Itinerary: Herbal Doc, LoveReadBook, Socks, Sesame Paste
Did you know that pigs get fed moldy cake in Taiwan?
We went to toss our trash tonight and I was all ready to dump the moldy birthday cake in the compost bin. But the guy sitting in the back of the trash truck saw the cake, picked it out, and tossed it into the “For pigs” bin.
I’m assuming it’s for pigs, that’s what the recycle poster tells you, that there’s a compost bin (堆肥) and one for pigs (養豬廚餘). All I can say is, I hope the pigs from HUCC 主婦聯盟 don’t eat those cake.
Astroboy has been sick the last few days and it’s now progressed to his chest. So time to go to the herbal doc my aunt goes to and get some 百合膏. It’s like that 川貝枇杷膏 Chinese medicine thing you buy when you’re coughing, but made of Lily?
Fleur took Thumper to EP bookstore while Astroboy and I looked for the herbal doc, who opens at 2pm. I still find it very strange that docs open in the afternoon and work till 9 or 10pm. In any case, EP bookstore is this free “library”, with a $100 entry fee, which includes unlimited drinks. You can’t buy books, you can’t borrow books, you can read books there. The draw is the nice space with new books to read.
Apparently says not many children’s books.
Afterward, we took a long bus ride to Love Read Book, where I found book gold. It’s a little dinky shop right around the corner from 師大 Mollie with crazy good prices, all in the shop owner’s head. The books are stuffed to the brim, and in piles, everywhere. Very dusty and sometimes itchy. I found tons of books from the Newberry Medal set at almost new condition, better than most of the copies I saw at Mollie. The Canadian Newberry Medal books were almost completely new there.
In general, this isn’t a place to find your picture books. There are some, but not necessarily of super good quality.
Best of all, I found my 華一兒童啟蒙文學 set, with only little yellowing dots on the cover but almost new inside. Fleur found this set of books published by 小魯 which has books by famous authors like the guy who wrote Island of the Blue Dolphin; except it’s all their lesser famous books.
Sadly, they don’t deliver your books. So we had to pack it all up and carry it to the post office across the street to ship them. It was $100 for my 12kg boxes and $125 for 15kg. Not too bad. We probably could have saved time by just taxing it all home. But the people there are so so nice and helpful, other than the strange me who asked me why I have “foreign” kids.
It was an exciting night because we’d already ordered online to have pizza delivered from Napoli Pizza. Fleur had to run ahead to get home in time for the delivery by 6:30pm while the kids and I meandered home through Shi Da Night Market area 師大夜市 and bought some cute Korean socks for the children. We also bought this apparently super delicious freshly ground black sesame paste from Fuyuhang 馥宇行. The children have been putting it on tortilla every morning for breakfast.
I love free pizza delivery! Sadly we have not tried any of the strange pizza flavors yet, always sticking to the kids acceptable Combo flavor. Napoli Pizza also sells slightly spicy fried chicken, which the children devoured.
Walking around Taipei today made me realize how much I miss meandering through neighborhoods. I feel kind of sad that it’s taking us a whole month to figure out our class situation. I know I should have done it in the US but it was so hard talking to people. Everyone said, call us when you get here! Except I didn’t.
All this today, we’ve almost got swimming, writing, science, and art classes lined up. I can finally stare at my excel spreadsheet to see when we can go out. I need to make time for actual traveling.
Addresses:
- Fuyuhang 馥宇行 – 台北羅斯福路三段183號
- Love Read Book 愛閱書坊 － 台北市大安區泰順街2號
