5/10/14
I did a double take this morning when I first woke up and checked my phone for the time. 6am?! How did I manage to wake up so (unusually) early? The sun had already risen though and the sky was clear at the horizon, so I was able to see the mountains bordering the city that were normally shrouded in smog.
The mountains aren't visible in the morning landscape photo from the "Sushi and Market" post.
At around 8, my uncle took my mom, grandparents, and I out for breakfast. We had a typical Taiwanese breakfast: Chinese fried donut (油條), meat buns, and soy milk (豆浆). The soy milk had the option of being either sweet or salty. The sweet kind was the common, plain soy milk, while the salty kind was also a little spicy, with chunks of Chinese donut and clouds of curdled soy milk (tofu) in it.
Chinese fried donut (油條) is salty, not sweet!
Meat buns.
Your average, plain, hot soymilk.
Salty soymilk (鹹豆漿) is more like a soup.
Afterwards, my grandparents went back to their apartment, while my mom and I went up to the rooftop. While my mom exercised, I walked around the rooftop garden, taking photos of the flowers growing there.
Tuntex Sky Tower (the tallest building) and ships on the horizon.
While taking photos, a pigeon landed nearby and started walking around the place. At the pools of water, it expertly hopped from stepping stone to stepping stone without even opening its wings, which I found pretty cute!
Pigeon in mid-hop.
I also remembered that three years ago, my sister and I had spotted a huge snail too. I looked around for its giant shell and found it near the windows, though I don't think there was anything inside... :(
After lunch, my grandma, mom, and I decided to walk to the department store about a ten-minute walk away. We wanted to travel lightly because it was super hot outside, so my mom decided to leave her bag at home and presumably put her wallet in mine. While there, my mom decided to make a purchase however, I reached into my bag....and couldn't find her wallet. At first, we panicked, retracing our steps, even asking a saleslady to send a message through the department store intercom for the missing wallet. My mom eventually started thinking that she may have just left the wallet at home with her bag, so we returned to the apartment.
Indeed, the wallet was in her bag, so we picked it up and walked straight back to the department store. Along the way, we passed under large, mossy trees that provided shade from the hot sun, and also two shrines. Although my mom thought the shrines weren't that interesting, having lived around them for years, I thought they looked pretty cool...
A shaded path.
The interior of the shrine.
On our way back, night had fallen. The shrine's lanterns were all lit, and the signs blazed with LED lights.
Near the trees, a cat brushed past us in the dark.
I'm amazed the camera was able to capture it in the darkness, thanks to super high ISO!
We finally made it back to the aunt and uncles', and sure enough, they had brought another late-night snack of barbeque skewers! :)
Skewered tofu, chicken wings, and not really sure what the last stuff is...
That's it for now, until tomorrow...
