Monday February 4th, 2013
First off I’ll give you a quick run down of today. Host
father and I took host grandmother to the doctor for medicine, then the three
of us took a 50-minute bus ride to a Chinese market, ate lunch, took the bus
home, I had a 3-4 hour nap, dinner and various work stuff on laptop. And yes
I’m still sick, which is probably why I felt tired enough for that ridiculously
long nap. But with that summary I shall now enlarge the Chinese market point to
a greater degree of detail.
This market was predominately for buying things in
preparation for the coming Chinese New Year, basically food stuffs. Pictures
will have to do most of the talking. So, here we go!
BRIGHTNESS! Decorations available for purchase are hanging,
all of course in the lucky color of red. Then there were boxes and boxes of
various candies just like these throughout the entire market. All very
colorful, huh?
This lady gave out samples for some sort of drink.
Apparently one was called “Dragon’s Eye” and was very sweet. Quite delectable!
One of the many samples you can taste in this market. The tasty sample led my
host father to purchasing two bags of the stuff. Yummy!
Beautiful…absolutely beautiful! Egg tart pyramid of
deliciousness! And a concealed pineapple cake pyramid in the back as well! Yet
another stand we purchased goods from. These egg tarts were quite good,
probably one of the best I’ve had in Taiwan so far. The ones I’ve had in Texas
still take the gold though. :P
At first I thought these were dried tomatoes but no
ho-ho-ho! They are dried persimmons. A taste of the sample given by a lady and
two were bought because they were very delicious. Mmm-mmm!
These little balls are quite interesting. They are called
‘ma lao’ and are basically made from rice. Each color is a different flavor,
from sesame seed to strawberry to wasabi. I’ve never seen anything like them
before today so this concept is new to me.
Some weird hybrid between fruit and nut, these are called
dragon’s eyes. You crack open the shell to gnaw on a seed that is coated with
fruit almost like a raisin. You don’t eat the seed though so you essentially
suck the fruit off. Not bad but it’s a little too hard for me to eat from my
lack of skills. XD
‘Xiao mi su’ are what these little
doo-hickeys are called. It’s basically hard flavored rice in a bar. These came
from Japan apparently and had flavors like taro, wasabi, potato and such. Also
a new food for me.
The market was filled with new
sights and smells for me, all intriguing in their own way. The sellers would
swarm at the sight of a new customer. Those of whom knew English would use as
much as they could to get a sale. The girl selling ma lao was quite good in
marketing her product in English. When I complimented her in Chinese over this
fact she made such a cute noise as a reaction. ^_^
One purchase we made was at a
dried fruit stand. I remember once having dried banana and a couple other
fruits in America and disliking it hence why I never bothered to associate
myself with the stuff except for raisins. Yet when I tried various samples of
dried fruit at this market, I’ve come to find I quite enjoy it! It is so good!
We filled a bag with numerous types of dried food from small tomatoes, carrots,
bananas, apples(love!), pineapple and one called jackfruit. I’ve never heard of
jackfruit before but I sure like it dried! :D
As a whole the market trip was
really fun and eye opening. I would love to try all the different and new foods
available there. All were fascinating!
For lunch we stopped at a little
local restaurant. Host father ordered several dishes and we shared between the
three of us. Don’t worry we had separate bowls to eat from. I’m still sick so
it’s a requirement more so than usual.
A sour soup with vegetables and
pig’s blood included. It was a little too sour for me but still good to try.
This was a roll with beef, onion
and a cucumber inside. Nummy.
A millet soup. It looks creamy but
it was actually more grainy. You can add sugar in it to make it sweet if so
desired though I kept mine plain.
A dish of thick sliced noodles
with veggies and meat. Good stuff.
Not much else happened today
considering most of the remaining time was spent unconscious on the bus and
back at home. So I bid y’all farewell! Byes!
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