the offWhites

At least I assume it’s coming up. I can’t see it, but outside is becoming brighter. I know this because I can’t sleep. The time change is a real bugger, apparently. I’m generally a solid eight-hour-plus sleeper, but I went to bed sometime between 9:30 and 10 last night, and I’ve been awake since 4:15, just lying in bed hoping to catch a few more winks.

We have one full day of training under our belts though. Yay! We mostly did get-to-know-each-other type things after our tour of the city, as well as something akin to dim sum for lunch. I found out a few minutes ago that one of the things I ate was blood. I didn’t like it when I didn’t know what it was. Several things were very good, though, and whatever the frozen fruit was that we had for dessert, I hope it’s a very common thing.

At the end of the day we were on our own for dinner. Since we only know four food words* we thought we’d look for a place with both pictures and prices easily visible. The couple of places we found like that didn’t look like anything we wanted, but eventually a woman approached us and apparently could tell we were very confused. She asked us “noodle or rice?” We’d decided by then we just wanted noodles. Then she tried to ask about fish, and things got confusing, until she pulled her son out from behind her. He looked about eight or ten, and he translated for us, pointing to a crowded shop very nearby and saying “Noodles here. You can see what you want to eat.” Indeed, we could see, as they had samples of everything sitting out, but it all looked a bit more oceanic than we were interested in at that moment, so we decided since noodles were the order of the day, we might as well hit one of the countless 7-11 shops here and get a cup of ramen and some coke.

*Mien=noodles, the other three words I think I can pronounce, but definitely can’t spell. They’re the Mandarin for rice, fruits, and vegetables.

In Taiwan, I don’t know if all ramen is like what I had last night, but it was a tad different than what I’m accustomed to stateside. The two differences were: the vegetables and beef were in the flavor pack, and there was one extra packet. Neither of these changes were bad-I think I maybe prefer the sealed veggies and meat-but the extra packet was…unusual. I thought it was duck sauce. It looked like duck sauce, except a bit oily. I tried to smell it, but the noodles overpowered it. I squeezed it into my noodles, stirred it in, and licked off what had spilled on my fingers. It was grease. Just grease. Like left over when you cook beef. It made the noodles more robust, no doubt, but I’m not sure I’ll do it again.