Night market Yilan

Yilan country, 19.8. 2012

Finally time for the night market :)
It's typically a food market, but if you're like me, you find clothes and jewlery as well :)

The plan was to try as much food as possible but it was quite difficult since there were tons of people waiting in line at every food stand and it sometimes took 10 minutes to get a bite.
I found my favourite tea up to now, made out of white gourd and lemon :)

mmmm, food :)

making Runbing (潤餅 Spring Rolls)

Sophie and Paul happy with the food

herb jelly in large amounts

gambeling on the street

one of the waiting lines

desert time :)

tapioka with red beans inside - here called large pearls

desert - pankakes with ice-cream and peanuts (this big chunk of food are peanuts)

Clogs, cold spring and prayer :)

Hualien, 18.8. 2012

I live for weekends, since I have to be at the pediatric department from 8 am to 5 pm. Last weekend we headed up to Suao (see the map).

First I was told we were going to climb a mountain. Well it was a hill and we were hardly climbing, the walk took us 10 minutes :) And I brought my hiking shoes!!! On top of the hill were canons in memory of a war between China and France. The view of the Suao harbour was very nice.

They took me to see the clogs museum (seriously :D ?), but the museum reached it's maximum capacity...
So we went to see a local temple in a fishermans village and than had a typical sea food lunch.

Don't ask me to name these things, all I know is that it was good :p

The temple was very interesting, I got my fortune told by choosing a wooden stick with a number and than getting a paper with ancient chinese letters on it. My mission then was to find someone who can read that. When I finally did, the suprisingly young man told me that it sais that I am up to my knees in shit and should really take time and think about my problem and than start solving it. I am still trying to figure out what problem that would be, no luck up to now :D

Here is where you take the stick :)

The locals told me that you can buy fake money at the temple and throw it into the incinerator. The smoke is supposed to go right to your loved ones in the sky :). You can also light some incense or give the gods food or flowers.

                       

                       

                                                                                pretending to pray much? :)

fake money and flowers

Burning of the fake money :)

After driving with the scooter the whole day we went to a cold spring. Sounds interesting, so what is it?
Well it's a river bank :) Looks like this:)

 

The water was pearsing cold, so not very enjoyable for me...

We had a private pool :)

Angela trying to find courage to dive in :)

And for the end some pictures of Suao...

Mr. Goose and pee

16.8. 2012

Before coming here, I wasn't eating meat for a few months. Not getting into the details, I was only eating fish. But here... well impossible. So I have a challenge: try as much food as possible. The challenge of my roommate is on the other hand learn one chinese sentence per day.
My part of the challenge is doing great. Not only for the traditional part, but I also try one of their snacks every day. Till now on the snack and drinks part I've tried dried mango, aloe vera jelly with different flavours, seaweed and sushi flawoured chips...
One night we went out to get dinner once again in a tradicional restaurant. They like to name restaurants miss and mr, so this one was mr. goose. They obviously specialize in goose :D

The outdoor kitchen...

Eva was suddenly not that hungry anymore :) So the guys ordered goose soup with noodles and various parts of the goose - next to the chest also liver and heart and the always present rice with blood, only this time it was goose not pigs. I was challenged to try the blood, which I declined since I tried it before (not bad, but still not that great that I would want to eat it all the time) and some eggs a awful brown color. Steven being him self, would not tell me what the deal was until I tried. So I did together with some tofu. After that I was told that the egg was fermented in urea, commonly known as pee :)

The story goes, that a farmer dropped an egg into horse pee, but had no other food so ate it anyway. He discovered, that it was acctually good and started to make this dish tradicionally. Since they don't have that much horse pee anymore, they use urea. I than told Steven we use urea in face creams and we realized that most of the things they eat, we put on the skin :)

Tofu with egg in pee :)

There was also bamboo as a kind of side dish, but it was the least tasty thing I tried up to now.
Have to try it again somewhere elso, hope I change my mind.

bamboo

goose

rice with goose blood

After the dinner there was some shoping to be done. We were interested what the prices were like. The lesson we girls got was that all the dresses look very short on us... :) Damn the small asian girls. So no girly dresses for me :)

Natural catastrophies, pets and superstition...

Hualien, 15.8. 2012

Up to now, I have only experienced one earthquake in my life. It was this year, when it woke me up in the middle of the night. At first I was really mad, cause I thought it was my boyfriend playing a prank on me and moving the bed in the middle of the night... :)

Here, I've felt 2 earthquakes in the first 3 days, there were more at night though. So I better get used to it. And the instructions you learn in school about hidding under the bed and things like that. Puf, in panic gone just like that. As that wasn't enough for my poor heart, a rummor started spreading in the hospital that a typhoon is coming at the end of the week. So I started investigating and asking the locals how to prepare and what it was like. The 1st grade students said that a typhoon is usually a good thing because it means no class... Not helping at all...


Then I was told to get prepared, buy food for a couple of days and that there is usually no electricity at that time. You get locked in the dorm, since it's raining like crazy and the wind is very strong and dangerous.
After consulting with my roommate, we descided that the best idea is to hide out at the hospital, since they probably have a generator, a food store and cafeteria inside. Thankfully, the typhoon descided to got otherwhere...

But nature here offers more :) Like the lovely pet we got when we moved in the doorm. Yes, you guessed it... it's the cockroach family. At first they were hidding from me, only showing themselves to Eva. When I went into the kitcen to get water from the filtering machine,because you can't drink it out of the tap, there they were. 2 big ones and a bunch of little baby cockroaches. Fast too. An hour later, when I went to wash my clothes, there they were again, this time in the hall. And they say we're happy to be in the 4th floor since there are less of them here than on any other floor (the floor of Death).
I have declared war so they better not try to enter my room in the next month, because I'm fully prepared :)

I'm told the first floor has another animal to offer. It's the lovely and elegant cobra. They fear people but get lost sometimes and end up in the first floor. Wasn't at all happy to hear that...

I feel very special to be living on the 4th floor. Most of the buildings here leave the 4th floor out, like my hospital, as you can see on the picture below. Also the patient files are never marked with a number 4.
The numer 4 in chinese is pronounced very simular to the word death, so they avoid using it in public buildings out of superstition. But not our dorm, so I not only live on the Death floor, but also in room 414, which we now call The death room. Well at least it will be for the cockroaches if they descide to try to enter...

Hm... where is 4F?

The hygiene here is not exactly on a very high level. Most kids are not encouraged to wash their teeth and so they end up in the hospital... really people, you don't want to see that, so brush and brush again...

It's not much better in the internal departement. Many people have salmonela and HIV tests are common.
The hardest thing for me to get used to is not flushing toilet paper but putting it in waste basket. Hate that...

14.8. 2012, Hualien

Fooooooood...

Up to now, some things might have looked unusual to me, but awarything tasted great, good or at least ok.

Some of you may know I'm very into colors, so the pictures at the end are from a food store where I had a fotoshooting with all the different food :) 

This was our first meal together, the so called Hot pot experience :) Mmmmm...

With it, I had my very fist try of the water lily, which I looove...

On the second picture, we had noodles with different kinds of meat inside, the side dishes are sea wead and hard tofu (it's a translation the guys gave me :) ).

Eva is smelling the desert :) The liquid white part is made out a kind of beans and her darker part is a bean called The white dutch running bean :D Laught over that for hours - it tastes like sweet corn. The other desert is mine and it has the same liquid part and the upper part is herb jelly. And the picture under is the preparation :)

Here they are - the best part of Taiwan :) So melon, mango, dragon fruit, durian, papaja and guava :)

Delicious all the way, though some don't like the dragon one and I was told not to try durian...

The second part of food coming very soon ;)

13.8. 2012, stil Hualien :p

Finally it was time to go to hospital :)
Yes, this is why I'm here, to see if asian babies are any different :p
I was handed a white coat, so I had doctor status... not really an honor in Taiwan I was told. The rate of lawsuits agains doctors is higher than in the USA...
Then there were problems with the lenght of Eva's pants, my toes are not supposed to bo showing and they wear polo shirt (????). But then at the depatment - no they don't care, so in your face admitions office :)

No, that is not a swastica... look it up!!!

I was taken to the nonatal care, but only got a glampse (sooooo cuteee) before they moved me to general pediatrics, where I met the head of the department. I was told my nose is nice (finally some recognition :p) because it's pointy and narrow :D

I'll let you in on a little secret - they have no idea what to do with me :) So again I just smile and wave and do what ever. In the morning I tag along at their rounds and get some translation on what's happening sometimes. Then I check what they were talking about in the patient log. One part of it is sometimes in English :p Then we have a seminar every day that the students prepare - it' s in English just for moi... After that I walk around and entertain the kids, that find me very weird :) And then I sneak out a little early for lunch and come back a little later than the other students. At the last part I go on rounds again and then pretend to study the neurology textbook until it's time to go.
Can't tell you what I've seen... signed some papers on that matter :)
What I can tell you - the view from the window is very nice :)

The best thing in this hospital is the tons of volunteers, mostly women from all over Taiwan that come to live at the center for a while. A couple of days ago we were at the office just as one group was leaving and the other arrived and they had this nice ceremony. Buddhists, gotta love them :)

The building I work at is called :

I managed to find the library also and used sign language to get the textbook that makes me seem busy when I have nothing to do but smile at the patients. You know, just going with the Patch Adams aproach towards healing :)

Ah yes, I almost forgot this hude neighbour of the hospital:

 The Hall of Still Thoughts. The Tzu Chi 

And tomorrow... food :)