My first press conference

Since it's almost dinner time here, I'll start with a picture of food. Mmm, food.

This week has been pretty busy but a lot of what I've been doing is kind of boring settling in type stuff. You know, getting a cell phone, applying for my Alien Resident Card, making friends with dogs on the street that may or may not be feral. Of course, just the fact that I'm doing all things in Taiwan makes it an adventure in my book. But I'll spare you the mundane details and get straight to the exciting parts.

Group photo!

The Magistrate and I

Exciting thing 1: I met the Yilan County Magistrate. They held a press conference to introduce the new Fulbrighters. And the Magistrate gave each of us a big bag of rice cakes that were made with the rice last year's Fulbrighters planted. They're very tasty.

Exciting thing 2: Yesterday we got to go to the International Children's Folklore and Folkgames Festival. The awesome part? It was held at the Dongshan River Water Park. So, after a morning of learning useful Chinese phrases for ordering food, we got to spend all afternoon playing around at a Taiwanese water park! Since my camera isn't waterproof, I didn't get the chance to take too many pictures. But take my word for it, it was really cool. I even got to ride a water bike (the Chinese version with pontoons made of empty water bottles, not one of those fancy Western-style water bikes with kayaks attached). Then, because one of the themes of the festival was

The woman on the left is the TP rep.

recycling, we were given some eco-friendly toilet

paper. The catch? We got roped into posing for a photo. Odds are we'll all end up on a billboard somewhere with the catch phrase "Even Americans like our toilet paper!"

Mango shaved ice = best thing ever

Exciting thing 3: I took a trip (the first of many) to the Luodong night market. There were lots of wonderful looking things to eat there but the thing I was really excited for was shaved ice. It's a Taiwan specialty and everyone I talked to told me just had to try it. When I finally saw it in the night market, I knew why. I got mango shaved milk ice. Soooo good!

Okay, one more completely unrelated food picture and I'm calling it a night. Bonus picture: 

I got a bear donut from Mr. Donut's! It was adorable and
filled with cookies and cream :)