To recap on Mike’s stinky tofu story, you guys didn’t get to hear my whole experience of the stench filled soup. So I heard about this stinky tofu before on one of those traveling channels so I definitely wanted to try it while we were here. I really didn’t think we jump right into on our second day of being here though. So Patty asked if we wanted to try it and we said sure. When you first walk in the restaurant it’s like getting punched in the nose by poop. The restaurants here are different from the ones back home, most of them except the really fancy ones are always open without any doors which I actually like a lot. But we were very good, we didn’t make any faces and we were very polite. So they bring this big boiling bowl of what looks like soup with noodles and some pieces of tofu and they gave us two individual bowls. Now I don’t know if it was that I didn’t eat all day but it really wasn’t that bad…that is the tofu. I was being safe and just eating the noodles and the tofu. So I’m gonna say I was on my third bowl of stinky when I started noticing other “things” in the soup. I started asking Patty what they were. First thing I pointed to, “Oh that’s a meatball,” says Patty and Mike ate that one right away, which later I told him was literally probably the pigs meaty ball. The next thing I point to was like a round, I really can’t even explain it and as she was trying to explain it to me I guess Mike had it in is mouth. Well it was a pig intestine. So then I felt bad for Mike and he said it wasn’t that bad so I tried one. He was a lot nicer than me, it was disgusting!! I wanted to spit it out so bad but I didn’t want to be disrespectful so I swallowed it. It was so chewy and it is not tender at all as Mike described, it was like chewing on a… well probably an intestine. Ugh I’m getting sick thinking about it right now. I wanted to get that taste out of my mouth so I continued eating the stinky. Well then to my surprise I saw a big blob of something grayish in the soup hiding underneath the noodles. Curiously I asked what it was. Patty wanted me to eat it before she told me and thank god I didn’t. She started to explain and said it was pig braud. I couldn’t think of what she was saying. I thought it was like a pigs heart or lung or god knows what. So then she started pointing to her veins and Mike was like oh it’s pigs BLOOD. They take the pigs blood and freeze it and then somehow it stays together when they cook it in the soup. I started to think that it was thawing out in the soup and I had just took down three bowls of the stinky soaking in pigs blood. You could pretty much say I was over it and wanted something safe so I got a bowl of rice. You think that would have stopped Mike also but he just kept at it, eating the stinky. After we were done eating we still had to continue apartment shopping which we had been doing all day so about an hour after eating my stomach was not right, I don’t know if it was in my head or I really felt sick but something definitely was not right. What was really cool about that night was that we were on the oldest streets in Danshui and we got to experience the night market on that street which is one of the famous ones in Taiwan. It was really fun to walk up and down the market and see all of the things they sell.
We are getting a lot better with trying to order food and communicating with the natives. Everyone is really helpful and patient with us. Mike and I actually found this cool little restaurant right by our apartment, the food is really good. I am starting to feel a lot more comfortable walking around and interacting with them.



Yesterday we spent the day in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. It is host to Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building (to date), which was our destination. Throughout the voyage downtown we were trying to contact a friend we made here at the airport.
Andy is a Taiwan-born USC student from California. We were sitting in front of him on the plane ride over but didn’t meet him until we were exiting the plane. He told us he would be over here for a year studying the language through a church program. We told him we were here on vacation for a couple months. We felt bad for lying to him but because our recruiter scared us to death about getting through customs and immigration, we felt we should keep our true identities under radar.
We were supposed to call Andy as soon as we got to Taipei 101 so he could show us around. Trying to reach Andy without our own phones was a bit of a challenge. After trying numerous payphones which kept returning our money before we even dialed or only accepted cards, and borrowing a local teenagers cell phone (in trade for our signatures proving that he’d spoken with foreigners for a class project) we were finally able to reach our friend’s voicemail. After leaving a message for him meet us at Taipei 101, we made our way to the towering structure. Okay I have to intervene, this is Erin, we made our way to the towering structure? I would never say that, what is he writing a book? It was really funny walking around Taipei because we get stared at a lot, especially by little kids
Surrounded by a high-class 5 level shopping mall, Taipei 101 is an enormous masterpiece combining modern engineering technology and ancient Chinese art (I totally paraphrased something I read). But it really is an awesome sight to see. The pictures we took definitely do not do it justice, but we tried. The stores are amazing, anything you could ever think of is in this building. I wanted to shop so bad!!
After visiting a Dolce and Gabana store, only to be laughed at by the employees when we walked out (it’s pathetic even the people from Taiwan know we don’t have any style), we decided to skip the rest of the ritzy stores and make our way toward the elevator which took us to the 89th floor viewing deck. 30 seconds later we are there. 89 stories above the earth, we were looking down at hundreds of taxis, scooters and high-rise apartment buildings. It is so amazing to be up there, there are people from all over the world walking around in awe. The building is built in the middle of an earthquake zone so it has this thing called a damper; it is the worlds largest and heaviest wind damper to date weighing 660 metric tons. It basically absorbs the wind and in the case of an earthquake it will shift the weight of the building so it will not tumble to the ground. It might not sound cool but it is amazing to be able to see it.
That night Andy took us to another Taiwan landmark, the Shaing Hi Shek Memorial. This is a memorial for the guy who basically started democracy in Taiwan, he’s pretty much a big deal. So of course this place was beautiful. The main building is pretty much exactly what you picture when you think of Chinese architecture. The pictures aren’t that great because we took them at night. We will post more when we go back during the day sometime.