Hot Pots

It's like Taiwanese fondue but with potentially scarier ingredients. I vowed to wait until we had our translator to try it so I didn't offend by not eating anything I was served. Sansan and Lanfen invited us to dinner and were able to help me negotiate the menu to an original beef hot pot that I loved. They have these great mushrooms that I couldn't get the name to, all kind of "tofu cousins," beef, and an egg. There were unidentified fish parts that I left in the pot so I'll leave them out of the blog as well.

I basically copied Sansan as she ate her hot pot because the way you cook it is just as important as the ingredients. Took quite a bit of time to eat with Ehren strapped to me but it was really good.

Would I order it again? Absolutely! Without supervision? Probably not.

Dinner was a lot of fun talking, laughing and getting to know these great Taiwanese women who had both heard of couchsurfing - how crazy is that? We laughed so hard over the impression we had made before coming and the fact that we forgot our camera when we showed up to pick up Ehren that I actually woke him up from his nap. It's like friends away from home.

We are the first family that has been here and not jetlagged so we are getting to hang out with the staff a lot more which I think is so important to the experience. Besides couchsurfing we also had the scooter in common. They have Vino scooters over here and Sansan just thought it was great that Joshua and I drive a scooter like they do since that is so rare in the US.

High five for not being jet lagged and having a scooter!

Ehren took the best nap ever (you know in the last 2 days) so we stopped by this thing on our way home:

Taitung has a lot of aboriginal tribes in it. I thought they had something to do with this but turns out it is a Toaism thing. This is a show for one of their gods to watch. There is some important festival starting tomorrow and so they erect these things all around the city to entertain the gods.

Three stories. Animatronics. Sounds. Lights. All night. Outside our hotel.