The Most Disgusting Sounding Thing I've Eaten...So Far

5/14

Didn't do too much today but.  I've been trying to get caught up on this blog still, and it gets a bit frustrating- it's starting to feel like a chore that I'm doing for only my Mom to read.  Okay, I'm done being a baby now.  So, did little during the day, emailed Mei and at night Judy came over.  She still seemed horribly rushed and anxious, but at least this time she randomly brought a bunch of food for me.  She gave me two different types of pies; pineapple and another one that were pretty good.  She also brought some wonderful tea and some pastry sort of snacks.  I told her my general plans but wouldn't definitively agree to anything and gave her Mei's phone back.

She said we should go to Longshan temple and the Tourist Night Market right then, and since I had energy from sitting on my ass all day, I agreed.  Once we were on the move, I made a serious effort to get her to calm down by asking her questions and talking slowly.  Though she never calmed down completely, she improved quite a bit, at which point I could actually enjoy talking to her.

Judy does incentive travel, for companies and so had traveled a good deal and so we talked about that for quite a while.  When she wasn't so anxious and didn't have people making crazy demands on her, she was really very cool.

After getting off the MRT we were in between the night market and the temple so she stopped to make me try pig's blood cake, one of her favorite foods.  She also made absolutely sure that I knew exactly what I was eating by typing out the word blood on her phone for me to see as I hadn't understood her accent on that word.  The taste itself wasn't really bad, it was just such a terrible idea that I couldn't help the name from entering my judgment of the food itself so it was really the idea that actually churned my stomach.  It looked like a long, rectangular piece of chocolate cake covered in a ground sweet, peanut mixture.  I tasted the peanut mix more than any other flavor, but mostly I just tasted the name: pig's blood cake.  Ugh!

Next, we walked over to Longshan Temple, which was incredible.  This was yet another point when I really, really wished I had my camera.  It was detailed and every surface was totally covered in decoration.  Besides dragons and tigers and different buddhas, I saw what looked like a phoenix and asked Judy about it.  She told me it was, you know, the thing...Harry Potter and the thing.  So it was a phoenix which I just thought was interesting because I didn't know that there were phoenixes in Chinese mythology and I really like phoenixes.  One or two people have told me I was like a phoenix and I thought that was just about the greatest compliment ever.

The temple closed and we walked over to the Huaxi Street Tourist Night Market.  She had me try several different traditional foods, most were edible but not great.  One interesting thing that was available at this market- though I didn't get to try it- was python.  They ate regular ones, but most of the live ones displayed were albino, presumably because they look better.