Adventures with Taxis, KTV, Night Market, and Ghost Month

Whew, what a title! Time marches on...
Last week I had my first (real) KTV experience (karaoke). I thought I would be more fun and sing and really get into it like I did in my Oak Cottage days (Julie remembers) but actually I didn't want to sing at all! Your group rents a KTV room with a big screen and a Karaoke machine and you punch in your songs, and they have English songs that are mostly oldies and 70's songs, and then they have these really tacky background videos that play during the songs as it highlights the words for you on the screen. Mostly the videos are of pretty 80's women in funky clothes wandering aimlessly (but beautifully lost-looking) through forests or along roads or beaches or something. That part is pretty entertaining. It's kind of loud though, and the microphone kind of makes your voice echo and bounce around the room and I wasn't so excited about that part. But it was a new experience and therefore fun. And it's funny to watch other people belt out songs like "Yellow Submarine" and "Funkytown".
This month is Ghost Month here in Taiwan, and I don't know all the reasons for Ghost Month but I do know it involves housholds and businesses burning a LOT MORE paper money in barrels and at temples than usual. Paper money, I don't know the reason for that either, but they offer it to their..ancestors maybe? by burning it at temples. Anyway, our apartment building had their paper money burning day on Sunday and a big tent was set up in our courtyard where the tenants could go burn incense, and two big barrels were set up outside our back fence by the 7-11 where they could burn paper money. I made the big mistake of taking out the trash that afternoon and the trash recycle bins are right next to where they had the burn barrells with the paper money and I ended up with paper money ash all over me. It was yucky. The air has been more smoggy than usual because of all the paper money burning but we've had some nice rains thankfully that washed most of it away. Yuk.
So the other day my scooter wouldn't start (it's temperamental and sometimes the humidity or if I run it too hard the day before then it decides to not start to get me back, and I don't know how to kick start it yet, apparently there's always a way to kick start your scooter when it decides to not start the Real Way but I can't do it yet) so I was running late so I took a taxi (there is a stand right around our corner, yay for Convinience!) and it's cheap to take one here (about $3 USD to get to my school) so I took one. When I got in the cab and told the driver where to go (in Chinese even!) we started off, then he turned to me and said "JESUS-UH!" (again, there's the "uh" at the end of all English words) and I was like "OH! I KNOW JESUS!" but he didn't really speak English, he could just say "Jesus-uh good!" and pointed to a cross hanging from his rearview mirror where the trinkets and temple baubles usually hang. So I thumbs upped him and wished desperately in my head that I could speak Chinese. It was a fun interaction for the day though.
Speaking of learning Chinese, I finally found a Chinese tutor! Two hours every Friday morning. Not a lot of time, but better than nothing. I know about 50 Chinese words now, not including nubmers and how to count.
Oh and speaking of things around the corner from our house, there's a Jie Pie Guy! (I totally don't think I spelled jie pie right in PinYin but that's how I see it in my head) Jie Pie (prounounced jee-pye) is like little pieces of fried chicken goodness in a little paper bag and you spear them with really long toothpick Things to eat them. Usually you buy it from a night market stand, but there's a stand right by the taxi station next to our house! HURRAY! The Jie Pie Guy also sells sweet potato fries and they are SO GOOD! Such an exciting discovery.
Speaking of food, here are some new foods I have tried lately:
red bean tea - not so excited about that one.
stir fried cabbage (which normally I like) in a lunchbox, but with little freeze-dried (plumped up in the dish though) shrimpies, with their heads and tails and eyeballs and all still intact. It was really creepy. It's like..ooh my favorite cabbage..UGH what's this ugly Thing in it?!?! I didn't eat it.
mango shaved ice - SO GOOD! OH my goodness! shaved ice with milk, then topped with this sweetend mango mixture with huge chunks of mango all over. it was WONDERFUL!
sweet potato frieds of course, and jie pie
watermelon juice! a number one favorite now. they basically take chunks of watermelon (including the rind!) and grind them up in a blender, mixed with some milk, strain out the chunks and seeds, and that's it! it's SO GOOD!
Okay, speaking of food, I went to the night market again the other night and I don't think I've blogged about night markets yet. I love the night market. I'm going to try when I finish typing this blog to upload my night market pictures but I've been having SO MUCH trouble with my stupid camera and last time I tried it wouldn't work, so sorry if I post this without any pictures. The night market is mostly clothes and trinkety jewelry and various shiny baubles and fun Things, and food stalls! The best is the food, but also I like to go read the clothes. The sayings they put on clothes here are SO FUNNY to me. I really want to take pictures but I think it would be kind of rude. English is apparently cool on clothes so even if it doesn't make the slightest sense but has English letters, it goes. Most things are simple misspellings like "Carifornia" but somethings don't make ANY sense: " Good vibe go always in the neighborhood!" or some such strangeness. "Beauty is the world round goes". I mean you kind of know mostly what they are trying to say. I did see a shirt that had just letters all over it running together : alkdnlksndklnlin. Eh, what? Oh but this one was so cute: "Love is when you meet someone who's heart sings the same tune as yours" or something like that. Also reminds me that our DVD player on the blue screen says "DVD Playper". that's funny to me.
Okay, here is a list of things I'm glad I brought to Taiwan with me:
McCormick's original Chili mix (the small seasoning packets) I love Chili and I am almost out of the ones I brought with me so if some wonderful person wants to send me a care package full of these I would be So Happy!)
Jersey Knit Sheets - every night, so thankful I brought these!
Sunblock - they only sell teeny wheeny bottles here and it's all some kind of whitening formula. Yeah, if I used a whitening formula, I would go invisible.

That's it! Such a short list! Most everything else is readily available here for similar or less money than in the US. But there are a couple of things I would like to find that I don't even know if they have here: that Mahatma's yellow rice they sell in the US grocery stores in small skinny packages - I haven't seen yellow rice here at all and I love it (ooh that could also go in a care package along with the chili mix!) and Cover Girl makeup. :( Oh well!

Okay, well this turned into a monstrously long post, so I'll try to upload my pictures now and then go to bed. Wan an! (good night!)
well, i'm pretty sure my camera is permanently unfixably broken now and I'm sad because I had a couple of really good night market pictures on that stupid memory stick. *sigh* no more pictures for this blog for a while! :(