Day Off Adventures

Today was the most exciting day off we've had so far. We started by going to the Childhood Steak House restaurant for lunch. One of the older boys, Eli (Wei Jye), works as a waiter there. He speaks pretty good English and is always jumping at the chance to practice, so when we walked in he got a huge grin on his face. We know how to say the word for chicken, pork, and fish, but didn't even have to use them becuase he came over and asked, "Steak, fish, or chick?" :) David, Rebecca's brother, got the steak and all of us girls ordered the chicken. We had no idea what else he would bring out. But it was pretty nice to just say chicken and then be greeted with a whole four course meal. First we had the "salad", which was more like a wrap with carrots, cabbage, tofu, cilantro, cucumbers, peanut powder, and some sort of meat. Next, was the main meat course, also served with a sunny side up egg, green leafy vegetable and noodles. Third, was a corn soup with a flaky crust over the top of it kind of like a chicken pot pie. The pastry part of it I really liked, but I wasn't too fond of the actual soup. Last, they brought us a type of cold pudding in milk and maybe an orange-ish flavor. Everything was very good. Another plus of eating at a restaurant in Taiwan is that they bring you tea for free!

After lunch, we set off to find the movie theater. We knew it was "near" where we ate, and had gotten verbal directions from Bev, but putting words to places in real life wasn't quite as easy as we'd thought it's be. After stopping at a vendor and then a 7-Eleven and then another 7-Eleven, getting directions at each one, we ended up on the complete opposite side of town. Apparently, three movie theaters were listed on our tickets and each place was taking us to a different one. A worker at the second 7-Eleven was nice enough to call a cab for us to take us where we needed to go. We were home free.....

Or so we thought. The taxi driver was very nice and dropped us off at the theater. We got out and looked around and all of us had an inkling that this might not be the right place. It was a movie theater, but a very shady looking one. A stand out front of a building was set up and three movie posters were hung behind it. The movie we were going to see was not among them. The rest of the building almost looked like a storage unit. All the men at the stand had disgustingly red mouths and a mouth full of rotten teeth from chewing beetle-nut, a type of nut filled with something that gives you a buzz. I asked them where a telephone was a one of them lead us to it. We called the Home to speak to get Show Hwa to speak to someone there to figure out where we needed to be. Turns out the place wasn't a sketchy as it looked and it was one of the movie theaters listed on our ticket (three in all), but not the one we wanted to go to. So we hopped into another taxi....

The second taxi took us right where we needed to be, to the movie theater back very close to the restaurant.  We realized that when we were walking to find the theater in the first place, we had just turned one street to early, and if we would have listened to the first vendor we stopped at for directions we probably would have found our way. I personally didn't mind getting lost. It was a gorgeous day outside (sunshine with no humidity), definitely gave us some adventure, and we made it to our destination just as the movie was beginning!

The movie we saw was Unstoppable and was a really exciting thriller. I'd recommend it, but beware you might not want to ride on a train ever again.


Other highlights of the day:
-Successfully asking "Where is the bathroom?" and "Telephone?" in Chinese
-Getting bings in the market after the movie. This time I tried a milk shaved ice with strawberry sauce. Rebecca got a strawberry shaved ice with mulberries, David a strawberry with chocolate sauce, and Jennifer and Gabrielle mango shaved ice. Next time I want to try a peanut shaved ice with chocolate sauce! And maybe then I'll be brave enough to try a taro root shaved ice...we"ll have to see about that one. I wouldn't want to waste a perfectly good and rare occasion to get a bing.
-Getting to hug Caleb when I got back to the Home