Sorry Haven't Posted For A While

Haven't posted for a while! Hahaha... having too much fun here! :-D

Ate a lot of new food, tried a lot of new things, visited new places, and met a lot of people these past few days...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NEW FOOD:
- Evan's burger: beefiest burger I've tasted in Taiwan so far.
- Hongkong restaurants in Zhongxiao-Dunhua: tastes like Chinese food back home...yum!
- Pizza Hut: Japanese Teppanyaki Pizza is weird and sweet.
- Burger King or 漢堡王: Tried their buy one take one thingies with classmates. Cheap food!
- mini siopao's and misua from Shida night market 師大夜市.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

EVENTS:
- Visited "Filipino-town" here in Taipei and hoarded Filipino chips (piatos, tempura, oishi, etc).
- Michelle cooked Filipino food (sinigang, pancit, adobo) for us. I helped chop veggies!
- Gatecrashed Heidi's classmate's party... Culture shock! Didn't know what to do at this social setting. hahahaha!
- Went to the gym: it's cheap here!!! CHEAP!!!
- Went to 九份 (jiufen): awesome traditional Chinese/Japanese looking place! Want to have my prenup shots done here! :-D
- Helped Michelle move 搬家!
- New haircut - which sucks a bit. Jamie said he was stunned. Hahaha!
- Went to a Fahrenheit Concert (飛輪海的演唱會) and cried tears of joy. 很感動吧! :-P

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NEW PEOPLE:
- Met Heidi's classmates and friends. :-)
- Met my 阿姨 and 姨丈 from the States! Love them!
- Met Jen's friends (Joy and Mae), went with them to 九份.
- Met Heidi's family!
- Met a friend's "friend" - let's leave it at that. ;-D

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We're having our mock-TOP tests this week, and the workload is much much lighter. 所以可以輕輕鬆松一點。。。 :-D

Just this Monday, I had an oral examination... It was so much fun because the exam is computer-based, they have set questions that they ask the examinees and they record our answers and will check them on a later date. The result comes out on December 15, 2009. Good thing the score won't affect our grades! :-D

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WEIRD EXAM ANSWER

I also had a chapter exam last Monday, and I probably won't forget this composition I did. We basically need to use up the grammar points to answer some questions.

For one of the items, the question was "昨天我打電話給你時﹐你為什麼沒空跟我說話?你那個時候在忙什麼?" (roughly translates as: "I called you up yesterday and you didn't have time to talk, what were you busy with?").

My answer using the grammar points was "真的不好意思﹐你打電話的時候我正要去廁所﹐大便就快出來了﹐所以沒辦法跟你說些話。" (which translates to: "Very sorry, I was about to go to the bathroom when you called; My poop was about to go out, that's why I wasn't able to talk to you.")

Then I added a "對不起!不好的題目。" ("sorry! bad topic!) apology for my teacher. hahahaha! Got that item right though - no deductions for grossness! :-D

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tomorrow, we will have our typing/composition exam. Then we have a listening exam on Thursday... Looking forward to the coming days!!!!! ^____^

Six Days of Food and Exercise

After Hamy left for Manila, my days have been filled with more eating and exercise. :-D


Last Thursday, Heidi was telling us how we should start exploring more eating options. We've become fond of the normal eating places here in Shida Night Market that we don't experiment and try others anymore. According to Heidi, we've only eaten at 24 different places in the month that we've been in Taiwan.

In order to diversify and add to the list, we decided to have lunch at a place that we've never had lunch before. We call it the "spicy place" because everything on the menu has the word 辣 or spicy in it. The thing is, you can order them non-spicy - like non-spicy spicy noodles. Hahaha... Anyway, it was a nice discovery because it was good and cheap food - just how the locals like 'em.

After eating, I felt sleepy so I left everyone to do their bit and went home to sleep the whole afternoon away. At around dinner time, Michelle, Heidz and Jamie came to my place to raid me! Hahahaha. They brought a mahjong set and some mantou rolls for dinner. We played bad mahjong then moved to 1-2-3-Pass (and write on loser's arms). Neung played with us for a few rounds then left. After she left, the game went wild! Jamie and Michelle are forever having these United States vs. England matches so when Michelle got to write her love for US in Jamie's arm, Jamie was so pissed. Jamie wasn't able to get his revenge because we didn't have enough time to play. Hahaha! It was good fun to watch them show their distaste for each other's countries (even though they actually really like the other's country).

Jamie's arm with "我愛美國,很好的地方" written on it (Taken by Michelle):


Friday was the day before our beach day so we spent most of the day planning for the beach trip. We ate at the hotpot place for lunch (with Michelle, Eli, Hanni, and Wayne), bought some swimming, volleyball, and tennis stuff; then headed for the Shida Tennis Courts to play my first tennis game in Taiwan. I still and will always suck at tennis, but i really do enjoy playing it for some reason. I was playing with Jamie for a bit before we got tired of picking up the balls (more than hitting them).

I did walling for a bit while the others played volleyball (I'm scared of being hit by volleyballs!). One other person was walling beside me, and he asked me if I wanted to play with him. Of course!!! 當然啊!!! So we played while the others were playing volleyball. I found out later that the guy's name is 生活 or something that sounds like that. I hope to play with him again next time - he's the only one who can catch and return by bad shots so far. :-D

Jamie, Michelle and I went to try a new place for dinner and ended up discovering Jamie's new favorite place which served Thai-Malaysian food. We had some coconut milk beef, sweet vinegar chicken and pineapple fried rice. We talked the night away, until the restaurant started closing the lights to shoo off the loitering customers.


Saturday is Fulong Beach day which I am gonna reserve for a different blog entry. Just because it was the most fun and unique experience in my stay here in Taiwan (so far). :-D


Sunday was spent for resting our aching bodies from all the sports and activities that we were doing. We still couldn't part from each other though; Heidz, Michelle, Jamie and I met up with each other to eat dinner together. We finally had Japanese thanks to Neung's help. :-D


Monday is another sleep day for me. We had a chapter test and an oral examination in class, then we (Jen, Mike, Michelle, and I) ate roast duck and asado for lunch. After that, I slept the whole afternoon away until Michelle called me up to meet everyone for dinner. We went back to Jamie's Thai-Malaysian place to introduce Jen and Heidz to the good food.


Today Tuesday, we ate the cheap 小龍包 place for lunch with a bunch of peeps from class and extended friends. Michelle went home to sleep, then Jen and I spent the early afternoon chatting and cleaning my room. The five of us (Michelle, Heidz, Jen, Jamie, me) met up at the oval for a run. The weather was so nice for running! I had a very nice and easy 10 laps. Jamie thought I was not tired enough though so he asked me to run another fast lap which I did in around 2 or 3 mins (400km). Not bad, I think. :-D

We met up with Michelle's friend, Dan. Then we ate at a place that served Mexican food. The food reminded me of "Hola!" burritos from the Philippines. :-D


Tomorrow is Wednesday and I might finally be able to try Evan's Burger (50% off on their burgers every Wednesday). :-D

Hamy-day and Other Days

So yeah, Hamy finally visited me here after more than a month of not seeing each other. I'm still gonna do my usual rundown of activities since I want to remember them in the future, so please bear with me. Hehehe...


Thursday was the day before Hamy arrives. The only thing I remembered was that it was the first time I was able to try sibut (chinese medicinal soup) and that it was my first full 10-lap run since I came here in Taiwan (due to Jamie's encouragement).


Hamy arrived on Friday and we were able to meet each other at around 4pm that day (I brought him fried dumplings which he absolutely loved). Jen waited with me just to be able to meet him, then she had to go home. We had dinner with Heidi, Jamie, and Michelle. Hamy was finally able to meet my Taiwan friends. Oh, and we ate at the Goon's chou fan place for dinner. Weirdly enough, he was also able to meet all my housemates that day. This isn't usual, I usually don't get to see all my housemates in one day!


Saturday was our foodie and lucky day (It was also Taiwan's Mid-Autumn Festival). I had breakfast with Hamy in the hotel, since he got two free breakfast stubs from his room. We wasted the rest of the morning doing my laundry and talking. For lunch, I took him to DinTaiFung to try the famous xiaolongbao. We had to wait for around 45-60 mins before we can get into the place so we went to a roast duck place nearby and shared a plate of mixed roasted meat (duck, pork, chicken). When we got back to DinTaiFung, we ordered two orders of xiaolongbao.

Me, waiting for our turn to come up in DinTaiFung! Things we do for good food...