I can see he says what he means

Currently can't get enough of this.


Sent to me by a good friend with similar appreciation for these forms of cuteness.

Also... according to their Twitter account, the new The Weepies album is finished! I can't wait for more details!

Delicious food

"i love having delicious food within 50 feet at all times. i love taiwan."

A friend of mine posted this as his Facebook status today. He must be in Taiwan! Anyway, it happens to be pertinent to my post today, which is about... food! I had some exposure to Taiwanese food growing up with a best friend with a Taiwanese mom who happens to be an awesome cook, and I love it. We spent quite a bit of time hunting out the best/most popular restaurants and had a lot of fun doing it! This topic will probably span a couple of posts.

We ate at a restaurant called Modern Toilet. It's famous mostly for its novelty. The food is served in miniature toilets (both Western-style and squat/Chinese-style) and, yes, poop is pretty central to the theme, too.

This is a picture of the table next to ours.

This is a picture of the bathroom sink. Yes, sink.

Eifeh's food. There was a little poop-shaped lid covering one of her dishes that was removed for the picture. Also, there was a little fire inside the toilet that kept the food warm... and made the soup inside the toilet bubble.

I drank my orange calpis out of a urinal-shaped glass.

Our entrees all came with chocolate ice cream served in a squat toilet-shaped dish.

We ate a famous restaurant called Din Tai Fung. There are three locations in Hong Kong, Taipei, and Los Angeles. There was a pretty sizable crowd waiting outside, but we were told it's pretty much always like that.

Mmm... I love pickled cucumbers in chili oil. Ridiculously good.

Sauteed vegetables.

The regular dumplings they're famous for

Sweet buns filled with sesame. I keep those little dental picks/flossers in my purse for foods like this! Sesame seeds everywhere. But so worth it!

We also had some really awesome, cheap teppanyaki at a place really close to Eifeh's apartment. Can't find it for $3 in the states!

We had some ridiculously awesome Korean hot pot. We kept the spicy side full the whole time. They give you two hours to eat, and we used up every last minute! Amazing, amazing.

Dessert buffet at the hot pot restaurant! Miniature cakes, fresh guava, pineapple, and passion fruit, and MILK PUDDING. Love, love milk pudding. We also had ice cream (not pictured).

Lots of people look down on visiting American chain restaurants in foreign countries, but I go only for any unique desserts they may have. I'd been told that KFC had awesome egg tarts and they were so right. Amazing! Wish they had them here!

McDonald's in different countries/states always have interesting flavors of pies. We had some blueberry pies here that Eifeh and I had a lot when we were in Taiwan before. Also, I think they fry them there, as opposed to baking them. Thailand had pineapple pies. Hawaii had macapuno pies. You get the picture.

We went to eat sushi for Dan's birthday.

Stinky tofu. That's really how it's translated and commonly known in the states. It's fermented and you can smell it from a block away. Matt hated the smell and likened it to a "loaded baby's diaper." Dan responded that it tastes like it smells, but it's one of Eifeh's favorite foods. Definitely not a favorite of mine, though.

Tiger beer is so good! It's a Singaporian beer. We finished a second one after this.

Sashimi! The one on the right was my favorite, but I don't know what it was! Whatever it was: freakishly good. Mmm.

Clams cooked hot-pot style in a garlic soup.

Radish cakes! Yum yum.

I've always really liked Asian style cakes. They're much lighter and fluffier than most cakes we eat in the U.S. This was a white cake with strawberries, pictured with the most useless eating utensil any of us have ever seen.

Dark chocolate, orange, and mint Kit Kats!

Well, hello again!

It's been how long since my last post?!

Well, to catch you up, Taiwan was wonderful. Good food every single day, beautiful sights, and some of my favorite people in the world.

I took about 1,200 pictures, so I'm going to try to break up the pictures a bit. Here are just a few of the places we visited:

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial

Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world as of about three weeks ago. It still has the fastest elevator, though! It feels like you've gone up about 4 floors, rather than 91!

Views from the top of Taipei 101

Danshui and its night market. We went to a different night market almost every night!

We even saw a surprise solar eclipse at sunset!

We took a bus ride up into the mountains in Wulai and saw this waterfall.

Beautiful red lanterns lined streets with tons of little shops on either side and lots of good food.

Raohe St. Night Market

Shopping in Ximen

A beautiful Buddhist temple. The buildings are so ornate; it's remarkable!

Greetings from Taipei!

It's about 8:30am here (4:30pm at home; Taiwan is 16 hours ahead of California), and I'm currently in Eifeh and Dan's Taipei apartment. Eifeh and Dan left about an hour ago for class and Matt's still sleeping. We arrived here last night after a pretty good flight. I slept about half of the 13.5 hours, which isn't bad. During the flight, I also watched the movies All About Steve (eh) and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (pretty funny!) and the TV shows 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother, which I already like.

After arriving in Eifeh and Dan's neighborhood, we grabbed a quick bite in town from the local stands and had some of my favorite Taiwanese dishes, a steamed pork bun/dumpling-like dish, green onion pancake with egg and kimchi, and some warm milk tea with boba. I love Taiwanese food and don't get to eat it much in the states. It's kind of hard to find, and a lot of it is quite different from other Asian cuisines. Although, the first time Matt had Taiwanese food, he thought it was Chinese. I didn't take pictures last night, but don't worry, I'll be on top of my picture duties from here on out.

Last night, among a whole slew of other things I had packed for Eifeh (a whole suitcase full of packages and other things I had been sent with!), Eifeh and I exchanged some things we'd bought for each other that never got mailed. I was greeted with some pretty awesome goodies!

• California Roll-flavored Ruffles chips. They have all sorts of interesting-flavored chips here, and Eifeh saw this one and thought I would like it. They also have beef, chicken, etc.
• A cute 2010 planner. Eifeh understands the value of a good, well-organized planner, and this one's really cute. Last time we were here, we spent a lot of time at the stationery shops, oohing and aahing over all the cute paper, pens, and other office supplies.
• An "Elmo Loves You" Sesame Street mug. It references one of our oldest inside jokes. She's Elmo.
• Hazelnut M&Ms. Another of Asia's unique flavored snacks; I think she got this one in Korea, though, but the packaging is in Russian. They also have orange-flavored chocolate M&Ms here! Dan says they're pretty good.
• Mini camera tripod. This one is super-exciting! It has bendable legs and is really sturdy, so I'm sure I'll get a lot of use out of it!

She also got me a pretty scarf that isn't pictured, but I'm sure I'll wear at some point during the trip, since it's pretty chilly here right now, in the 50s and 60s (it was so nice in California, mid-70s and sunny!). I'm so excited to be here, though. I'm doing two of the things I love and treasure most in life, traveling and being with a few of my absolute favorite people ever. I'll make sure to take lots of pictures, and I'll try to post again soon!

123,456

Check it. I stopped my car about three blocks from my house to take this picture, because I knew I wouldn't quite make it home at this mileage (it was 123,457 when I got home). That's a lot of miles, guys! Please, car gods, help my car to last another three good years, so I can afford to buy myself a killer new one when this one dies. I'll tell you, though, this car has been solid. My Camry has been GOOD to me! Couldn't have asked for better!

Enough about cars, though. Today is dedicated to running errands, cleaning, and packing. I already took care of all my bills, etc. I just need to stay productive! We can do this! Readyyyyy... break!

Asian travels

One of my best friends, Jessica, just uploaded some old pictures onto Facebook from our trip to Thailand in 2006, and it brought back so many awesome memories. I've loved all of my travels, but Thailand was definitely still one of my best trips ever. In this picture, we were dancing to Thai pop music, hairbrushes and everything, and I believe Jessica's cousin and our other traveling companion were in the room, too.

Thailand was wonderful for us. Good (and inexpensive!) food, friendly people, adventure, and lots of ancient culture (and for me, mosquitos, too--I got hit the worst of all of us). Hopefully, Jess and I can go back one day and have it be as incredible as it was for us the first time. I feel like we spent the entire trip laughing. So much fun!

I don't think I mentioned it on here at all yet, but I've got another Asian adventure coming up soon! One of my other best friends, Eifeh, is spending a year in Taiwan. She double-majored in history and Chinese and studied abroad in Taiwan a couple of years ago, and Matt and I will be spending two weeks there with Eifeh and her boyfriend, Dan! Huge, huge thanks to Matt for making this trip possible for me, because my budget really could not have handled it otherwise. I have a seriously amazing boyfriend.

Spammy

Just received this!

Subject: I hate to do this and email everyone

[insert name] here from [insert teacher's name]' Comm 411 class. This is a bit embarrassing but i was chatting to someone up in the comm Department about the GRE and i am totally spacing on your name. it was at the end of the semester and you were dropping off thank you notes to your Profs. It's kinda hard with so many people in the class to narrow it down. Whatever. You know who you are. Send me an email or something.
To everyone else, sorry to fill up your inbox.

It was me!