Dinner, night market, and moving day...

Dinner with the PhD candidates at the mountain restaraunt.

Well, last night the political science PhD candidates picked me up about 5:00 pm and took me to meet the other political science graduate students. After a quick introduction, we drove up the mountain past the university to a small outdoor restaraunt perched on the side of the mountain overlooking the ocean. We had some traditional Taiwanese food, which was pretty good, and watched the sunset into the ocean. We chatted about East Asian politics, work, school, and travel. They were really nice, had a good sense of humor, and all spoke excellent English.

After dinner, Julien (yellow shirt) and Harlin (the girl) took me to a Kaohsiung night market. Kaohsiung apparently has a lot of these. It was a great experience, but I promised myself that next time I am going with an empty stomach, because the food looked excellent! Crabs so fresh they are still kicking, eels, snakes, Turkish ice cream (with an actual Turkish guy selling it), "pan cakes", and many other dishes were being sold out of carts. There was also a plethora of cheap clothes, shoes, perfume, lighters shaped like anything imaginable, and many other consumer goods for sale. I bought some cheap sunglasses, but didn't see any other "must-haves".

I loaded pictures on flickr, so check out my photo gallery. I also bought a headset, so I can chat over the good-ol' Internet without paying ridiculous international calling fees. If you use skype, then you can add me (my user ID is straydog16) if you want to chat. If you don't use skype, then get on it! The address is www.skype.com (pretty easy to remember). Skype users can chat for free. You can also buy time on Skype Out so you can call people on their home or cell phones in another country and you are charged domestic rates. I can now call people in the U.S. from Taiwan for $0.02 a minute! Good deal...