January 16

Today I had my first lesson in Chinese. During the winter break, all of the ISU students are taking 3 hours of Chinese (and sometimes 6 hours) every day. We were taught the Chinese National Phonetic Alphabet or "bopomofo." Actually being able to pronounce many of the sounds used is coming only slowly. Maybe by the time I leave Taiwan I will be able to order a meal.

Today I was more adventurous and tried some different foods during a quick lunch in the school cafeteria. The cafeteria is buffet style and only costs me about $1.60 for a good meal, although with nothing to drink. The Taiwanese tend to use very watery soups as their drink. For lunch I tried a little bit of everything, including some kind of seaweed and octopus. The seaweed had a flavor that I did not like, while the octopus was surprisingly good (albiet rubbery) once you get past the tentacle look.

For dinner I went out with Paul and some friends and had "hot pot." Hot pot is basically a pot of boiling water that you chuck a bunch of different foods into. The pot contained lots of cabbage and rice noodles as well as other things that I wasn't sure of. The unfamiliar foods were thin stalked mushrooms with small caps, skin of tofu, and pig's blood cake. My Taiwanese friends made me try some of the pig's blood cake first thing. It wasn't too bad, but wasn't great. Everything else in the hot pot was very good, although I couldn't finish. This huge supper cost only about $3, food is very inexpensive here!

On the way home I stopped at a shop to buy sandals, handsoap, and some other random items. Some of the things were more money than I expected (the soap, paper) but not too bad. Without Wal-Mart I guess shops can charge more.