Food Adventures

Scott and I had an adventure yesterday. Sidney went off to work so Scott and I went sight seeing on our own, navigating the subway systems of Taipei. I think Scott has a compass built into his head, he never seems to get lost, even in a country where we can't read any signs. I on the other hand get lost in Owen Sound. I think I will stick with him!
Sidney gave us directions to Church offices so we could meet him for lunch. We knew how to get to the subway, Sidney said take the train with two Chinese symbols, not three, told us which exit to leave from, how far to walk and then turn at the 7 Eleven. That made us laugh, there is a 7 Eleven on every corner here. We had more trouble getting the apartment door to unlock than we did getting to his office.
After a lunch with the church staff, more tea and some chocolates from Owen Sound, we headed out sight seeing. We went to 101, the highest building in Taipie. 89 floors up, what a view! It took about 30 seconds to get up in the high speed elevator, our ears popped about 3 times.
Then we headed for the famous night market for dinner and the evening. Markets in foreign countries are amazing - thousands of people, thousands of places to eat.
We entered the food area and looked for something we could recognize - we could smell the stinky tofu, we could recognize squid on a stick - we avoided both. They are very agressive trying to get you to sit down and order their food. They have a piece of paper, laminated, with about 20 blurry pictures of food we don't recognize. Scott pointed to something that looked like an omlette, and a couple of crabs. We are now the proud owners of our own chop sticks (with the burning bush symbol on them!) We can get the food in our mouths, but we also get alot on our clothes. We keep trying. So...the food arrived. It was egg, but also some clear, gooey jelly mixed with it, red sauce and some little grey things - we had no idea what it was. The sauce was a plum sauce, the jelly was tasteless, but weird. The little grey things were some kind of seafood, but I had no idea what. When we described it all to Sidney later he told us it was oysters and the jelly a cornstarch mixture.
Then we went for a fruit drink, even the fruit here we have never seen before. We wanted to ask for a mango drink but the lady just started mixing something up and handed us green drinks. Green is a scary colour when you don't know what it is! To our relief it was kiwi! Very good.
The market was overwhelming, loud, thousands of people. We managed to make a few purchases, no English anywhere but we knew numbers and that is what mattered.
Today we head to the east coast for two days with the church staff and a few other international delegates, some of us are still hanging around after General Assembly.
We will have more stories then!
Anne