Small Potato, Big Potato

I have come to really appreciate hot water.  We have hardly any and in the morning when I would most like some warm or even hot water, there is none.  Also it is necessary to plan when to wash your hair and to be able to take a shower…  Yesterday evening mom and I both wanted to wash our hair before the dinner, but the hot water that is supposed to be turned on at 5pm was not on even at 5:30pm and so we took very cold showers and could not wash our hair.  It is a bit frustrating, as it seems most things here are out of our control.

This morning mom was anxious about trying to figure out how we were going to send a box, or probably 2, back to the states without costing a fortune and without it getting lost.  We have asked all of our contacts here what they would do and we have come up with just sending it regular Taiwan Post via sea mail so it is slow (about a month), but we will not be home for another 3 weeks anyway, so its perfect. Dad’s contact here in the dorm, very nicely picked up 4 large boxes for us to pack and then this afternoon we are going to go back to the post office and mail them.  I really wish we spoke even a little Chinese as this is proving to be the most difficult part of being here.  Being able to say hello and thank you is one thing, but anything else is so complicated and even though we are trying to learn and remember the Chinese words even for water, they all sound so similar it seems like an impossible task to learn.

This morning mom and I ventured to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial about a mile from where we are staying.  We took the MRT (metro) because it was hot and humid outside and also we wanted to get home at some reasonable hour to pack the boxes to ship.  So we went one stop and go out at the Chiang Kai-shek Station that was beautiful.  It was ornate with lots of blue and white everywhere.  Outside the station we were right at the memorial, with the Opera house and the National Hall flanking the area.  All of the buildings were HUGE- my conclusion to why everything seems so big is that possibly because the Chinese are so small they have to make up for it by building gigantic buildings.  Even the Lincoln Memorial does not compare to the size of this place. 

There were a few couples in their wedding garb around the area that were getting their photos taken in front of the gate and the Memorial Hall Building.

Mom and I walked down the great plaza area to the Memorial Building and climbed the 89 steps to the top to see the Hall and the Guards that have stand guard for an hour at a time and then there is a changing of the guard.  

Inside the building there were a few floors of informational/exhibition halls that we went into.  One of the exhibition halls was an art exhibit of paintings done by an autistic man, and they were excellent. 

Another hall was about the history of Chiang and it showcased two of his black limousines!  There was also a whole section on a Green Initiative that they are implementing and outside of the Hall there are lots of solar panels flanking the building.

We spent about an hour there and then decided to come back home to pack the boxes… which took a few hours!!  It was an experience too going to the post office.  The woman that has helped dad while he was here, brought up a trolley to put the boxes on, because they were a bit heavy (18 pounds for one box, 11 for the other) and then we had to walk three blocks away to the post office, where we stood in line for quite some time and then had a lovely postal man help us mail our boxes!  We are sending them a combined sea and air mail so it will arrive in about a month- and it was a quarter of the cost of what DHL would have been.

After we left the post office, mom and I wanted to try and do a little shopping for gifts for people, even though we were tired and knew that we were going out to eat with two different people this evening… so we tried to be quick.  However, we went into a department store looking for some chopsticks and mom not only found some chopsticks, but found many chopsticks that she decided to purchase.  We also found these cool giant pearl oyster cell phone thingies and some very cool silicon cooking chopsticks.  Dad actually found his way to the shopping mall from dropping off the trolley back at our dorm.  For anyone who knows dad, that is very impressive.

There were so many wok's everywhere.  I've never seen so many different options.

After shopping, we rushed back to the room, took showers and in a matter of 10 minutes (two showers later), we were ready to go to meet a young doctor whom dad really enjoyed working with and teaching.  He was going to show us a traditional tea house.  And he certainly did not disappoint.  We took the MRT a few stops away, then walked a couple of kilometers before finding a beautiful 80 year old Japanese tea house.  It was beautiful and we learned the correct way to brew tea.

After tea (and maybe you should know that by this time it was already almost 8:30pm and we had not had dinner yet), we grabbed a taxi and went to meet our other hosts for a lovely goodbye, beginning of a nice friendship dinner.  They belong to an American Club here in Taipei where everything was in English and the food was very American.  And it was good too!  We decided that we are going to be full vegetarian’s in China and so mom ordered a Ribeye for dinner tonight, Dad had a veggie pizza and I have some mushroom risotto.  This is probably the last filling meal we will have for 3 weeks.  So we ate slowly and enjoyed every bite!  Our hosts even gave us some advice for the food in China and said we will probably lose a fair amount of weight!!

So the reason this post is called small potato, big potato is because the doctor we went to tea with called himself a small potato- however he is an extraordinarily bright young man who is a resident here in Taipei; he works very hard and likes more informal, low key, down to earth, off the beaten track type of places- just what we usually like too.  The host we went to the American restaurant with is the “big potato”- the superintendent of the hospital.  Though even though he may be the big potato, as the younger doctor calls him, he is still very down to earth and an absolutely lovely man.  His family was also at the dinner tonight and they are terrific.  It will definitely be the start of a long friendship… especially since their son is in the same year as my bro at the same medical school.  Small world.