Fifth day of training

More than half way through! Awesome. We did our second assessed demo yesterday, 21st Feb, and I felt completely lost. I got through it alive though and we were let off early for a well deserved rest and a day off on Saturday.

The younger people in the group went off and had a bit of a party, but Renalda and I decided to rather take in another night market and some exotic food. We went south on the Zhonghe Orange line, and got off at the Yongan Market station, looking for the Yongan Market, but were disappointed to realise we were too early. But we did find a fruit shop who had the tiny citrus fruit I'd been looking for ever since my tangerine tea and the Chaing Kai Shek memorial! Yummy tea awaits!! 

We just walked around the vicinity and took in the sights, sounds and smells of the place. Something you hear at the traffic lights all over taipei and no doubt taiwan as a whole is what sounds like the start of a huge scooter race when the traffic lights turn green. Suddenly there is the loud buzzing of fifty scooters all racing hell-for-leather down the street and the crazy weaving of the jockeys jostling for first place. Very comical!

Something else I noticed was that the petrol stations are setup to serve scooters better. There are pumps that are in positions which a car could never get to, obviously a large proportion of their business comes from scooters.

We then got back on the MRT and headed for Nanshijiao station and to the Xingnan market, which we were sure would be happening at that time, we weren't disappointed! The smell of stinky tofu was in the air, we had arrived! We had gone out looking for duck, it wasn't something we had tried here yet. We found a place selling what looked like mildly smoked duck and asked for some. I also spotted some tripe. We also got some of that. Unfortunately the duck was not to either of our tastes, the first thing I can think of that we didn't want to finish. We also saw some intriguing tomato "toffee apples" which we tried, the sweet and sourness worked very well together, and the crunchiness of the sugar were all delightful. Toffee apples are definitely not my thing, but I might have one of these again in the future!

Toffee tomatoes!

We wandered around looking at the various clothing, food and trinket shops, nearly getting run over by insane scooter drivers on more than one occasion. Every now and then we were loudly invited into a shop to try this or that. We have a few extra things that will not fit into our bags on Thursday when we move to our branches so we had to buy an extra bag. We went into a store and "chatted" to a guy, who managed to convey to Renalda that his son had live in South Africa, NanFei, for a few years, where he learnt English. Very friendly people on the whole.

I have to have veggies with my meat so we went looking for a place selling a variety of deep fried veg, but Renalda wanted some chicken hearts and "pope's noses," who am I to argue with a woman who wants to eat more meat?! The couple selling the food seemed a little unfriendly but we thought nothing of it and were all smiles. When they were about to hand us our food we motioned to ask if we could take a picture of their stand, for which we got an emphatic "NO!" which we found a bit surprising. Perhaps they were having a bad day. 

We walked up and down some more until we found a shaved ice store!! It's ice cream, with a twist. They freeze a block of sugared water or coconut milk (we think), and then put it on what looks like a vertical lathe. They then use a blade to shave off the ice and put all sorts of sweet goodies with it. We had strawberries in syrup. Renalda had asked about the pineapple, but that was apparently not for the ice cream, so we couldn't get it on ours. However a few minutes later a little bowl arrived with some pineapple in syrup on the house! 

Renalda sampling some shaved ice, looking very pleased

It really was a mountain of numminess!!

I used my phone to translate "that was very good" as the sales people didn't speak any English. We then just came back to the hotel for a good night's rest, so that I don't have to wear the mask of shame next week ;) 

Mask of shame

Then last night I was awoken by the bed shaking back and forth and Renalda telling me nervously that it was an earthquake. It was indeed our first noticeable earthquake...and we are on the ninth floor. We have been assured that there is nothing to worry about, they don't even do drills with the kids here as the earthquakes just aren't that violent. Apparently Taiwan has about than 3000 earthquakes a year of which only a few hundred are noticeable. I guess if the tension is being relieved regularly the chances of a large earthquake are smaller.