I wish I could say that I had an exciting day today. You probably won't think that it was very exciting, but it was exactly what I wanted to do. I got breakfast, and then hung around in my room for most of the morning, talking to people, and just thinking about my life. I took a quick nap, and talked to some people on Skype, before deciding it was finally time to go out and join society in some capacity. That is what normal people do, isn't it? So I went to a cafe. What else is there to do?
Once there, I discovered that I had an overwhelming desire for a cup of black tea with milk and sugar. Which I haven't had in DAYS, in case anybody was wondering. But there was only small problem: I have absolutely no clue how to say Earl Grey tea in Chinese, and I am discovering that it is not as easy as I thought it was going to be to read traditional characters. I tried to point at the tea that I wanted, but guess what I got instead? Green tea with rose infusion. Oh well. Can't win everything. Not nearly as good as my caffeinated earl grey, but what are you gonna do.
I had originally planned on doing some of my Hoffman stuff while at the coffee shop, but as soon as I got there, and saw how packed it was, there was no way that I was going to pull that stuff out. So I just played games on my iPad. Quite worth the time, if I do say so myself. I am far too embarassed to tell you what the game is.
Most of the past couple of days, I have felt kind of...not closed off, but maybe more cautious than I felt like I was at Hoffman. I felt like all of my walls fell down when I was there and now I am trying so hard not to let them come up. But it's so hard, because obviously, the real world is not like our world at Hoffman was. And it is hard to stay as open and trusting when the rest of the world is not like that. Am I supposed to just keep myself out there? I will, but I just don't want to shut down again. How are you supposed to reconcile something like that? It's scary to have your world completely shaken up, and feel completely different from what you are used to. Fantastic, and so exciting and empowering, but scary at the same time.
But back to my day in Taiwan. I did dinner with friends again at 7. This is a pattern now, I do believe. We decided to go to a hot pot place. This is what hot pot looks like:
It was amazing. We had to wait for 50 minutes before we could eat in the restaurant, so we hit up Club 7 (where else) had a couple of beers, and then went to the restaurant. It was a BYOB restaurant, so we sent out a scout to go back to Club 7 to bring back provisions. But this place was some of the best food ever. Once we did sit down, we discovered that for $20, it was all you can eat meat and veggies and ice cream. And boy did we make the most of it. We had a completely absurd amount of food. We just kept telling the waitress to bring us more beef and pork and chicken. It was actually embarrassing how much we ate. A couple of times there were some small kids that walked by and stared at us, or waved, and of course we waved back. It was just an hour and a half of solid fun and discussion. By the end of it, I think it is safe to say that we were all in a food coma. It took us a couple of minutes to get up the courage to walk out the door.
We sneaked past a book shop quickly right after dinner, just to walk off the dinner, and then called it a night. Most of us are still jet lagged, 10 PM is late for us. I haven't eaten that much since I have been in Taiwan. I thought that the humidity had robbed me of my appetite, but apparently if I want it badly enough, I can get it back. How's that for free will?
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