Reflection of Summer

"Farewell, Season!  You were very beautiful and rich.  No other summer can compare with you.  Today I recognize this even though there have been times when you made me terribly unhappy and sad.  As something to remember me by, I leave you my adventures, littered all over the park and the lanes and gardens.  I can't take my age [twenty] back with me, that will have to stay behind here for good.  Now you're sinking amont the shades, and down to the underworld along with you goes all this [...]"

-Bruno Shulz, Autumn

Wrapping It Up

A paragraph on the last few days of and returning home from Taiwan:

As I mentioned before, we did a little more sightseeing to round out the trip. First, we went to Sun Moon Lake. Taiwan doesn’t have too many lakes, and this is the island’s largest, so not only is it a very pretty place to spend the day, it’s also special in that way, too. We took a boat around and visited several sights (including one that sold a woman’s very famous tea eggs). We also visited a church that Chiang Kai-Shek built so that his mother could attend when she was there. There was also a couple taking their wedding photos there, which will definitely turn out nice.

On The Menu

So now that I have returned home, I thought it might be fun to include a list of food that I ate in Taiwan that maybe I wouldn't eat in the US, most likely because they aren't as available. For example:

• Seaweed soup (warm and cold [the warm is better], special from Penghu and said to maybe help you get better if you have SARS or Cancer…)
• Mini squid
• Little fried minnow-like fish (whole)
• Octopus tentacles

Dear Taiwan...

Dear Taiwan,

Your air sucks.

And I would like to note that, like any good student of letters, I chose my language very carefully. I chose the word “sucks” over others that may seem at the surface equal because I do, quite literally, feel as if I am now “sucking” the air in with each breath.