Taiwan Day 1 - The Food Orgy Begins
Full picture set of the day here: Flickr set or slideshow.
Day 1 begins where day 0 ends, which is some point in time when I decide that it happens. Normally a day ends when you go to bed, and the next day begins when you wake up. Without that nightly sleep, there really is no solid ending & beginning. So our first day in Taiwan began when we saw the MIL, FIL, and BIL waiting to pick us up. We piled our stuff into 2 cars and were off.
I always love the first drive out of the airport. Not because the scenery is so amazing, but because the scenery is just so different. You look out and see rice paddies and small cars & trucks. The signs, cars, landscape, buildings - all different. Certainly not in the proverbial Kansas anymore. This isn't anything amazing but shows you a difernt view from outside the window:
The first order of business is breakfast, and we stop to get a rice ball which is more of a rice "stick" than ball. It's sticky rice wrapped around shredded & dried pork, veggies and maybe something else depending on who makes it. We also get a few other things plus fresh soymilk. I love the soymilk here and end up drinking it almost every day we're here.
Back to Calvin's apartment to eat breakfast and shower. Also checked to make sure I could connect to work, and I was able to. That's my redundancy only, since we don't really want to spend 6 weeks there. But I needed to make sure I could get a connection since the whole trip is sort of predicated onmy being able to do some work while we're there. Julia also landed a late Christmas present which she tore into:
Then we piled into the car and headed down to Luodong, which is where the apartment is. We took some day bags in the car and my bike in the trunk. The rest of the luggage was in Calvin's car and was coming down later. The drive from Taipei to Luodong takes about 1:15 and cuts through the mountains on a relatively new freeway which makes the drive much faster than it was 5 years ago. This is where you really know you're somewhere else. I always love this drive with the roads winding through the steep hills then occasionally boring straight into them. Also dig the temples just plopped randomly along the way.
This one shows what I've referred to before. The terraced hillside is used for growing something or other. Land is at a premium here:
Back to the apartment and I put the bike together in less than 10 minutes with the multitool. Unfortunately I left all my bike clothes back in the luggage in Taipei. Not a big deal as it will be hard enough to stay awake through this dinner tonight. So, I'm happy that I was able to get the bike together and more or less ready to roll. Tomorrow I can give it a shot for real.
Lunch is on the later side, which suits me fine as we've been more or less eating since we left the house on Wednesday night. We had liver and noodles with intestine. That stuff is really good:
Unfortunately I wasn't able to connect to work at the apartment. There are a few different options to try still but the primary line doesn't work. It's a wire, not wireless, but I can't even get an IP address when I plug in. Something's rotten with this one. It's an ADSL modem from the stone age, which may have something to do with it. I have 3 days to figure it out.
Like many of you, Julia does not eat intestine and liver, so we went to McDonalds:
Then we walked around town a bit, got some coffee, played at the park with some local drunks, and picked up a few things we needed for the apartment. At 5:00 we went to dinner for my MIL's birthday. I guess it was our NYE dinner also, but that was somewhat of a back-burner thing given that we all just wanted to go to bed. The meal was a super high-end Japanese place, and it was really excellent. Julia was pretty much shot though, and it was all we could do to keep her from falling asleep during the meal. Nat looked cooked as well.
Back at the apartment and we get our sleep clothes together and hit the sack. But first I break out a few of Julia's stuffed animals that I had packed and surprise her with them. The big one was the 2 foot tall smurf which she's totally stoked about. Still tired, she's full of smiles when we go to bed. The day was pretty tiring but the pre-jetlag efort worked, and we stay up past 8:00 with little issue.
Day 1 begins where day 0 ends, which is some point in time when I decide that it happens. Normally a day ends when you go to bed, and the next day begins when you wake up. Without that nightly sleep, there really is no solid ending & beginning. So our first day in Taiwan began when we saw the MIL, FIL, and BIL waiting to pick us up. We piled our stuff into 2 cars and were off.
I always love the first drive out of the airport. Not because the scenery is so amazing, but because the scenery is just so different. You look out and see rice paddies and small cars & trucks. The signs, cars, landscape, buildings - all different. Certainly not in the proverbial Kansas anymore. This isn't anything amazing but shows you a difernt view from outside the window:
The first order of business is breakfast, and we stop to get a rice ball which is more of a rice "stick" than ball. It's sticky rice wrapped around shredded & dried pork, veggies and maybe something else depending on who makes it. We also get a few other things plus fresh soymilk. I love the soymilk here and end up drinking it almost every day we're here.
Back to Calvin's apartment to eat breakfast and shower. Also checked to make sure I could connect to work, and I was able to. That's my redundancy only, since we don't really want to spend 6 weeks there. But I needed to make sure I could get a connection since the whole trip is sort of predicated onmy being able to do some work while we're there. Julia also landed a late Christmas present which she tore into:
Then we piled into the car and headed down to Luodong, which is where the apartment is. We took some day bags in the car and my bike in the trunk. The rest of the luggage was in Calvin's car and was coming down later. The drive from Taipei to Luodong takes about 1:15 and cuts through the mountains on a relatively new freeway which makes the drive much faster than it was 5 years ago. This is where you really know you're somewhere else. I always love this drive with the roads winding through the steep hills then occasionally boring straight into them. Also dig the temples just plopped randomly along the way.
This one shows what I've referred to before. The terraced hillside is used for growing something or other. Land is at a premium here:
Back to the apartment and I put the bike together in less than 10 minutes with the multitool. Unfortunately I left all my bike clothes back in the luggage in Taipei. Not a big deal as it will be hard enough to stay awake through this dinner tonight. So, I'm happy that I was able to get the bike together and more or less ready to roll. Tomorrow I can give it a shot for real.
Lunch is on the later side, which suits me fine as we've been more or less eating since we left the house on Wednesday night. We had liver and noodles with intestine. That stuff is really good:
Unfortunately I wasn't able to connect to work at the apartment. There are a few different options to try still but the primary line doesn't work. It's a wire, not wireless, but I can't even get an IP address when I plug in. Something's rotten with this one. It's an ADSL modem from the stone age, which may have something to do with it. I have 3 days to figure it out.
Like many of you, Julia does not eat intestine and liver, so we went to McDonalds:
Then we walked around town a bit, got some coffee, played at the park with some local drunks, and picked up a few things we needed for the apartment. At 5:00 we went to dinner for my MIL's birthday. I guess it was our NYE dinner also, but that was somewhat of a back-burner thing given that we all just wanted to go to bed. The meal was a super high-end Japanese place, and it was really excellent. Julia was pretty much shot though, and it was all we could do to keep her from falling asleep during the meal. Nat looked cooked as well.
Back at the apartment and we get our sleep clothes together and hit the sack. But first I break out a few of Julia's stuffed animals that I had packed and surprise her with them. The big one was the 2 foot tall smurf which she's totally stoked about. Still tired, she's full of smiles when we go to bed. The day was pretty tiring but the pre-jetlag efort worked, and we stay up past 8:00 with little issue.
Labels: taiwan
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home