forming [tasty] habits

we have been in Taiwan for a full week now. already we are settling in, making plans, and forming new habits. okra + eggs + avocado for breakfast. running around the lake. using our vintage star wars placemats. washing dishes together after dinner. mango smoothies.

funny how most of our habits revolve around food...

yesterday Husband and I went on an adventure to find Costco. you can take the bus [or have helpful parents drive you] but we wanted to try walking. I think part of the plan to walk was that our route took us right past the smoothie place we visited a few days ago. we tried the chocolate smoothie and the mango smoothie and both were pretty incredible. this time around, Husband got some lime-flavored drink called a green wizard. I stuck with the mango smoothie. because it is so. darn. tasty.

I like that we have a smoothie place. and I like that I have an order soon to be called "the usual".

Husband had the genius idea to look up directions on the iPhone and bring it along as our map. we only get wi-fi service [so we couldn't tell where on the map we actually were] but we made it work.

the rest of our journey was not very well documented due to the smoothie. I have my trusty hand strap, but I love my SLR too much to risk one-handed street photography while weaving between parked cars and scooters.

scooters. are. everywhere. I honestly think there are more scooters than cars on the road... which is probably a good thing to save space. anytime you walk past a big office building or apartments there will be rows on rows of parked scooters. it sounds like a lot of the teachers either have on or are planning to get one. [I myself am mildly terrified to try driving around the city on one.]

eventually we made it past all the scooters and to the Costco. we restocked on okra and picked up a dehumidifier for the apartment. [thrilling, I know] and then - because we were tired from the walk and the dehumidifier weighed 80 pounds - we took a cab home. for about $4 US. [we definitely hi-fived over that a few times]

ok, one more thing about the scooters. the amounts of people I saw coming out of Costco and loading up their scooters with flats of pop and boxes of kiwi or giant bottles of milk and 48 packs of Heineken? ridiculous. they would just stack the stuff down where their feet should be and take off, nothing holding it in place. ridiculous.

and speaking of ridiculous, check out this chicken tender.


I have no words.