If You Have Heatstroke, Start Laughing

I had a hard time sleeping in this morning, because I slept so much yesterday. How sad is that? I woke up at 6:30, because I had been sleeping for so long that I was no longer tired. But this did give me more than enough time to go downstairs and buy some breakfast. The lady at the baozi place asked me where I was from this morning. We are slowly becoming friends, I can feel it. Just in time, because I am actually starting to get sick of those baozi for breakfast. It's kind of hard to eat the same thing every morning, and that much fried stuff that early in the morning is just not too good for my stomach.

I got to go pick up my textbooks and my class schedule this morning. I was actually super excited. As soon as I realized that both of my textbooks were in traditional characters, I realized that I was in deep shit. To be perfectly honest. My placement test was in simplified characters, so I was pretty sure I tested into a high class, but I am a baby when it comes to traditional characters. When I asked them if I could have the textbooks in simplified characters, they informed me that one of the textbooks only came in traditional characters, but the other one was in simplified. So I am going to have in traditional, one in simplified. That way, I can learn traditional characters, and still pass my class at the same time. Ingenius, I think. The one in traditional characters is actually a collection of newspaper articles, so that should be fun. NOT.

Then it was a quick trip back to my room to drop my books off, and call one of my friends. So worth it. :)

Around lunch time, I met up with one of my friends Jan to have lunch at our favorite bao place. It is actually pretty good food. We ate pretty quickly, because we were supposed to be meeting people at the subway stop so we could go on a trip, but we didn't know if the meeting time was 1:10 or 1:30. We were fairly sure where we were supposed to be meeting though. That at least was a bonus.

It turns out we were supposed to be there at 1:10, so it's good that we got there early. We met the teacher, and then the other students started arriving. Of course, we all started doing the awkward "What's your name? Where are you from? What is your Chinese like?" The painful first meeting of college students. Something I wish I could skip, but what are you going to do. There were about 35 of us once we had all congregated. And as soon as we all got there, the army of foreigners moved into the subway. We all got on the same train, and our stop was about half an hour away. I felt so conspicuous moving around with so many foreigners.

We were on our way to Danshui, which is a small seaside town outside of Taipei. It used to be the hub for colonization in Taipei. The castle where they had their base was where we were headed. It was about a 20 minute walk from the subway station, and it was hot as hell. We walked along the seaside for a little while, passing all sorts of little cafe's that looked so very tempting. I really wanted to stop, but the teacher was moving very forcefully forward, so there was no stopping. The water looked super sketchy. Little things were moving around in it, and the beach looked like if you walked on it, you would get something infectious. And deadly. Not all that appetizing.

Once we got to the castle thing, we found a tour guide that spoke English almost like he was a native speaker. It was amazing. It was definitely fun to walk around in. We saw all of the cells where prisoners used to be kept. And then we were taken into the back, where all of the customs agents used to live. And that was where the world changed. There were brides EVERYWHERE. Yep, you read right. Brides. As in, people who were about to get married. They were dressed in all different colors, and posed in all sorts of cheesy poses. And even though it was about a zillion and half degrees, none of them looked hot. And they had an army of photographers (plus a van) with all of their hair and dress products. It was actually kind of amazing.

It wasn't long after this that I decided I had had enough. So I staged a coup. Me and some other people told the teacher we were going to leave (they were headed off to a temple, so she wasn't all that happy) and we left. She told us to be careful. And then we took off back down the river, trying desperately to get some of the fictional cool breeze coming off the stagnant river.

Jan and I made one impulse buy. I bought a rice pickers hat. As Jan said, I look like Saigon Betty when I wear it.



Of course, I can't wear it anywhere without looking like a complete toolbag, but I had to have one. This was also the moment that we managed to alienate two girls from New York City, who had been coming with us to ditch the tour. I think they thought we were insane for buying them.

After a quick stop at the Starbucks to get some food (all of the street food looked little too sketchy to eat at) we decided to take the subway back to Taida. Originally, we were going to go to the gym, but all of us were starting to feel slightly loopy, and more than slightly hungry, so food it was. We settled on a fairly respectable looking hot pot place right around the corner from our dorm, and settled in for some serious eating.

The fact that no one was there on a Thursday night should have been our first clue that this was not a respectable joint. The second clue was definitely the fact that it took half and hour and three waiters to get our water to boil. We were all so hungry and tired at this point that we were literally staring at the pot with blank stares on our faces, not saying a word, just willing the pot to boil. As soon as we saw a bubble, we got so excited that we dumped three plates full of meat into the water. And then watched that as it took 20 minutes to boil. It was absolutely hysterical how hysterical we were getting by the fact that we were surrounded by food we couldn't eat.

Once the water did FINALLY start boiling, our dining experience did not improve. The meat was freezer burned and bland, and the spicy part of the soup was not particularly spicy. All of us were thinking it, but none of us were saying it: this food was terrible. That is about the time that the laughing fits started. And lasted for the next hour. We would all pick food up, look at each other, and just dissolve into fits of laughter. I myself was crying. It was so funny.

Eventually, Bo and I had enough of the terrible food, and decided to try our hand at the all you can eat ice cream. Jan was still plugging away at all of the meat and veggies. He's a trooper. Unfortunately, the ice cream was more ice than cream. How can you screw up packaged ice cream? This place could. This too was just over the top hysterical, and set us off once again. Really, we were acting like a bunch of teenage girls. And it was awesome. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. So much better than therapy.

As soon as we decided that our stomachs just couldn't take anymore bad food, we cut our loses and left. Except that the waiter tried to overcharge us by 300 kuai. Foreigner tax, right? Not this time, bud.

It was pretty clear to all of us that we had some sort of heat stroke, that had gone straight to our heads. I'm not surprised, actually, it was so hot, and I didn't drink nearly enough water. No wonder we were laughing so hard. And so, at the end of the night, we were heat stroke-d, filled with bad food, and exhausted from the long trip in the heat. What more could you want from Taipei?