taoyuan day 1

we made it to taiwan! last night we took a bus from the airport and walked by the dorm, used the computer in the coffee shop and got in touch with bobo who came to pick us up. we're staying at her house for this week. (she was my chinese teacher in taiwan). jaime was awake but doing homework and was a liiittle shy at first but warmed up quickly. of course, she loves guillermo. so does joyce. they have trouble remembering/saying his name though. last night guillermo stayed in as we had a pretty long day of traveling and bobo and i went to this bar downtown called genesis and met up with a bunch of the other foreign teachers. my friend steve was there. he's a lot of fun. and i met this guy john from canada who's a professor at a university in guei shan. he's been here 2 months so we had the typical 2 months in taiwan conversation. i told him about all of the food he needs to try and that he needs to get a scooter ASAP, etc.

then today we kind of did the grand tour of my favorite people in taoyuan. we saw the kuo's this afternoon and hung out for several hours where they literally stuffed us full of all the food we could handle. bobo's family came with us to eat lunch which was really cool for me. they had never met before so they both had lots to say. at first the kuo's had kind of forgotten some english so they translated a lot through bobo. mrs. chan made my favorite beef with peppers and onions.

bobo's family left after a bit and guillermo and i stayed for a few more hours. they cut up guava and honeydew melon and dragonfruit and grapes and we ate and ate until we couldn't fit any more. mr. kuo gave us these cool things made of paper that his mom made. some teapots and baskets and cups. hard to explain, but i'll send pictures when i get home. anyway it was really a whole lot of fun to see them. i'm going there again on tuesday.

mr. kuo dropped us off at the coffee shop and we went through the fruit market. the fruit ladies remembered me! it was really funny. i said 'long time no see!' and they said we thought you went home and i said yes but i'm back in taiwan visiting for a week. this woman was standing beside me buying fruit and the older fruit lady explained that i used to be a teacher at gloria and i bought all my fruit there. it was really sweet. i was glad they knew me. thennn we went to to tina coffee and the older woman there remembered me too. she had the same questions.

then we went to the coffee shop for a little while to have some cheesecake. tonight we watched a movie with bobo's family and then we just went to tapenyaki which is one of my favs. guillermo loved it.. he wants to go back before we leave.

so overall today was just really nice :) everything you could hope for. and no rain. apparently they've had rain all week which would be inconvenient for us since we're on foot. taipei tomorrow! hitting the highlights