Food.

Although I had been warned otherwise :)  The food here is amazing.  I don't have a kitchen, so I've been eating a lot of meals from 7-11.  It's very convenient, they'll microwave it for you, and put it in a little plastic carrier.  But it gets old after awhile.  There are other places around here, I just haven't been brave enough to try and order anything.  Yet.  I've got 10 months to work on that.  I have mastered chopsticks, even got complimented at lunch last week by my coworkers.  I eat at restaurants when I can.  Tonight I ventured into the night market, not the first time, and again, I wasn't disappointed.  Ordering food in a place where you don't speak the language is kind of risky.  Night markets are good, as long as you can identify what the food is.  Tonight I had the most amazing corn on the cob, roasted with some kind of spice, cinnamon maybe?  I didn't take a picture, I ate it too fast.  I also had a sandwich and a drink that I think may have been pomelo with lime, but I'm not sure.  It was good though.  Every city has a night market, larger cities have one in each neighborhood.  Eating here is cheap, I think my whole dinner tonight was 80 NT, about 2.60.  I usually spend less than $10 a day on food.  I eat the school lunches, which aren't bad, and they're about $1. 

 

During the work days, before school started, they would order lunch every day.  This is typically what I got.

Breakfast is cereal and tea or juice, and dinner is whatever I can find.  

Foods I have really liked here:

Fried noodles

Lemon chicken

Papaya salad

Kung Pao Chicken

Din Tai Fung

Shrimp cakes (yes, you read that right)

The pizza in Taichung

Fried rice

Pomelo 

Sweet Soup

Chicken flavored potato chips

Mango Tea

Taiwanese Eggnog

Bubble tea

Foods I can live without:

Guava

Tofu

Bitter Melon

So the list of dislikes is pretty short compared to what I've enjoyed here.  So I'll continue to try new stuff, and maybe by tomorrow I'll have the courage to order something from an actual restaurant.  Even if I have to make farm animal noises, ha ha.