Bubble Tea Land

It is so hot and humid here (35 degrees celcius) and we are so stuffed with fried dumplings and steamed buns and rice noodles and dragonfruit, that I can hardly wiggle my fingers enough to blog, but our host family has the air conditioning cranked and are upstairs napping, so this might be my only opportunity to get online for a while.
Taiwan has been good to us, Mike's english-teaching cousin Dave rescued us at the airport and manouevered us and and our gear back to his apartment through the vibrating hive of scooters and watermelon carts and cheap clothing stands and garbage trucks playing a jingle through a loud speaker like an icecream truck (what a disappointment that was!) in this second most densely populated country in the world (after Bangladesh). It was great to stay with someone who could offer us a good chunk of insight into new dining and bathroom and footwear etiquette, as his students have been lucky enough to have held his attention focused here in Taipei for almost a year now and he's still going strong. He knew how to spiral us slowly into the excitement of this big Asian city to avoid the claustrophobic panic attacks of being mashed in together with thousands of other people pushing down narrow alleys throbbing with Chinglish t-shirts on hangers and carts steaming with bamboo leaf rice wraps and scooters whizzing (and squeezing through the crowd with a baby in the basket and a toddler standing between mom's knees) in every direction and skinned snakes dangling from the roof. Ok, we only saw a handful of those. But it has been a brilliant experience as we can always escape the heat of the day as even the buses are air conditioned, the crowds are still delighted and smiling to see the rarity of foreigners, Taiwan is one of the safest countries we have ever visited, there are frequent dragon and phoenix adorned Buddhist and Taoist temples sparkling in bright reds, greens, yellows and blues between the tall, narrow apartment buildings (and some Confucious temples), and we can sample the best food from all over Asia without fear of tummy bugs! My list of our culinary adventures this week, especially odd preparations of tofu and snacks of glistening fruits, is already three pages long.
We have being graciously hosted by two hospitality club families already, Yuying in Taipei, and Han and Ching and their daughter, Sky in Jhong-li. Yuying and her friend brought us hiking in the mists of the mountains surrouding the city where the temperature cooled to a more comfortable 26 degrees, where the cicada song was frighteningly loud, and photo opportunities abundant: so many huge butterflies and shimmering dragonflies darting through the bamboo forest, and turtles and frogs in the lotus ponds. And we would have been completely lost in the charging markets without an experienced guide; she had us sampling from almost every bin in the Chinese medicine and herb market, an outdoor Taiwanese opera wailing in the street behind us, most of the audience seated on their scooters. In Jhong-li, we piled into the van with the other 17 children that attend Han and Ching's summer school in the morning to go to the local waterpark/spa to get hammered by "massaging" waterfalls and jets targetting pressure points in the blue or orange pools of different temperatures and herbal concoctions, and then there were the saunas, as if we weren't sweating enough outside already. In the afternoon we joined them to drive into the country to an elementary school surrounded by rice fields, and were proclaimed captains of the competing soccer teams...we didn't offer very much skilled assistance though, but Mike walked away with a good few bruises from his goal-tending duties. The air quality in the cities here is quite poor, which was the motivation to get the kids into the countryside, but our game nearly got smoked out by the farmer next to the school burning off the rice stalks. Some of the kids were laying on the ground during half-time to get under the smoke, but at least it was better than the scooter fumes of the city!
Every meal is a delightful adventure here, as we never know what we are ordering (all the signs in Mandarin characters), but we haven't been disappointed yet. We avoid the animal part carts entirely, but sometimes we are surprised what forms the tofu and mushrooms and radishes can take when prepared skillfully. Today Ching introduced us to the morning market and the art of bargaining, not our strongest point. Many people excitedly take the opportuntity to practice their English, even the squid-monger, but Ching took care of most of the business, I carried the bags of lychees and noodles and papaya salad and new clothing purchases, and Mike was busy photographing the old men peering eagerly at him over carts of chicken feet, bowls of lotus seeds, and jars of crabs, and the bald, orange-robed Buddhist monks chanting along with the sacred music humming out of the ghetto blaster in their satchel. This evening they are taking us to Jhubei to stay with another HC host in her bookstore, and the further south we go, the hotter it is supposed to get!