Friday Heat

Today we slept in after a late night at the Shilin Market and cool down. We walked over to the Eslite Bookstore, a 5 story mega store with everything you can imagine in the way of books- including books in a variety of languages and a cafe. I bought a Night Market Snacks cookbook written in Mandarin and also English, but I'll need some time for experimentation. Can anyone get aluminum powder that's edible? What about gelatinous beef or chunks of porgy? Anyway, the food looks good and we've sampled lots of it already in the markets.

Ben's coffeeshop is a short distance away, but 31 degrees C is close to 90 and we were really sweating by the time we got there. We had smoothy/shakes that really hit the spot. Ben had blueberry/yogurt, Paul had Oreo and I had honey/yogurt. We relaxed and read a little and absorbed some yuppie ambiance before hitting the wall of heat outside.

We went to meet Ben's class before they left for the weekend. They were really cute and Lance, the sub, survived the two whole weeks. The kids asked a few questions to practice their English. They go to Honor Roll English School after attending regular school all day. Ben work on grammar and conversation. Apparently there are lots of English teaching jobs for young Americans (not old) but not too many other jobs for them.

In the evening, we went to a great dinner place as the guests of Ray and Amy, with their sons Tristan and Lucas. Ben tutors Tristan, the genius. Dinner was on a table with a "lazy susan" spinning center. I can't even name all the dishes that were offered, but they included plum juice and Oolong tea, rice, chicken based soup, chicken, eggplant, an egg/veggie dish to roll into a crepe, pork intestines stuffed with a veggie filling, rice rolls filled with chunks of chicken. Everyone helps themselves and turns the table so everyone can reach.

Afterwards, walking home, we stopped at Hunny Honey for ice cream- Yotse (orange peel), chocolate and Ben had something good that we couldn't name.

Paul and I stopped at the Night Market where I bought a 190NTD dress and some ear clips for the Pilon kids. We starting to get to know the neighborhood as you can see from the pics.