Day 2

It is 6am of day 3 right now. Every day we get woken up by a bizarre sounding rooster who starts screeching at 4 and 5am. I want to go down and strangle it. I share a big bed with my parents. The beds here don't have mattresses because it is too hot. Instead they are hard and flat with bamboo mats on them. Here is a picture:

Yesterday we walked on the farm my dad and his brothers own. We are currently staying in the house of his younger brother, and his older brother lives next door. On the farm they grow pineapples, lychees, lohngyein which are similar to lychees except they are eaten dried and have the texture of a prune, mangos, balah which are similar to pears and some other fruits. The farm is on a mountain, so we hiked up early in the morning. We also had to wear hats with neck coverings and detachable sleeves to keep mosquitos from biting us. Here is a picture of my uncles, my mom and I in our covering clothes. My younger uncle is on the left and my older uncle is between my mom and I.

My dad got really excited whenever we saw a fine specimen of a lohnyein tree or ate a particularly good lychee. The lychees are actually really amazing; apparently they don't keep well so you have to sell them the day you pick them. Therefore, if you've had lychee in the US, it is probably all dried and nasty. The lychees are really plump and juicy. The season only lasts for one or two weeks, so we are lucky that we came to Taiwan now.

My grandparents are also buried on the same mountain, so saw their graves and prostrated to them. I guess it is a form of ancestor worship, because you are supposed to prostrate with your head to the ground to your relatives who passed away. While we were there, I found it strange that we all stood on my grandfather's grave at one point. I asked my younger uncle about it and told him in the US we couldn't stand on people's graves. He said that we could stand on my grandfather's grave, but non-related people would not be allowed to.

We also went to this amazing market where they sell really fresh food as well as delicious premade food. There, we picked up a cooked chicken we had dropped off as a dead chicken in the morning and bought crispy-fried tofu pouches with oyster and a Chinese vegetable inside.

The rest of the day consisted mostly of bumping into people in the village and sitting around outside with them. Everyone speaks Taiwanese in the village where we are, and my mom and I are probably the only people in the whole village who only speak Mandarin. Everyone knows everyone else, so everywhere we went people would talk to my dad and he would remind them of his name Ng-bo, which is his Taiwanese name, and they would get really excited and invite us to sit. Once in a while people would point to me and my mom and say something in Taiwanese or speak to us. I would just laugh a lot, and my mom would say "Huh" which is Taiwanese for "yes" or "correct" and smile. She must have agreed to a lot of random things, because we had no idea what they were saying.

My younger uncle, his wife and my cousin who is the same year as me can all speak Mandarin, so it is not a problem although they usually revert to Taiwanese with my dad. My older uncle and his wife can't speak Mandarin though. When we first saw my older uncle, he started speaking to me in Taiwanese and it was apparent that I didn't understand. Then he asked my dad if I spoke Taiwanese. He was so disappointed. Then he said he thought my sister spoke Taiwanese, and my dad had to say she doesn't. Haha, I felt so bad!