11:10pm

Jenny was not kidding when she said we would eat a lot...I'm stuffed!

We went to the night market. It was kind-of a combination of the Wellfleet flea market and Commercial Street in Provincetown. The most disturbing thing I saw there was two men dragging themselves, legs limp and useless behind them, up the street. Jenny said they are beggars. A van drops them off at various markets then takes a cut of their alms. It was the most heart wrenching thing I have ever seen in person. Neither showed his face as in was down touching the street, dragging in the gutter.

We also visited Jenny's grandmother on her mom's side {...} She lived in Taipei during the Japanese occupation, which I believe was during World War II.

Jenny's mom showed us a poem written by Jenny's grandfather. It says something like "In 1946, I came here. In 1947 I stayed here. I've been here 60 years and I was unaware time so fast. I have 33 descendents on either side (i.e. of the China Sea). Now my fate depends on the heavens.

Numbers are written differently in Mandarin (the main Chinese language). For example, 26 (twenty six) is written as 2 ten 6.

For dinner I had bamboo roots with sweet mayonnaise, green veggies (bok choy maybe?), spicy tofu, whole small fish (approx. one inch long). We eat the fish whole--eyes, skulls, and all--we also had leftovers from lunch with slices of radish and we ate it family style with individual bowls of white sticky rice.

When we came back from the night market we had wax apples. They were a pink color and had a wet, styrofoam texture but they were unbelievably juicy. It was like drinking apple flavored water. {They were soooo good and thirst quenching!}

Tomorrow Jenny and I are getting haircuts. It should be an interesting experience. I have no idea what I want to do with it. {...} Jenny's grandmother is insisting on doing my laundry (she reminds me far too much of Nana to refuse--even if I could speak the language. {...}

Ok, here's some vocab {in Abby's phonetic style which has probably no semblance to real phonics}
knee-how is hello
how is good/fine/ok
shie-shie is thank you
hun-how-chse is that tastes good.
day-boo-chee is sorry