another vacation!

i just bought my plane tickets for another vacation! i'm going to visit shauna in the netherlands during the last two weeks of july. then it's the start of med school on aug 6!

in other exciting news, this is my first post from my new computer! a few weeks ago i got my 15.4" thinkpad t61 in the mail!

spending so much money lately...

fort san domingo diy

i finally decided to make my fort san domingo diy (a gift from taoyuan tour buddies, which we picked out together at taiwan storyland!). it was basically a postcard sized piece of tag board with the fort san domingo pattern on it. when i started, i realized, it was a bit more hard/complicated than i had imagined O_O ! tools i used included: scissors and box cutter, metal ruler to make straight creases, elmer's glue and q tip for glue application, PATIENCE! it's not perfect...but i thought it turned out decent. hopefully the resemblance to the real fort san domingo (bottom picture) is apparent. more pictures at picasa!

cute stuff from taiwan

on my picasa, i posted pictures of a sample of the cute stuff i got in taiwan. check it out!

day19: shilin, danshui

wednesday, 4/16/2008:

this was my last day in taiwan! it has been a great trip. i went to some interesting places, ate some amazing foods, and did some great shopping. and i met so many interesting people along the way. and, for the first time, i can really say i have become friends with my cousins. i am going to miss EVERYTHING and EVERYONE! anyway, getting along with the activities of my last day...

the plan was to go to my uncle and aunt's familymart convenience store in danshui to visit my cousin (who was working there) and eat the most amazing steamed dumplings ever. before i left, i ate some ore of my pudding. on the way to danshui, i shopped the shilin traditional market, bought some stuff (like a vegetable peeler and a REALLY cute pig watch for 100NT/$3!) and basically ate my way to danshui. first, at the traditional market i got a shuang bao tai (twins), basically fried dough with sugar...delicious! then outside the mrt station i bought a zhuabing (kind of like a scallion pancake, but more fluffed up) with basil and an egg on top! the most important goal for the day was eating the steamed dumplings (picture) that are sold right outside my uncle and aunt's convenience store...i have been waiting to eat them my whole trip! last time i was in taiwan, i ate them, and they were the absolute most amazing! but before even making it to danshui, i was already REALLY full! i took the mrt to danshui, then transferred to the red38 bus and got off at zhenli university (aletheia university) stop, right in front of the convenience store. first order of business was the steamed dumplings. it was the height of lunch time and there was a huge line! last time i was there, the owner told me the two tricks for making his dumplings. 1) the cabbage must be dehydrated by mixing them with salt, incubate, then wash the salt off, and spin the water off the cabbage. this makes the cabbage crisp! 2) steaming the dumplings in high heat so they are done really quick! tada...the best dumplings ever. by now i am beyond full.

for the rest of the afternoon, i kept browsing the small convenience store, and basically ate whenever my stomach didn't feel like it was going to explode. this was my last chance before coming back to minnesota!! first, i had a milk flavored pudding, it was white! [and now i will rate all the puddings i've had in the past few days: (1) milk pudding (weiquan), (2) egg pudding (imei), (3) red bean pudding (carrefour/generic), (4) egg pudding (weiquan). 1 = best] to drink i had a winter melon tea, pretty average thing to drink in taiwan, but pretty refreshing, i like winter melon tea a lot. then i was hanging out behind the counter with my cousin, not the widest of places, and i walked by the espresso machine and all of a sudden *shshshshhshhhh!!* !! the machine just started apparently i had brushed the mocha button! apparently this happens a lot, my cousin quickly grabbed a cup to catch my mocha...it was actually pretty good!! a mr. brown espresso machine! then, while browsing the store, i came across some REALLY interesting snacks, tiny sugar coated crabs. i tried one...it tasted like a mouth full of harbor! the most disgusting "food" i ate during my entire trip (maybe entire life!). my cousin seemed to enjoy them and ate the rest of the package. later my cousin had kfc for lunch, and of course i had a piece, whoa the spicy chicken is REALLY good! taiwan's kfc also has egg tarts! finally, my last accomplishment at the familymart was drinking a row of yangleduo! once during the trip when i was walking on the streets of taipei, i saw someone was drinking a row of yangleduo. they weren't drinking just one of the tiny yangleduos, and they weren't drinking one of the big bottles, but a row of tiny ones (usually the tiny yangleduos are packaged together in shrink wrap in rows of 5). it never occurred to me to drink a row still stuck together! what a cool idea!! so i had to try that. because, one tiny yangleduo is never enough. but somehow i think it's not the same to drink the big bottles of yangleduo...this was the perfect way. anyway, the afternoon i spent at familymart was really productive in terms of eating. i also saw some interesting snacks: a package of cheese singles that came with a plastic cheese singles man figure, "crispy mint" m&m's (is this novel? or do i not shop the candy aisle enough?), sushi flavored chips, seaweed flavored chips, cartons of iced lattes that advertised latte art on the front (too bad it doesn't look like that inside!). as it was approaching dinner time, i was still completely stuffed!

next my aunt took me to buy some xi bing (chinese people's equivalent of wedding cakes) to take home. they are meant to be given away to celebrate weddings, but are tasty whether you have occasion to eat them or not! they kind of remind me of mooncakes, but are flatter, bigger, and way tastier. my favorite one had a hmong bean and salty egg yolk filling, but there were a lot of different fillings. even though i was so full, the store owner kept encouraging us to sample everything...this stuff is really rich!

back at home i'm about to explode, but we are supposed to go to dinner, my last meal in taiwan! first i do most of my packing, hoping that i'll digest some of the food i ate, but no such luck! it was SO HOT i thought i was going to melt. about an hour later, it was time to head out for dinner. we had planned on going to hot pot (my favorite type of meal), but we could tell my grandpa really want to go to steak, since he KEPT being like, ellen you should try the steak. so, despite being grossly full, we went to eat steak. it had a buffet salad bar, but it was really all i could do to just eat the steak...and drink lots of tea to wash it down. but i felt like my grandpa would be upset if it appeared i didn't like the steak, so i worked really hard at it. all i can say is, it wasn't a pleasant experience. it would have been pretty good. after dinner, my aunt took me on a quick trip to buy some pineapple cakes and it was home to finish packing.

the next morning, my flight would leave shilin at 5am to catch a 7:30am flight back to osaka, detroit, then minnesota. an end to the most amazing 3 weeks!

WORTH EATING: milk pudding, imei egg pudding, shuangbaotai, zhuabing with basil and egg, steamed dumplings, row of yangleduo

full set of pictures at picasa!

day18: yehliu, keelung

tuesday, 4/15/2008:

tuesday morning i ate another two pudding cups and an ice cream bar for breakfast! and then hurried on my way to yehliu. the fastest way is to take a bus from taipei directly to yehliu, but for some reason i insisted on taking a train to keelung first... from taipei train station i took a train to keelung train station, which had a helpful tourist information center, which told me to take the keelung <--> jinshan bus to yehliu. 45NT ($1.50) gets you the ~40 minute ride to yehliu. when i got on the bus, i asked the driver to let me know when to get off for yehliu. but as we were riding along, it seemed to be already more than 40 minutes and the bus driver hadn't said anything! but the view out the window was especially spectacular after 40 minutes, so i was busy looking at the great view of taiwan's north shore. i love rocky coastlines! finally it seemed to be too long and the route was getting away from the coast, so i asked the driver if we had passed yehliu. he was like, o no i forgot!! he was like, don't pay, just get off and cross the street, and take the return bus a couple stops, be careful when cross the street!! lol...he could tell i was a total tourist i guess. so i got on the next bus, which came pretty soon, there's a bus like every 10 minutes. and a couple of stops and only 22NT (~75 cents) later, i was at the yehliu stop! despite taking the bus past my stop, i thought the whole experience was a good deal: half price to yehliu and i saw some great views of the ocean! from the bus stop there were signs to yehliu geopark, but i still had to ask directions a few times. on the way there i passed yehliu harbor, which smelled GROSS. after a short walk, i arrived at yehliu geopark!

yehliu geopark is a small peninsula on taiwan's north shore. the small area is full of interesting rock formations, and is most famous for a rock formation in the shape of a queen's head (picture)! i had heard that, due to natural weathering, the neck of the queen's head is getting thinner and thinner and will one day break, so i made a point of going to check her out during this trip. basically the rocks at yehliu are harder on top than on the bottom, so erosion makes them thinner on the bottom than on top, which makes them look like enormous mushrooms (picture). there are some footpaths on the peninsula, but for the most part you are free to walk off the footpaths and into the formations and touch them. the only formation that was off limits was the queen's head. past the main rock formations, you can continue to make a loop around the peninsula. i made it almost to the tip of the peninsula, but then came back around the same way since there was no one else there and i got a little scared. there is no designated route, no footpath, only large rocks and large waves... but according to the brochure, you can make the loop. i found the whole peninsula to be a spectacular, mysterious, even magical place! the rock formations themselves are pretty strange looking, the areas with water pools and mossy rocks are quite beautiful, and the peninsula is a great balance of vegetation, rock, and waves! even though i was at the park in the early afternoon and it was VERY sunny and hot, i really enjoyed the 2-3 hours i spent walking around the peninsula. i felt like a fantastic story full of pixies and elves could definitely be set there. at the end of my taiwan vacation, this was definitely one of the highlights of my trip! on my way out of yehliu i walked through a very touristy market that sold a lot of seafood products like dried squid. there were a couple vendors that sold fried seaweed! i tried a sample, was pretty good. then i took the bus back to keelung.

next i took a bus to reifang train station (faster than train) to take a train to pingxi. the pingxi line is another small tourist rail line (like jiji). but when i got to reifang, the information center person told me not to go because it was too late in the day, and that i wouldn't be able to see anything by the time i caught the next train. disappointed, i turned around and went back to keelung. (although, one good thing is...now i feel like i really know how to take the bus in and out of keelung...)

the next destination was keelung's miaokou night market, famous for it's foooood! by the time i got to miaokou (a short walk from keelung train station) it was 6:30pm, and i hadn't eaten since breakfast! unfortunately, the whole experience wasn't as expected. night market food really requires experience. when i ate at danshui, my cousin knew what was good, what was not. at miaokou i was on my own, and i had varied luck. first i had an oyster omelet, which is supposed to be really good at miaokou (being by the ocean and all). i sat down and ordered, and as i was eating, i realized that i had sat down right in front of the vat of oysters waiting to be cooked...the smell was totally unappetizing! but the oyster omelet was decent, but not really one of my favorite foods. i tried to look for food that i hadn't eaten before. i saw these interesting fried buns. all i can say is...it turned out to be a total waste of stomach space. i think mine had tuna and green onions inside. next i saw these fried crabs, which was REALLY tasty! but difficult to eat in a night market setting. that food vendor didn't have any tables to sit at, so i looked for something to eat that had tables so i could also eat my crabs. i sat down at a dessert stand and had another shu bing, this time with peanut soup in it. the one i had at taiwan storyland was way better, too much peanut soup in this one. finally, i got in line to buy my taro flavored pao pao bing (bubble ice), ice shaved so fine it's like ice cream. miaokou is also famous for its pao pao bing, and it was decent. two things i should have eaten but didn't: ding bian cu (some kind of soup with flat stuff in it?) and an quan sanmingzi (some kind of sandwich). well, i got to save some stuff to eat for the next time i go to taiwan!

finally i walked back to the train station and took a train back to taipei and went back home to shilin. on the way back, i finally took pictures of the two checker board stores near the shilin mrt station. these stores have become popular all over taiwan. basically the stores are full of cubbies, which are rented out, so that anyone can rent one or two cubbies and sell anything they want! there is always a lot of random and interesting things in those stores!

what i thought was interesting was that, on the day i went to national palace museum i didn't eat lunch and was unbearably hungry by 4pm, while traipsing around keelung area until 6:30pm without lunch was completely bearable...i guess the national palace museum is not sufficient to take my mind off hunger...

WORTH SEEING: yehliu

WORTH EATING: fried crabs

full set of pictures at picasa!

day17: shilin

monday, 4/14/2008:

again, my cousin was still sleeping when i got up in the morning, so more ktv homework! we were planning on going again later in the day, so it was cram time.

as we were getting ready to leave, we started eating the lao tien lu stuff. OMG SO GOOD! seriously, how do they get the spices so just right?? the duck wing was exceptional! and so was the stomach thing, i'm not sure what animal it is of, but it was very crisp!

after breakfast we went to carrefour, kind of like a super walmart. i had hoped to get some handy kitchen supplies (i really wanted to get some metal chinese style spoons) and stationary and candy and other miscellaneous things. turns out i was pretty disappointed. i didn't find any kitchen supplies i liked and the stationary section was too small to have any good choices. i did get some pretty good gum, airwaves, my favorite gum!! i don't even like gum, but i always stock up on airwaves when i go to taiwan. we don't have good gum in the states! i also got a pack of this really good japanese grape hard candy that has a gooey filling and tastes EXACTLY like a grape. but the most important thing is that i realized i hadn't eaten my fair share of ice cream / popsicles and pudding! my first choice was a box of morinaga milk caramel ice cream bars (picture). packaged in small yellow boxes, morinaga milk caramels were a staple for me growing up. every trip to taiwan involved stocking up on this candy! this was the first time i saw ice cream bars of that flavor! there were also ovaltine ice cream bars, which i thought would be really good! but i opted to get taro flavored ice cream bars instead. i figured two boxes of ice cream bars was enough for the last 3 days i had left in taiwan. my cousin also picked out some more muoji ice cream. and then i also picked some yangleduo popsicles, kind of like a chubby mr. freezey. then it was to the pudding section! i picked a strip of weiquan brand and a strip of imei brand pudding. then i also decided to try a strip of the carrefour generic brand pudding in red bean flavor. each strip had 3 pudding cups! next, my cousin and i picked out some food for lunch in the deli section. they were selling various yan shuei ji (salty chicken?) parts. my favorite part of the chicken is its back, and you could just buy the strip of the chicken that is its spine! purchases in hand, we went back home to eat! ...mainly i wanted to try my desserts ;)

after lunch, my cousin went to take a nap and i continued my ktv homework.

then, my two cousins and their bfs and i met up at the holiday ktv again! we got right down to business, here are some of the songs i sang:

rainie's yu shang ai
rainie's jie muo qiao ke li
ariel lin's fei ni muo shu
danson's zao fei ji
danson's zui ai hai shi ni
SHE's wu yue tian
SHE's lao po
jordan chen's wo ai de ren

again, the songs are not picked because i necessarily like them the most, but because i found them easy to pick up!

after 5 hours of ktv, we left and strolled through shilin night market on our way home. i had a "da bing bao xiao bing" (big bread wraps small bread), which is one of the famous food vendor products at shilin night market. the "small bread" is fried, and then crushed, then flavor added, then wrapped in the "big bread", which is a large moist flat bread. i had black pepper flavored, my cousin had taro flavored. pretty good! then home, and more ice cream bars later, sleep.

WORTH EATING: morinaga milk caramel ice cream bars, taro ice cream bars, imei pudding, chicken spine, da bing bao xiao bing

full set of pictures at picasa!

day16: ximending, shilin

sunday, 4/13/2008:

so as my cousin and i were planning to go see sharon li, i asked if we could see any other celebrities...ones that i actually like! my cousin searched a while online and found that yoga lin (too bad that vcr clip doesn't show clips of him crying because that is always my favorite he looks like he's in kindergarten and you just want to hold his hand and help him cross the street!) was going to go to ximending!! i LOVED the first season of one million star and yoga was definitely my favorite contestant...and the winner! anyway, sunday was the day we were going to go see yoga! but my cousin hadn't gotten up yet, so i started my ktv homework, by first trying to think up songs that i knew. i had a whole list of them before my cousin got up!

we left around 12:30pm to go to ximending, and yoga was supposed to show up at 2:00pm. when we got to the spot, there was a small crowd (picture) in front of a small stage. the crowd was much smaller than i had imagined. all these girls were sitting in front of the stage, holding little signs that were buns and said "yoga". a few people had big signs. some people had signs of lcd lights! and one person even had a peter pan sign! my cousin and i tried to squeeze in from the side, but i think we were not appreciated, hehe. they were broadcasting some of the songs he sang on the show, about 5 songs, and they kept looping. yoga, was of course, late. a dj went up on the stage and started talking and then was saying how yoga had this surprise new look. we waited patiently. finally this van drives up, and then tries to back up right next to the stage, but has to make a turn to do that, seriously almost ran us down. of course we didn't want to move and lose our spot so the van just really slowly backed up next to us, and we were basically squeezed as much as possible. somewhat frightening, but taiwan drivers have really good technique (if not courteous), right? anyway, then yoga POPPED out of the van and OMG O_O what happened to him?!?!?! purple satin shirt and purple belt, hair slicked back, all because he decided to sing an elvis song, his only song. i was pretty shocked. i come all this way to see him and he turns himself into a cheap elvis impersonator (and a really bad one at that)! the whole event was supposed to be to advertise for his concert...not so we could hear him sing, hehe. but seriously, he was always so good at picking songs in one million star. and now he's turned into a monster singing an elvis song. omg i can't believe it. i don't have words for how upset i was (and still am). anyway, i still took a lot of pictures.

after the yoga fiasco, my cousin took me to this japanese restaurant (he ming?) i think still in ximending. but first, she took me to a papaya milk shop! papaya milk is one of my favorite foods! i can't believe i hadn't had any yet my whole trip! anyway, onto the japanese restaurant. probably the best thing i had there was my kiwi cocktail! lots of kiwi chunks in it! i had a beef dish that was raw when it came and the waitress lighted the pot so that it cooked on the table. it was okay, more of a show than tasty. my cousin had this sticky pancake thing, pretty good. she also got these other sticky cake things as appetizers, not too impressive. anyway, after some slight shopping in ximending, it was time for dinner! my cousin was meeting her bf and his uncle+family for dinner and insisted on dragging me along. but before leaving ximending, my cousin took me to lao tien lu, the best place to get "lu wei", which is basically all sorts of things cooked in soy sauce and spices. we got duck wings, chicken wings, duck eggs, some kind of stomach, tofu, and there were so many different things there and a million different kinds of tofu. we didn't eat it until the next day, but i will just say now, OMG IT WAS SO GOOD! usually i'm not a huge lu wei fan because i'm not a big soy sauce fan, but seriously it was really good.

o yeah and on the way out of ximending we stopped in a convenience store and there was an incubator for warm drinks...it was all cans in there! lots of canned coffee in there, but there was also canned ovaltine! AND SUPAU! who drinks supau warm?!?!

anyway, my cousin's bf's uncle+family we went to eat sizzling steak plus salad bar. the steak was a lot like the steak my cousin took me to the other day. the salad bar was pretty normal, but had some interesting chinese dishes, for example chicken feet that still looked like chicken feet but already had the bones removed! SO FULL! especially because we just ate not too long ago...

but then on the way back home, walking back from the mrt stop, my cousin is like, omg the minced meat on rice is SO GOOD at this one stand, so she convinces me i have to try it, so a bowl of rice with minced meat later, my cousin is like, omg the "yan shu" (basically where there's lots of choices but everything is fried) at this other stand is SO GOOD, so then somehow we are standing there picking stuff out... my favorite is chicken butts on a skewer (usually 5), and we also picked squid, chicken chunks, and chicken skins (yeah just the skins, fried...). so then the food vendor fries it, and right before being done, throws in some basil (the best part!). the chicken butts and chicken skins are SO GOOD!

in case you haven't noticed, i have now entered the phase in my trip where i crazily eat everything in sight...not many days left and so many things left to eat!

anyway, back at home, my other cousin takes me into her room and she watches me as i do my ktv homework, practice practice practice. what i found is that, it's not about necessarily picking songs you like (because of the short practice time), but picking songs that you, for whatever reason, are better at singing, both lyric and melody -wise. i couldn't possibly memorize the lyrics, but i had to get really used to reading the words fast and how the melody goes, because at ktv, when the singer's voice is gone, sometimes it's pretty hard to figure out how you are actually supposed to sing, it depends on the song. what is cool is that on youtube, you can get a lot of the mvs in the ktv version, so that the words are really big and you can follow them as they turn blue! in these videos the singer's voice is still there, which is important for initial practicing, but then i also found a really good youtube account that has ktv videos in which the singer's voice is muted!

WORTH EATING: papaya milk, lao tien lu, yan shu

full set of pictures at picasa!