Searching and Finding

Two of the guys I met last weekend at the camp took me to find the climbing wall today. I was looking forward to finding out which building, around Beitou, had a climbing wall secreted away inside. The correct answer was none of them. I hadn't been able to find the climbing wall because there was no climbing wall at the Beitou stop. Or at the New Beitou stop. The climbing wall was at a completely different metro stop, two or three stations closer to town. The climbing wall was at the 'Beitou Sports Center', which was where I made my first mistake. I thought since it was at the 'Beitou Sports Center', it must be in Beitou, but indeed not.

I think these guys just came to show me where the wall was. One didn't climb at all, and the other went up once and called it good. After we finished climbing they took me to another night market, the Shi Lin night market. It is a lot bigger than the Shi Da night market (the one close to my house), and there are many more options for food. We got an egg/seafood dish which was pretty good. Then a drink which had 'frog eggs' in it. They weren't real frog eggs, and they tasted kind of starchy, like they were made from some sort of flour. After we had gotten the 'frog egg' drink we were walking over to go look at the rest of the night market, when we passed a vendor selling candied fruits on a stick. Xiao Chen and Zhi Yuan insisted I try some so I bought one. I chose the one he said was similar to the apple, but I could have gotten tomatoe, strawberry, or a couple other unidentifables. There were four little 'apples' on the stick, and the whole thing had been dipped into some sort of red sugary dip. It had solidified so that it was kind of like a tootsie roll pop, except with four 'apples' at the center instead of a tootsie roll. I started to feel like a kid at a fair. I had a sweet drink in my left hand and a stick of candied fruit in my right hand. Furthermore, the dynamics of the fruit stick were such that, in order to eat any of the fruit I had to smear red syrup all over my face. Now not only were my hands full of candy, but my mouth and cheeks were smeared with red sugar. I think a good time was had by all.