It being Friday, it was time to drum up some interest in happy hour at the expat bar by the lake. Lee sent out the email and we met up with a happy bunch of colleagues looking for a little relaxation after a busy week inspiring the youth of Taiwan. The wind was blowing off the water, the beer was chilly enough and the garlic fries were delicious. All in all, a lovely way to finish off week 3 in Kaohsiung.

Yesterday was an especially beautiful day - clear sky, tolerable humidity and temps in the 80's, so Lee and I ventured out after work for a fabulous bike ride on the path. Tomorrow we're hoping for more good weather while we explore Monkey Mountain. The monkeys are supposed to be quite bold and will unzip your backpack and steal your granola bars. As long as they don't steal our phones I should have some good photos to post tomorrow.

IKEA before:

and after:

We now have a place to put kitchen stuff. It's in the living room but the kitchen is too tiny and there is no storage space in there. It reminds me of our first apartment at Walker's in Dodge House. The kitchen there was too small for the fridge so it was in the living room. Now that space is the office for the Montessori school.

Anyway, in addition to putting together the dresser we also got a chair, an end table and a couple lamps. Now Lee can do his chillaxin' at home in a little more comfort.

Next step is to get some things up on the walls. Our wonderful friend Nicki sent us some stuff to help with the decorating so we'll be adding color to our lives in no time!

I was going to tell you all about our trip to IKEA but we went out to find dinner and found a better story instead. Since I know you all want to hear about our IKEA adventure I'll tell you about it tomorrow after we've assembled everything and taken pictures.

Here is our Tuesday night story: We had heard about Sushi, Sushi, a restaurant with a very good reputation that's in our neighborhood. However, when we arrived we found out we needed a reservation, which we didn't have. I have to admit, I'm a little stymied by the idea of making a reservation. I can't find the name of the restaurant online since I don't read Chinese and even if I could call I'm not likely to reach someone who speaks English. I guess they would just set aside a table for the Americans and figure it's unlikely that more than one set of Americans walks in. To give you an idea of how many non-Asians you're likely to see on a typical day, during our whole 4 hours at IKEA on Sunday we saw one family and one couple who were Caucasian. And the place was packed.

Anyway, no dinner at Sushi, Sushi so we walked down the street, turned the corner and came across a market full of stalls of fruit, vegetables, seafood and food.

This stall caught our fancy, just because they seemed to be open (we were there pretty early, by Taiwanese standards). There were no pictures to go by so we asked the gentleman behind the counter if he could speak English and he said yes, a little. His English was pretty good, actually. Enough to tell us they had pork, chicken, fish and rice with soup and spices. Sounded good to us!

Here he is with his mother making us our dinner. He came and sat down with us, inbetween customers, and chatted with us. He was surprised to hear we were living in Kaohsiung and was pleased that we were enjoying the city. Here are our dinners:

For Lee, spicy seafood stew with yellow rice.

For me yellow rice, crispy pork, sauteed greens, dried anchovies, taro and basil sauce.

It seems like every time we take a walk we find fabulous little places to eat and really wonderful people who want to share their little piece of the world with us. An excellent dinner all around.

Now that we've had our bikes for a week and we feel like old hands at navigating Kaohsiung traffic we took the leap and rode to work this morning. We left at 6:30 and arrived 20 minutes later but it was another half hour before I'd cooled off. I have to work on the logistics of this. There are a number of teachers who regularly commute on their bikes (although most use scooters) and they have lots of tips. But because there aren't shower facilities it's a little tricky. I cranked the AC in my classroom and sat still for awhile before I wiped down and changed clothes but I have to tweak the technique a bit.

Like any big city the air quality isn't great but so far it doesn't seem any worse than Boston or New York. I hear that it can be worse in the winter. At least it will have cooled off!

There's a trick to turning left in Taiwan that I'd like to try to explain. For scooters (and bikes), if you want to turn left you stay in the far right lane in the designated scooter box painted on the road, which is about a car length in front of all the cars. When the light turns green you cross the street on your right and patiently wait in the scooter box on the far corner. Then when the light changes to green for the cross street the scooters zip across and go along their merry way. It's amazing to me, given the flaunting of so many other traffic laws, that almost everyone follows this one.

Anyway, we too followed the turn-left-law and made it home safely and now it's time for a cold drink. You know you've had a successful shopping trip when you come home with this:

Mango smoothies, Taiwan Beer, and the ultimate mash-up: mango beer.

At this point we know where to find, in our neighborhood, just about everything we need:
The 24 Hour Store, aka The Plastic Store, is like an old Woolworths. A place to get a trash can, step ladder, rain poncho and little packs of tissues. Plus just about everything else if you look hard enough.
The 9x9 is the stationary store. Pens, paper, wrapping paper, books, etc.
The night market is open every night except Mondays and Wednesdays from 6 pm to 2 am. It'll be our go-to spot for food that's not good for us but tastes really good.
The Wellcome and the 7-11 are on every corner. The 7-11 is the place to get a cold drink and snacks. The Wellcome is more like a small grocery store.
Dollars is the really big grocery store. Think mega-Walmart.
Costco. Self explanatory.
Foster Hewitts is the expat bar. English spoken here and the beer is on tap.
Our restaurant options are ever-expanding.
We're on our way to IKEA now. Pix to follow!

This morning one of the veteran teachers, Jen, took me and Lee plus three other newbies on a bike ride along the Love River and down to the city harbor. It was quite an adventure! We took the bike path all the way to end where the Pier 2 art center is (see the post from August 2 about the sculpture park) and along the pier to Jen's favorite spot for mango ice. Mango ice is a big thing around here, especially now when mangoes are in season.

Here we are at the snack shop, waiting for our mango ice.

After our refreshing snack we made our way to the ferry to Qijin Island. The ferry costs NT$15 (about 50 cents US) for a passenger with a bike and takes about 5 minutes to get to the island.

The bottom of the ferry filled up with scooters. The top is for walk-on passengers.

The buildings in the center of the photo are on Qijin Island.

Kaohsiung City skyline, including 85 Tower, the tallest building in the city.

 The island itself is a lot like Virginia Beach or Coney Island. Shops with trinkets and beach paraphernalia plus food stalls and the streets full of tourists.

In addition to honky tonk there are also temples, which you can find all over the city.

We biked through the town and quickly got past the crowds and onto the bike path along the beach. It was pretty incredible. The sand was black and the beach deserted. Apparently the Taiwanese are not much into swimming. It was also hot (I know, I mention that a lot...) and the ocean temperature was the warmest I've ever felt. Not exactly refreshing. Anyway it was beautiful. On the horizon there were more huge container ships than I could count.

  

Which fruit to choose for breakfast today? Guava, dragon fruit, banana, pineapple? It's an embarrassment of riches!