This still won't tell you much

Just returned from a day of scooting...first to Taichung (pronounced Tie-(as in neck) -Jung (sort of rhymes with "young")) where I had four hours of going over curriculum for my potential classes. Overall interesting, although I probably could have learned it in half the time it took us to plod through. I'm sure they are used to training larger groups, but with the two of us there, it seemed a little unnecessary. For Kelly: all children in Taiwan learn KK, which is very similar to phonetics. I will probably be teaching this. I have training/observations all of next week and I start a bit of teaching on Wednesday. I have to work a bit on Saturday which was unexpected (training technically starts a week from Monday, but they found out I was coming early so there goes the week of adjustment and grad school apps.) Next weekend Josh and I are going to Taipei and then he comes back here while I stay there until Thursday for training.

Then we drove back here, tried to find a mattress pad that was within my budget (Taiwanese beds are boards), and of course ended up wandering around this huge department. We tried a couple of different edibles...the girl cut us off a piece of some candies--dried fruit of some sort with some sugary something...very tart-ish. It looks like owl pellets. We had noticed them in 7-11 yesterday, and were still curious. Didn't taste as I would assume owl pellets would, but it was still..."interesting." Josh tried some beef-looking jerky which was supposedly a little bit "la" (fourth tone)and ended up in slightly redder faced Josh so of course we all laughed.

Then to dinner at a teppanyaki place where they cook the food right in front of you. The food was excellent, and aside from the soup there was no trace of fish. This is a welcome change from eating food wrapped in seaweed for the last two days. Ooo! We also tried dragon fruit and pomelo this morning in my first kitchen creation. Dragon fruit is white, firm yet quite watery, and has little black edible seeds. The Pomelo tastes a bit like a grapefruit. I don't think I would eat either alone, but I hear dragon fruit is excellent in smoothies. I might try to freeze a bit of it to use instead of ice.

We were going to go out with some friends but we missed the text message so now we are home and I am just fine with that. It's not even ten but I am sure I will be asleep quite shortly.

Fake apologies for the mundane update; at some point I'll write about what it is like to dodge in and out of traffic on the back of a scooter and maybe even about the ever-frequent breakdowns of exhaustion. Let's just say Josh is a very patient man.

Love to all