After finishing both quarantine and Self-Health Management, I finally moved to my official placement in Yunlin: Douliu City! Douliu is basically Yunlin County's capital; it's a bigger city than Huwei but also more spread-out so its streets are calmer, wider, and generally less chaotic than Huwei's.
I moved into my apartment late last week and am still feeling my way around the area. My two roommates, Ciashia and Levi, are also Fulbright ETAs. Levi is actually an ETF, aka a second-year ETA, so he's already lived in Douliu for a year and has some very useful intel about the city and teaching program.
Our neighborhood is fairly walkable but there isn't much public transport in Yunlin, so most people ride scooters. Once we secure our residency ID cards, we're planning on taking the scooter test. As a longtime fan of the Mission Impossible and other action franchises, I am very pumped for this opportunity. When else in my life will I be able to whiz around town on a scooter? But first, Levi has to teach us how to ride one. Yesterday was our first practice session. Our Fulbright coordinator, Joyce, gave the city government a lot of bubble tea so we could use one of their building's parking lots LOL. Ciashia and I were pretty nervous but we actually made decent progress! We're off to practice again later today.
Watch out, Ethan Hunt, here we come!
Until we earn our scooter licenses, I was planning on mostly walking around Douliu. But this past weekend, I was strolling by our apartment when our building manager, Uncle Yang*, called out to me.
"Do you have a scooter?" he asked.
"No, I haven't taken the test yet," I explained.
"Ah. Well, I see you walking around too much, too far. Can you ride a bike?"
"Uh yes."
"Then come with me."
He took me to the apartment courtyard's long line of bikes, chose one, pumped up the tires, called another uncle down to give me the bike lock key, and said, "Here, use this one." And just like that, I got a free bike! On top of that, when I returned from my errands that day and asked if he wanted the key back, Uncle Yang said, "If you're gonna use the bike, you can hold onto it," and then proceeded to hand me an iced coffee. All out of nowhere!
Taiwanese people are the bessssssssst.
Apart from getting our transportation bases covered, my roommates and I have been eating our way through Douliu. Some recent highlights include:
Hotpot! Taiwanese hotpot restaurants tend to serve individual hotpots rather than a communal table one. Each customers can order a set meal that comes with a broth and a whole basket of ingredients or order everything a la carte. The restaurants also serve milk tea and ice cream to cleanse your palate afterwards! So smart for such a hot country and meal.
Conveyor belt sushi! Whoever invented this dining style is a genius. Why settle for 10 rolls of the same kind of sushi when you could have 2 rolls of 10 different kinds of sushi?? And the latter is usually much cheaper than the former.
Shave ice! A Taiwanese national treasure, shave ice is like a big bowl of ice cream with a ton of toppings. You can go traditional and get tofu pudding or a fruity flavor with boba, taro balls, and glass jelly, or go even sweeter with matcha, chocolate, or red bean. This time, I gave into my cravings and got chocolate shave ice with banana and cereal flakes. Yummy!
Night market food! Anyone who's been to Taiwan knows that these evening street markets are one of the pillars of the national food scene. The bigger cities tend to claim more of the well-known night markets but even smaller cities like Douliu have a few, and last weekend we checked out RenWen Night Market. There were tons of food and drink stands as well as your typical carnival games and even a toy auctioneer! I can't wait to go again.
Top, from left: Chocolate shave ice, shave ice in the park, conveyor belt sushi
Middle: Hotpot night!
Bottom, from left: Night market toy auctioneer, a whole pig (or what's left of it), night market customers
With all this food comes a lot of garbage. And Taiwan has a super unique way of collecting the trash. First of all, Taiwanese people meticulously sort their trash into several categories: general trash, compost specifically to feed pigs, other compost, and recycling (glass, plastic, paper, etc). Second of all, it's way too hot for people to leave their trash outside even for a couple of hours, so instead, the garbage truck comes at scheduled times most days to each neighborhood. At the appointed time, everyone in the neighborhood comes out with their trash and recycling and waits for the truck. The trucks play unmistakably loud music--in fact, they sound a lot like American ice cream trucks--to warn that they're coming. Once the truck arrives, everyone runs up and hurls their garbage into the back or hands their recycling to a worker. I've participated in trash night a few times now, and honestly, it's kind of fun, like a nightly community bonding event :)
Trash night with the neighborhood
From exploring new neighborhoods and food scenes to trying different modes of transportation and even trash collection, the Douliu crew is off to a promising start!
Moment of joy/humor: One of Levi's schools is right next to our apartment so he runs into his students a lot. Apparently, one of his students saw him walking with me and Ciashia and asked if we were his WIVES. Hahahahahahahahahahaha.
This inspired Levi to teach his students the word "roommate." :)
* East Asian people often address friends and strangers with familial titles. For example, they will refer to people who are roughly the same age as their parents as "Uncle surname" or "Aunt surname" regardless of blood relationship status. Hence, "Uncle Yang," even though he isn't my uncle.
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