Afternoon T-Storms

Greetings from the motherland. Yep, I'm here in Taiwan!

It has been one crazy day so far. I've been up for the past 19 hours in the hot humid weather. I'm going to start from the plane ride.


this is what they served us on the plane for the first meal. it was some sort of chicken over pasta with tomato sauce.


2nd meal on the plane. chicken fried rice for breakfast.


the airport at Taipei, Taiwan. It looked dingy and old.



this is the building where my Aunt and cousins live. It was built 29 years ago.

first thing my family took me to do was to get Taiwanese breakfast!! :)


this is the place they brought me to. it was right around the corner from their house.


some of the pastries they had.


this lady is making fresh sao beng. so yummy!


this is what we got. sao beng, yo tiao, fan twan bao dan beng, and do jiang


this is the fan twan bao dan beng. they say it's new. it was realy good. better than the stuff they have at home.


they even have fresh steamed shao long bao. the steamer was weird because built into the tabletop was the steamer, so that's why you see all that steam coming out of the table.


the street market in the alleyway. this one is a butcher.


after breakfast, we went to take the subway or metro all the way across town.


here is the entrance where you scan your card to gain admission to the metro. it reminded me a lot of europe. very convenient.


we had to stop here to buy tickets to take the "gondola" I'm pretty sure this isn't disney endosed...


here's the ticket to ride the gondola. they call it a gondola, but it really is one of those hanging cable cars... like those ones they have at santa cruz beach boardwalk.


we got some fresh squeezed bamboo cane juice.


my aunt who took me around.


these are the cable cars we took up. it went up really high.


from the cable car we got a nice view of the 101 building, which is currently the tallest in the world.


we went up really high. really high...


here's a map of the place we went to.


and of course, taiwanese shaved ice. it was necessary. it was SO HOT!


so the place we went to is famous for their tea. here's an old lady in action picking those tea leaves.


this is a taro root plant. the taro root is underwater, hence the "root"


some temple in the mountains.


i took this picture because as I was walking down the mountain road, i thought.. this would be so perfect to go biking on.


we stopped by one of those tea houses. i think it is family owned. they grow and pick their own tea.


they had one of those old old rain coats


they gave us a tea sampling.


we got to try 4 different kinds of tea. it was really really fresh.


tea


the toilet is in the ground. first time ive seen that.


after climbing the mountain, we stopped to get dim sum.


it was so sunny earlier, but quickly the clouds came in and the rain came down hard!


we stopped by building 101. I couldn't even get a good shot because I was too close. It's called 101 beacuse it has 101 floors. We didn't get to go up this time because it was raining. maybe next time..


inside the building is a mall. fancy. just like america.



I don't know if you can tell, but i was trying to show you how hard it was pouring.

Yep, so we pretty much went home after we walked around two malls. so tired!!! I'm heading to bed now. Maybe more blogging tomorrow. It's 11:15 pm over here. I guess that's that...

Talk to the Tortellini

I got one of these meals from my coworker, who is actually leaving for Iraq again. He says that cheese tortellini is actually really good. I really want to crack it open and see what it looks like inside. I heard there is this heat source that cooks the food and you can actually make a bomb out of it. Maybe for a rainy day.

Long time no post

When you haven't blogged in awhile it is hard to start off. I don't know where to begin, but I guess I'll skip over the unimportant events (like my birthday), and get to the good stuff.

Cherry picking!!!!

How long has it been since I last went cherry picking? I used to go almost every season when I was little, but it has been over 10 years since I last went.


It is so hard to find things I used to do in my childhood down here in so cal. The nearest cherry farm I could find was in Leona Valley near the city of Palmdale. It wasn't that far, but still a drive.


the entrance to the cherry farm


the farmer told us the cherries near the ground are riper than the ones high up on the tree because the ground keeps a higher temperature which ripens the cherries faster


"these cherries are very profound"


tee hee


hmm... somehow picking cherries makes adrian more distinguished


deep in thought


this is adrian's cousin Josh and his fiancee Katie who were the ones that brough us cherry picking


yum






hmm, we found this shotgun shell in the cherry orchard... prowlers beware!


so the cherries we got were Brooks cherries which is a cross between a type of bing cherry and rainier cherries. they were super yummy! i haven't had cherries that fresh in a long while, but after a week of eating cherries everday you tend to get sick of them...

but they are still so yummy!