for the price of a cup of tea

i'm going to try to list everything we've done in the last 3 days, but i'm not going to remember everything. it was a whirlwind. it felt like 2 weeks.

thursday-
set off at 10am for the bus to the HSR (high speed rail) station
got a ticket for noon on the HSR to tainan
bobo picked us up and we went straight to lunch at a busy noodle place
we met her sister, yaya, and her son, kenny. he was super cute. he had a wall-e doll that folded up into a box and he kept making me help him stuff it in there. he was pretty shy.
checked out a few temples downtown right after that.
bobo showed us how to pray and then throw these moon shaped wooden blocks. if one lands up and one down, you pick a wooden stick out of a bin and then take a piece of paper with the corresponding number out of this big chest of drawers. thenn you take it to this man in the temple who deciphers it with a special book. he told me i'd meet the right person and have babies and not to worry about it.
anyway later we walked around and had delicious green tea at a fancy tea house
then we headed to a japanese restaurant where they ordered a million things and we just sampled a little bit of everything, including octopus balls and eel (which, as it turns out, i've been eating for quite a while, but i thought it was fish)
then we went to her mom's house to have a sip of wine and mingle
then we went to a night market and wandered around in a haze of exhaustion.
click here to see alex's album of photos for thursday (you can click on the picture itself to scroll to the next one)

friday-
4 course breakfast at 9am.. i was admiring the water pitchers in the restaurant and bobo asked where they bought them, they said a store down the street. so 20 minutes later, one of the servers tells bobo that they called the place and it wasn't open, so they would sell me two of theirs for $150 each even though they were originally $350 in the store. that is classically taiwanese. they go so far out of their way for you. the bottles themselves really pretty. i'll take a picture when i get a new camera cord somewhere.

anyway then they dropped us off and we walked all over the city
alex must have taken us to see 10 temples all over the place
and we saw some art galleries and the literary museum
in the afternoon, we took the train to kaoshiung to meet bobo's inlaws
we had hot pot at their house in the evening and then went on a boat ride on the love river
thenn we went to the night market
both nights, as soon as i hit the pillow, i was asleep. we were so exhausted.
click here for pictures from friday

saturday-
they let us sleep until 10 which was nice/badly needed.
went to get breakfast and coffee in the morning before we went to a lake.
the lake was really big and cool. there were a couple of temples around it and these giant sculptures of a lion and a dragon and you walked inside their mouths and through them. it was interesting.
we ran into alex guppy and his friend jasmine at the lake. what are the odds? same time, same place. they didn't even know we were in kaoshiung, because our plan was to stay in tainan.
after that, we went to a pretty good mexican restaurant to appease jerry, who was bummed that we didn't go to monkey mountain.
thenn we took a magical bus home. you could recline almost all the way, had your own TV, the chair had a built in massage thing, and they gave you a quilt to keep warm. it was amazing. best 6 hours i've spent in taiwan. ;)

so it was a busy 3 days. bobo's family was so accomodating and nice to us. and we got to spend some quality time with jaime and joyce. when they picked us up at the train station, they ran up to me screaming megan!!!! and almost knocked me over with their hugs. i hadn't seen them since before i went home. they're a lot of fun. crazy and full of energy, but sweet and cuddly and fun.
there are 2 josh's and 2 megan's, so one is fat fat josh, one is fat leg josh. they call meghan frisch 'other megan' and i'm 'princess megan'. hilarious.

time for bed! i am so tired.