A Tycoon is Coming to Taiwan!

Lots of rain, strong winds...you know, a tycoon. Stock up on water and ramen! Tape the windows! Don't go outside!

Also, tonight we got host families! My host is an English teacher named Grace, but she had class tonight so her parents came to the host family dinner to meet me instead. They spoke like no English, so it was an interesting time. My Chinese is pretty decent, especially for talking about the things you usually talk about when you are introducing yourself to somebody, but the dad kept using words I didn't know, and I think he got kind of frustrated that I didn't understand. They were really nice, though, and the mom said I could call her Xu Mama (Xu is their last name) and she would teach me how to speak Taiwanese and cook Chinese food. If the weather permits, we'll probably do something together for Moon Festival, which is this Sunday.

Me with Xu Mama and Xu Baba:


For those of you who do not know what Moon Festival entails, here is the lowdown: Moon Festival, aka Mid-Autumn Festival, is a holiday sort of similar to Thanksgiving, in that it's a time for families to get together. Traditionally, on Moon Festival, you barbecue meat and eat moon cakes and pomelos. After you eat your pomelo (it's a sort of grapefruitish thing), you are supposed to take the rind and wear it on your head. I am not kidding. The other crazy thing about Moon Festival is the moon cakes, which often come in really fancy boxes with lots of compartments that people usually save for jewelry boxes. There are various flavors of moon cakes, but a common variety has a whole egg yolk in the center. Also many of them are bean-flavored, as Asian desserts tend to be. My impression of moon cakes is that they are sort of like fruitcakes at Christmas...it's traditional to give them to people, but they aren't necessarily that good. I'm not huge on the egg yolk, but I had a moon cake yesterday that tasted vaguely like raisins, and it was pretty decent. Unfortunately, we foreigners as a group don't seem to like moon cake that much, but in the past few days people have given us soooo much moon cake! I suppose it might be nice to have around if the typhoon is particularly fierce and keeps us from leaving our apartment to obtain non-ramen food.