Taipei!

i know i'm not in barcelona yet but i kind of wanted to start this blog now, before i actually get there. i've never been able to successfully keep up a blog so this will be a challenge. something about having all your thoughts out for the world to read is kind of daunting to me. and also... i get lazy :p.

anywayy so i'm in taipei right now! since we aren't chinese citizens, my dad has to leave the country for a month every year for visa/tax reasons... i don't really get it but that's the way it works apparently. so he's been in taipei now for a month and we decided to come over and spend christmas with him.

even though my parents were born and raised here, and the way we speak mandarin and the food we eat at home is more taiwanese than mainland chinese, this is only my second time visiting and i feel quite like a tourist!

so far i can't really remember what we've done except walk around and eat. taiwan has the best street food! last night i went to a nightmarket for the first time. i've noticed a couple things about taipei... the subways are quite clean because they don't allow food/drink or chewing gum down there. we all spat out our gum before going down into the subway :p. also every time you enter a store or restaurant, every single employee will yell and greet you with a "HUAN YING GUANG LING!", which means "WELCOME GUEST!" :D. i wish i took more pictures (i will later) but here are some that i have now:


my dad took us here on our first day in taipei. it's this taiwanese rice noodle place that's been there since 1975. for some reason they chose not to have any seating... there's just a counter with a guy serving bowls of noodles. so you take your bowl and help yourself to condiments (i put lots of vinegar in mine :D) and then you find a spot to stand and eat. not sure if you can tell but all those people are standing and eating noodles!


here's my mom, brother, and dad eating lunch while standing :D. despite the fact that the bowl is really hot and that you have to stand, the noodles taste really goooooooood.


and then after you're done, you can just dump it in the convenient trash buckets they have! hehee

we also went to visit Yang Ming Shan, which is a really huge park close to where my dad grew up. while we hiked along, my mom and i bought these "egg popsicles". haha! i had never seen these before. at first when my mom said, "let's buy some egg popsicles!" i thought she meant that they were egg-flavored popsicles, which i thought was really gross... but it turns out they were just shaped like eggs :).



here's a picture of jimmy pang with momma and poppa pang at the park:


I kind of wish now that I had taken more pictures... these ones are from like two days ago... I will take more photos and write more posts in the next couple days. but i have to say that all in all, taipei so far has been Very Good! :D.