaloo was about. Unfortunately, folks, I still can't tell you. I did not like the dish. At all. The fried tofu has a texture that is reminiscent of bubble gum and has very little flavor, and the sauce is not very spicy at all. Being from the south, I suppose that that is because I am so used to hot sauce that the spice here doesn't affect me. The thing that gets me is the tofu part of this equation. This would mark my fifth time to try some kind of tofu here, and I have struck out every time. No matter how hard I try, I just cannot make myself like tofu. This comes as quite a blow to me, because one of the things on my bucket list is to try veganism for three months. A task that becomes extremely difficult if you do not like one of the main staple foods. Maybe one day, I will grow accustomed to the texture of this soy product, but until then, I will stick to meat.

In other news, I also went back to Beitou this afternoon and climbed a mountain. This is no where near as extreme as it sounds, because there were steps leading up the mountain. This area of Beitou is famous for its beautiful scenery and the lack of people. You see, a long time ago, the mountains of Beitou were coveted as a source for a type of sturdy stone that was used for building purposes. Fights would break out over who had the right to mine where, and so there was a lot of bloodshed. Fast forward to today, and the apartments and houses in the area hold very few residents.

An empty park under the metro

An old house

There are a lot of temples in this area to appease the spirits of the dead. 

 Most people don't want to live in a place that has seen that much death, so the area is pretty deserted. But, it is also home to gorgeous parks, and it was in one of these parks, that I hiked up a mountain. Here are some pictures:

The stairs leading up the mountain are paved in the famous stones that caused all of that blood shed.

A panoramic view of Taiwan as seen from the mountain

We found this at the top of the mountain:

Interesting building and a giant sundial

We have no idea why it is there, but it was a cool thing to discover.

Later on, I went with my aunt and uncle to another one of their music classes. This time it was a singing class for adults. I couldn't understand the song lyrics, (they were in Chinese), but I could understand the notes. I have heard it said that math is the same in any language. I would argue that the same could be said about music. Sheet music still looks the same over here as it did in America, the only difference is how they teach music. In the U.S., we learn the "music alphabet" which consists of the letters A-G, but here, they use the Do, Re, Me system that was made famous by a nun named Maria in 1965.
                                                         
It was cool to see it put to practice, even though the song "Doe, a deer" was stuck in my head the entire time. But enough for now, I will see you tomorrow everyone, may you have a wonderful adventure until then.
Adiaŭ! (that's Esperanto by the way)