good stuff, day at the beach!

Heyho,
After all the bad stuff from last week, things seem to have turned around and I'm finally good again, the flute stopped playing (I hope the guy didn't stumble upon this blog^^), I got german bread and I've spent a day at a Taiwanese beach!
Especially being at the beach was quite neat. We even managed to rent some surfboards so I could go surfing again - babam!!! And what striked me was that we didnt even have to pay a deposit for the surfboards - people here are just so trustworthy it seems that no one would steal it - I like that a lot! In general people here seem to be incredibly honest and decent when it comes to business. In terms of this, my experiences in Mainland China were actually completely different where every taxidriver tried to squeeze as much money out of me as he could...

And on the weekend we had a proper German style "Abendbrot"! I found a german bakery, "Oma Ursel's" where I got bread, pretzels and jam and that together with some other stuff that Anker got for his birthday we got quite a decent meal together.

It admit that it might not look that fancy, but for us it was a feast!

The taifun that came over Taiwan recently has also been rather mild here in Taipei. It just rained a lot here (it rained cats and dogs!). But as I was lying in bed anyway, that was not too bad for me and I guess I missed out on less stuff (lower opportunity costs of being sick an economist would say ;-) ).

From all the last weeks lying in bed, it seems that my mattress got even thinner (from about 3 fingers width to less than 1 finger) so today I ordered a new thick mattress from IKEA! Anker got the same one about two weeks ago and its only 50€. Tomorrow I'll probably have it - yay!

sick Lihong - Anker made this picture when he came to visit me.
The overwhelming pity of this picture slightly amuses me now^^

At a famous dumpling restaurant - it was once rated one of the best restaurants in the world!

On the weekend with a group of people we checked out the famous Keelung nightmarket. Unfortunately as Keelung is a horbour city, there was mostly seafood so I didn't like most of the stuff but we had a good time there anyway.

Mjami!

On Saturday I wanted to check out the Yangmingshan national park, which is very close to Taipei. However the whole expedition was a complete fail. For some weird reason, the whole place smelled like foul eggs - first I thought I was just a local sanitation problem, but as it smelled like this everywhere my second guess would be some plant whose polls smell like this. Furtermore it rained most of the time and worst, I lost track and ended up hiking just around the mountain peak. When I found out, it was too late to get up there before the dark -.- All in all I didn't even get a single good view that day. But weirdly I found the trip still a pleasant experience.

Today Anker showed me this short story. Its entirely made up of the word "shi" just with different intonations. But even the same intonation must not mean its the same meaning.
Isn't that crazy?! At least most of the written characters are different...

I also realized that there are actually words, that I can say but not read, words I can read but not write, and also words that I can read but not say - it's sooo strange. But I'm still highly motivated to get going with it.
Yesterday I learned a "polite measure word for people" together with measure words for "stick-like things" and "things that come in pairs". Its such a crazy language!

And by now its already one month that I am here in Taipei - time's flying!