So, the typhoon was… slightly pathetic in Tainan.  I can’t speak for Taipei, but it hardly even rained here today.  I went outside in a poncho and it wasn’t even drizzling.  I think some of the nicest weather came this weekend: cool and windy.  It was a welcomed break from the blazing sun and sticky humidity.  Some students with home stays in Tainan still got to go to their host family.  I saw a lot of pictures on facebook, and I’m pretty jealous.  I really hope mine can reschedule.

That being said, most of TUSA was in the dorm on Saturday.  So naturally, with the unthreatening weather, we went out.  A bunch of us went to a little Italian restaurant by the university’s gym, with the idea of going to the badminton tournament there afterward.  I got pesto pecan chicken pasta, which was arranged in a nice little pasta tower topped with cheese.  And I discovered I am a huge fan of Winter Melon Tea.

Okay, so the badminton tournament was SO AWESOME.  It reminded me of my high school volleyball tournaments, where there would be over 100 courts in one room, and if you looked straight down a row, you could see volleyballs going back and forth over the net for what seemed like a mile.  But these were birdies.  And okay, the gym was a little smaller than the Columbus Convention Center I just described.  But they probably had about 20 matches going on at one time, with a huge seating area.  The sheer skill of these badminton players was just incredible.  They flew in the air, smashed birdies on the ground.  I wish badminton were as big in the United States, because I think it’s a really fun sport.

After the tournament, we went back to the dorm, and new group of us went to play board games at Funny House again.  That place has so many cool games.  My favorites this time were probably Dixit and Avalon.  In Avalon, I got to be a bad guy and Merlin for the two rounds we played, essentially meaning that I had a good amount of sway over what happened in the game.  Who doesn’t love power?  Somebody (still not sure who) brought our whole table fried sweet potatoes and fried milk (measure the degree of how disgusting that sounds, and it was that magnitude of spectacular, I promise).  The game pictured below is a German game called Super Rhino.

Then we went out to dinner at a rice place.  I got chicken and pork in mine.  Delicious.  Right next door was a tea store.  And guess what?  They had Winter Melon Tea!  The same tea from lunch!  Got a huge glass for a less than a dollar (25 NT).  So many good deals in this country.

On the way back to the dorm, my new friend from the day, Sonia, took me on a little detour to show me a famous display of public art.  It was part of a bar called Blue Print.  The outside looks like a blue print (cool!) and the inside is totally blue, decked out with blue lights and everything.  Thanks for taking me there, Sonia!

Everyday I find one more thing to love about Taiwan.