The past few weeks have been kinda crazy, so blogging unfortunately got put on the back burner.  But on the plus side, I have collected a few interesting pictures and even more sweet stories.   Since the last entry, I was introduced to the Chinese tea-drinking culture!  I was invited by a friend of a friend who lives in Kaohsiung to go with her family for a Sunday afternoon picnic on the lake.  First let me introduce Joy.  Joy is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met.  She just finished her graduate work at a university in Taipei and is at this moment in California at UC Irvine for her PhD in Theatre and Drama.  Her English is amazing and she has an adorable and rather high voice.  My voice would actually go up a few octaves when I would talk to her on the phone..which was consistently pointed out to me by my roommates.  So her mom, dad and I went up to a beautiful lake outside of the city.  

A view of Chengching Lake and the 9-Corner bridge that goes out over it.

Joy and her mom and Dad with the Grand Hotel in the background

We walked along the lake for a bit, before finding a scenically located pagoda for our picnic.  Basically the meal started and ended with tea.  The tea set consisted of a drinking cup, a smelling cup, and a small plate that both rested on.  The first batch of tea is always thrown away.  After that, the tea is poured first into the smelling cup.  You place the drinking cup (DC) upside-down on the smelling cup (SC), then quickly flip it over so that the contents are now in the DC and not the SC.  You then take the smelling cup, roll it between your hands, and inhale.  Drinking good tea is like drinking good wine. You have to appreciate the smell, the color, and then the taste.  This video shows Joy’s dad explaining the process even better than I possibly could.  Tea Tasting

After a very traditional Taiwanese Sunday picnic, her dad took us to get Taiwanese ice cream (they rarely ever let you say no, at least not easily, when it comes to food.  which has its ups (ice cream) and downs (cold sugar soup with gelatinous blobs and things that look like eyeballs…except we were assured it was vegetarian-safe and therefore could not be actual eyeballs)

Oh, and one final thought to bring this post to a satisfying end.  McDonald’s, as one might imagine, is relatively popular with the locals here.  So much so that there is a bench with a larger-than-life Ronald McDonald statue sitting on it located right outside our nearby Mickey D’s.  So one night the roomies and I are enjoying one of the few dependable and delicious delicacies of the country (caramel McFlurry) when we look out the window to see this:

your eyes do not deceive you. This girl is sitting (not simply posing) on Ronald's lap. While smoking a cigarette. and talking on a cell phone. love it.