Day 2

This was our only full day in Tainan, Chinese New Year!! Happy new year!!

Her family provided me with this yummy sesame-red-bean-filled-cracker-cake thing, and a pineapple filled shortbread cookie/cake very typical of Taiwan- so typical that Christine is sick of even looking at the wrapping.  I don't usually love fruit-desert stuff (unless it's straight up-un-messed with fruit), but like I said I'm being as open minded as possible about everything I eat and it was pretty good!
In the car on our way to temple we had roasted and seasoned seaweed, just like we used to have it at Christine's house back in the day.

Once we got to the temple but before praying, we walked into the most crowded cafeteria ever for a free vegetarian feast- chow mein, tofu skin, seitan w/ mushrooms & bamboo and mushroom soup.  This was the first meal where there were designated food serving chopsticks and food eating chopsticks.  As we finished the plates of food people who I assume work at the temple came around with huge vats of food and replenished whatever any table was running low on.  Naturally, we stuffed ourselves silly and then went out to light incense, burn (fake) money and pray.  From there we went to Christine's oldest aunt's house where there is a goose farm and ripe tomatoes for picking.  The baby geese were super cute, and we spent a little while picking tomatoes but stopped after the bird poop smell started to get to us.

We snacked on candy and crackers as we drove to a second temple, and from there embarked on the long drive back to Tainan.  On the way back to the house we stopped at a vegetarian cafeteria style restaurant where I got to try all kinds of food- there was sushi, bittermelon, yucca, bamboo, seaweed salad, seitan, different mushroom dishes, yam, sweet rice, tofu and even some green vegetables!  The only thing I wasn't a huge fan of was the bitter melon, but Christine said that it's really good for you so I finished eating what was left of it.

We went home and I took Christine's Glee-card.  It was magical.  I passed out after four episodes but she stayed up for twice as many.  It's no surprise that she's hooked.