Breakfast

I got ambitious and took a picture of my breakfast (choclate almond milk, bannanas, rice, tofu, and cinnamon.) I even tried to make a smiley face with the cinnamon, but I think it actually looks kind of scary. Oh Well.

After breakfast I went to Thai Boxing. Great as usual. After I got back, I showered quickly and wolfed down a PB&J sandwich, then headed off to meet the Taiwanese Wilderness Society guy at 1:00. I found the place ok, and ended up a couple of minutes early. A few minutes after one, the secretary came out, and said Mr. Xie was still on the road, so she sat down and talked to me. She asked a little about me, but we mostly talked about what the Taiwanese Wilderness Society does. I didn't understand it all, but inferring was easier than normal, because I think they do a lot of the same things that American NGOs do, like going into classrooms and giving talks on the environment, trying to conserve native species when people put in new roads, and working with existing land management to more effectively protect what is there already. After a while Mr. Xie got there.

When I was at Thai Boxing in the morning, I asked David (the instructor) about travelling to and in Thailand (he travels there frequently). So we talked about Thailand for a while, and he and another guy both said that Thai is a lot easier to pick up than Chinese. They also said that if the Thai complement you on your Thai language skills, it really is a complement. As opposed to in China and Taiwan, where if your Chinese is fluent the people don't complement you, but if your Chinese is bad their complements are profuse. After I had been talking with Mr. Xie for a while, he began to complement my Chinese, which was kind of disappointing because I thought we had been communicating pretty well (and I'm pretty sure David is right about the Chinese, I'll know my language is good when people stop complementing me.)

I took a nap in the afternoon. I didn't want to, but after I eat, I'm so comfortable, and I lack the movitation to get up off the couch. So I just move the other stuff off the couch, and lay down. The couch is terribly short, and I have to drap my legs around at different angles, but I'm so comfortable from eating that I doze right off.

In the evening I went out to dinner with Luke and his friend Levi. They showed up on Luke's moped, and I had to follow on my bike, so I just took it out into the street (fortunately there wasn't much traffic) and kept up as best I could. We made it to the Indian restaurant without event, and after parking moped and bike we walked over to the restaurant. There was a bit of a ruckus outside, with a huge pink truck advertising some sort of food, and a small crowd of people in pink shirts. Furthermore, there were two polices officers standing in the doorway. I was a little concerned about what was going on, but when we walked up one of the police officers grinned jovially, and beckoned us inside, so we took that as a good sign and went in. Apparently some of the people in pink shirts had broken something at the Indian restaurant, and somehow the police had gotten involved. The menu was printed in Chinese, but it also had Hindi words in roman script, which (for the most part) meant little more to me than the Chinese. We decided what we wanted to eat, but after waiting for a while they never came to take our order, so we left. We crossed through a night market, then headed to an Italian restaurant (I haven't eaten cheese in ages, so I thought this would be a good place to go). Tipping at a restaurant is not the norm here, and I think it makes a difference in the service. The Indian restaurant was slow, and at this Italian place we had about five different servers, and the woman who took our order just wrote it on the palm of her hand. The food was good though, and the conversation was interesting. Luke is concerned about his 'style' so he spent a lot of the time asking Levi about different articles of clothing, and how they matched together, where to buy what, what kind of fit you're looking for and all of the things related to style. I put in my two cents every so often, but mostly just listened and laughed.

After dinner Luke and I went to Oldie Goodie again. It was just as much fun as last week. We're starting to be regulars. We talked to one of the singers in the band for a while, and the bartender knew what drink I wanted when I came in. I didn't even have to order.