Itinerary: homeschool, Daiso, co-op meeting, nap, Jinmei Nightmarket
Yesterday started semi-crappy but ended up well after we visited a night market.
We started the day being lazy. In the morning the kids watched Monster’s Inc in Chinese on TV while Fleur got ready for her sightseeing trip. By the time they left it was 11 and we squeezed in an hour of homeschooling before lunch.
After lunch it was a mad dash out the door to run errands. First is to withdraw some money. The rate I’m burning through cash is scary. Like Mandarin Mama says, it’s like Monopoly money!
Oh right, so crappy thing #1, Astroboy lost his Easy Card on the bus. We’d bought a nice retractable clip for it too. I was very sad.
It was really time to get those shoulder purse I wanted for the kids so they can buy their own things and clip their Easy Card card to it. So off to Daiso 大創 we went. Everything is $39 ($1.25 USD). The kids found cute Piggie and cute Cat purses, which, crappy thing #2, I had to go back to exchange two hours later because one of the velcro fell off.
Every time we’re in Taiwan, I get the kids a purse. Taiwan is definitely a place where you can get the kids to be super independent in their daily lives. There are so many more opportunities for the kids, moving around the city daily.
We had a meeting at the HUCC Co-op 主婦聯盟 at 2 pm. You have to sit through this 1.5 hour long boring meeting in order to join the co-op. The co-op was started by a bunch of women who wanted safe and healthy food for their family, since Taiwan does have a long history of food scandals (people substituting ingredients or adding unlisted ingredients). It’s basically an easy way for me to know that the food I’m buying is safe and of quality. Plus some of prices are cheaper. We saw some organic-ish milk at Santa Cruz for either $132 or $198 and it’s $98 at the co-op.
The co-op concept is akin to REI, except they haven’t gotten the idea that most of their members don’t have time to be advocates. They want more active members, hence having to sit through a meeting.
However, crappy thing #3, some woman does not understand the concept of co-op and kept commenting on how the co-op ought to be run to entice new members. (The presenter said they’re stagnating at 70k members). Then she decides after the meeting she doesn’t want to join! Crappy thing #4: I couldn’t join either because they would not take my passport as ID, as I’ve lost my ID. Plus if I don’t go back in a month, I have to re-listen to this whole spiel about the co-op again.
At this point, since it costs $2300 to join anyway, I’m ready to just research what the co-op stocks and buy it at higher price. The ladies at the checkout counters are one of the most unfriendly bunches I’ve met in Taiwan. The good thing is, my kids were so so great and sat through the whole 2 hours outside of the meeting reading Harry Potter and playing with blocks.
Crappy thing #5, after we went to exchange our purse, then took the 10 min bus ride home up the hill, we discovered that I had lost my canteen somewhere. I had already lost my Kleen Kanteen in Japan and this was the replacement. Super crappy. Thank goodness we called Daiso and discovered we had left it there.
But before heading out again, it was time for a nap because of the super long co-op presentation. After our nap, I felt so so much better and we had the energy to head out again in the rain. We went to Daiso to pick up our canteen and then to Jingmei Nightmarket.
It was pouring rain by this time and yet amazingly there are people out! According to this online website, Jingmei is an older style night market that doesn’t really cater to tourists, so you can see a lot more variety of shops. It is definitely way more old schooled. There is one main street with 3 offshoots. The main street is mostly just clothes, more like your traditional day market.
We had the most delicious, just wrapped and steamed pork buns and veggie buns, 豆花, and oyster pancake. If I weren’t so full, I’d buy more of the pork buns. The kids then each played a game (3 games for $100) at a stall and then we headed home.
So glad the night ended on a good note. I even sent the kids off to bed by themselves at 10pm and stayed up watching 拉拉追婚記 in the rapidly turning to pigsty apartment. Now that Fleur has left, I no longer have to pretend I’m a semi-neat person.
Did you know?
- At Family Mart, the ATM allows you to deposit money across banks?
- You can download the Easy Wallet app and keep track of all of your Easy Cards, see the transaction history, and even report it missing?
