My Day In Taichung

Today I went to Taichung with two of my Taiwanese friends. Originally, we were going to go to a jazz festival but ended up doing other things instead. We spent most of the day shopping and hanging out with their aunt in her shop. Here is a play by play of my day.

We started by taking the train at 11am from Changhua to Taichung. It's a pretty quick ride by train, about 15 minutes. After that, we got lunch at McDonalds. I had fries and iced coffee (lunch of champions). It was perfect.

Outside the train station

After eating lunch, we took a bus to a shopping area in the city. There were SO many people, so many places to shop, and the biggest mall I've ever seen. The mall (they call the whole mall department store) was three buildings that were connected, went 3 floors below the ground, and at least 14 stories above ground. It was insane and expensive. So we went to the cheaper places. It was basically a bunch of alleys jam packed with people and shops or stalls. Lots of clothes, phone cases, purses, and food. It was impossible to walk around without running in to someone. It is a popular place for young people to hang out and shop because everything is so cheap. It was fun though. The stores had interesting names like "Merry Jane", "Pancake", and "Animal Girl". Here are some pictures from that excursion:

At the department stores

People sell things anywhere they can

The floor of a shop

Super cool sign

The ugliest shirt in Taiwan

During this shopping trip, we got something called "special green tea". It was really good but really weird at the same time. It was iced green tea with this white foam on top. The foam was sweet but also salty and bad tasting at the same time. One sip it would be sugary, and the next it was bitter. It was very interesting. I asked my friend what the foam was, but she didn't know how to explain it in English. After we got our green tea, we got lost and we found this awesome, HUGE silver goat. I'm talking gigantic. It was so cool.

Special green tea

The silver goat (or ram maybe)

After that, we hung out in my friend's aunt's shop. It was a crowded clothing store, but it had some pretty cool things in there. Another family member insisted on taking us out to dinner, so we ate in the mall food court. I was giving a very interesting Taiwanese snack. It looks like soup. But it has peanuts in it. So it kind of tastes like peanut juice, if there was such a thing. In the peanut juice is chunks of processed soy beans (and it looks like fresh mozzarella). I was okay with the peanut juice, but the texture of that soy bean stuff was probably the worst thing ever. It was like, liquidy/mushy/melted in your mouth but also kind of chunky? I can't even put it into words. It was something different. For dinner, I ate fried rice that had beef, shrimp, chicken, AND tiny octopus tentacles in it. It was really, really good. I also had a side of seaweed soup and some unidentified veggies.

The Taiwanese snack

After eating, we went back to her aunt's shop and hung out for a long time. We drank tea and had a really good time. They didn't speak English so my friends at to keep translating everything. Here is the shop:

It was a really good day. I bought/given a lot of things but only spent about $30 US. Here are my purchases:

The coolest shoes ever

Headband

Black sweater and a $3 skull scarf

The aunt gave me this for free (and I bought the flower overalls at a very cheap price)

After a loooong day, we took a bus and then the train back home. It was a really fun day. It was cool to hang out with new friends, and to experience a different, bigger city. I will definitely be heading back there soon.