What I Said I'd Say

This is a fairly instant replay of an interesting weekend.



Friday:

I get the call, kids are going to XiMen, apparantly there's a Night Market there. I go home, change out of my uniform and I'm ready for action. Bus 284 takes me to Kunyang MRT Station and I'm estimating my arrival at XiMen station to be 6:41 PM. I'm right on time. I whip out my sweet Motorola PDA cell phone gadgetry to call everyone and let them know I made it exactly when I foresaw.

This is where the confusion occurs. Turns out everyone is at the ShihLin Tourism Night Market, there's no Night Market in XiMen. So, I'm back on the train again, have to change lines at Taipei Main Station, and eventually I arrive at the correct place where I wait patiently for everyone to find me.

Too many people. We related it to Senior Prom where there's music playing, but no room to move let alone dance. Bags, clothes, shoes, it all ran together, everything cheap, but I didn't buy anything, in my mind money's pretty tight. The only thing I bought that night was a 250NT meal of chicken, shrimp, rice, soup, greens and browns (worth every dollar), and an 18NT bottle of black tea (which I hear is bad for me). Walked around a lot, made it home okay.

Saturday:

Could have gone to DanShui, which is apparently really beautiful and near the ocean and basically an awesome place to go. Too bad my little brother had "too much homework", so we hit up the batting cages? I am not a baseball player, and I try not to pretend that I am. Of twenty baseballs thrown by lever arm I bunted/fouled five or six. We're there about one and a half to two hours, and when we get home DiDi (little brother in Chinese) is on the computer playing online baseball, I wonder where his homework went.

Sunday:

Wake up at 11:30 and must be at YongChun Station by 1:00 to meet some classmates to go shopping for a barbecue. I'm early, so I grab breakfast at one of the bazillion 711's in Taipei and wait around for half an hour. During that time I decide that, yes, I will attempt to show these kids how to make S'mores.

We get to the grocery store (a French chain called Geant) and I begin my ingredient search. Chocolate was the easiest find, as expected. Marshmallows took some finaegling, but were eventually acquired. Graham crackers do not exist in Taiwan. I substituted milk cookies, but there was no comparison.

With our barbecuing necessities in hand we headed to a nearby park. Setting-up the grills was half the fun. The charcoal was not matchlight, and one kid had to use a blowtorch in order to get the stuff to light (I have a picture). We barbecue for awhile, I pull out my mandolin and strum out some merry tunes, I hold a few conversations, we have a good time. I notice someone has put a hot coal in a cardboard box. I wonder how I should act on this information as I climb to the top of a low wall to take a picture of the goings on.

I took two pictures and then everyone got quiet. A cop had showed up, I was told later that someone had called him about the ruckus we were making and apparently we were not to be making barbecues or ruckuses in this particular park.

He let us off with a warning and the party was over. We cleaned up the huge mess we made and then we played a few games including Spin the Bottle and Do Something Dumb While People Take Pictures of You. That was interesting. An old man tapped me on the shoulder and thought I was my classmates' English teacher. I told him who I am and where I came from. He chuckled at his mistake and bid me take care. I was home by 9:00.