various things

 Man chopping fresh noodles from a block of noodle dough.  

 My next door neighbor / fellow PiA-er, Lily, eating said noodles.  

 Me sneaking a candid shot in my Chinese class.  Back to the ol' 中文.  CFAU offers 4 Chinese classes everyday Mon-Fri (from 8:00-11:40 AM) which I can audit for a small fee.  I really like this convenient way to 'turn on' my Chinese in the morning and usually dip in on 1 or 2 classes.  Added cool points for the diversity in the class room: my classmates are from Kazakhstan, Ukraine, France, Italy, Botswana, Egypt, Tanzania, plus 1 other American.

Colorful kindergarten behind my dorm (not connected to CFAU lol)

  

 I got a 'blind massage' (a lot of blind people in Asia give massages professionally) for 13USD/hour!       

Bringing da islan' to 台灣島

Believe it, guys!  I handcrafted Jamaican patties for my Taiwanese friends.  I wanted to share some grub from another small island nation half-way around the world.  

I got all of the ingredients from a combination of the 7-11 and fruit/veggie stand across the street.  Some improvisation was needed and is as follows...

ground beef → ground pork (often used here to make dumplings)
thyme → parsley
dry bread crumbs → crushed soda crackers
beef broth → instant beefs noodles seasoning packet
Scotch Bonnet pepper → red chili pepper
convection oven → rusting toaster oven

Yin Rou and Mei Yun, homeroom teachers at Wu Ta Elementary.  

 Cherish, my co-teacher at Wu Ta.  

 Sonia, Junior High homeroom teacher.  

And I transformed the Restaurant Station at English Village into a cooking class.

My Chinese teacher, Zhan 老師, and I had a "cuisine exchange" before class.  She treated me to cabbage pickled in passion fruit.  Total sweet and sour goodness.  Below she skillfully consumes her patty with chopsticks.  台灣 swag!  

Winter Solstice

The moon is big, the day(light) is short. 

The train schedule, which my life revolves around, changed.  

I ate tang yuan to ensure I live through the year.  湯圓, literally 'soup round,' means dumpling.  Yilan High Schoolers helped me make the soup, so rad.