Taipei: So Many Nutrients!

This is what you get when you combine an entire container of salad mix, 4 oz. of Martinelli's Apple Juice and 2 over-ripe bananas! This is the watery bit left at the bottom, the part already consumed was solid enough to mold to the contours of the cup and could be picked up with chopsticks. It taste's delicious but looks like baby poop. There was nothing particularly pleasing about the experience of eating it... but so many nutrients!

Next time fewer greens and more liquid.

Taipei: My Patience Rewarded!

One of the reasons I came to Taiwan to begin with was because of my love of tea and my knowledge that Taiwan is to tea-lovers what Amsterdam is to pot-heads. The last thing I wanted however was to walk into a tea shop and be mistaken for a tourist looking for a novelty tea set to pay way too much for in order to have something to put on a shelf and never use. So I waited. Wait for my Chinese to improve was my intention, and that has happened, but on top of that, my path just happened to cross ways with other people who love tea as much as I do and who have so much to teach me and genuine interest in my American Gung-Fu Cha experiences. I have developed my relationship with them and steeped enough pots of tea from tea sets available in local tea houses with them that I finally decided to have a set of my own, and that my friend decided to help me assemble it. I am in hog heaven. I love Taiwan.

Taipei: How is it already June?

Time flies by so quickly here. I am still dealing with the issues of eating meat. Making compromises is an interesting aspect of human nature. Being faced with the reality that I wasn't willing to insist on not eating meat in situations where it would be inconvenient for my friends, I instead just invented new rules to veganism, constructed situations where it would be ok to cheat on myself. Now I never eat meat if I am alone, but only with certain friends who have to eat meat with every meal. Certain other friends have joined with me in avoiding meat, some have embraced it even more whole-heartedly than I. The world is a magical place.

I am now in an 8:30 am chinese class with three japanese people, another american and a guy from somewhere in Europe. Changing from the 3:00 pm class to the 8:30 am class is a large life change but it is one that I requested and am glad to be making. My schedule revolves in large part around, sleeping, studying and eating leafy green vegetables. If I were to stumble upon a genie in a bottle, I don't think I would have anything to wish for.

I went with my friends to Kaohsiung last Sunday because they were playing a show there. About an hour before they were to go on they realized that they didn't have anybody to man there table and sell cd's for them. I didn't volunteer, thinking my language barrier to be a bar from eligibility, but they didn't see it that way and asked me to sell cd's for them. So I did.