22 October 2010

First Typhoon Day!

I've been an absolute heathen about posting - but with good reason! I started training at my job yesterday and am hopefully going to sign a lease tonight, weather permitting.

That being said, I was a little horrified when I got the text message today "don't come in, the school is closed because of the typhoon". What? Really? But when it comes down to it, it's just the Taiwanese version of a snow day. So after a somewhat embarrassing trip to the 7-11 to stock up on pot noodles and chocolate; I'm ready to blog, read the news, and watch movies all day. I have to say, I'm looking forward to it.
[Edit: I ended up doing the pre-move-in Ikea trip today, it turns out that all the stores are open and shopping is how most people pass the time if it's not too bad out]

A note on culture shock, I've become completely addicted to iced tea in all of its miraculous forms.

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It comes with everything here and there are about half a dozen tea stands per block. This picture shows a buffet lunch with free iced black tea (which is "red tea" in Mandarin). Ordering tea here is an art form:

First, you decide what kind of tea you want: black tea, green tea, and occasionally fruit tea. Then there are many, many flavours. Favourite black teas include: special pudding tea and black milk tea. Often black teas have tapioca, "bubble tea" to us North Americans. Green teas often come with amazing fresh fruit juice, at present my two favourites are passion fruit and grapefruit.

Now, even getting to this preliminary step can still be a challenge. It often involves taking out things people have written down for me in my phrase book and attempting different gestures to describe that I want tapioca.

Thankfully, the next two steps are easier because once you know what they mean, they can be done with pointing at the menu. They let you decide the level of sugar you want: supersaturated, normal, low, or none. Now, for fruit teas it's my personal taste to go for low sugar or no sugar, because they're usually sweet already. But for black teas, you're definitely going to want normal because low sugar is way too bitter for North American taste buds.

Then it's time to decide how much ice you want; I find though I'm often tempted to go for the low, normal levels keep me from slurping down these ridiculous concoctions too quickly.

Also, another note.

Adjusting to the humidity, I've attempted a few things:

The first, as shown in the picture, is trying out those buffets as a way to increase veggie intake. They're usually just lightly pan-friend. So what you see is pretty much what you get. (Also, that brown oval? It's an egg that's been hard boiled in, yep, tea - they're aromatic and delicious. But you have to be careful, they sell them everywhere and sometimes they've been sitting out for a long time and have gotten a rubbery skin on the outside. It's best to go either right at the beginning or right at the end of a meal time when they've just been changed) I was also trying not to drink too much tea, because it really was getting excessive. But I then found myself ridiculously lethargic. I was all grumpy and headachey and it was hard to haul my butt up stairs.

But I had some instant coffee this morning - and I feel amazing! Staying over-caffeinated might be reasonable for the time being. It's at least more useful than what this guy has to say.

1 comment:

  1. Ah ha ha. Were you Googling how to adjust to a tropical climate? That's so interesting about how you order tea--seems like at least that way you get what you want, versus never really know how sweet something will be etc. etc.

    Hope the typhoons stay relatively calm for you.

    I'd like to try an egg cooked in tea. Sounds fascinating.

    xo

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