Barbecue for Dayz

Let's do a little catch up blogging, shall we? At the beginning of October, one of our school's secretaries and our good friend, Momo, invited all of us teachers to join her and her fiance, Sam, for a day out shopping in Taichung. We had been to Taichung a few times already but it was fun to have a local friend show us around and just wander in and out of shops on the street. After some window shopping we made our way to the Feng Chia Night Market, which is the largest one in Taichung. We had already been there previously as well but they had us try different foods that we didn't get to eat the last time that we visited, including the world famous fried octopus balls at the entrance of the market. When we went on our visit before the line for the octopus ball store was obscenely long, but on the day that we went with Sam and Momo it was a reasonable wait time, so we actually got to try them.

We had dinner reservations for Taiwanese barbecue so after the night market we tried to walk off a little of what we had eaten to make room for the feast that we were in for. The barbecue restaurant was a neat experience because the grill was built into the table. Ours was a large table, so it had two grills. You order the foods that you want, the waiters bring the foods out in waves, and you cook the food yourselves over the grills in your table. You have your table for 2 hours and, depending on how much you paid, you get a set number of rounds of food.

This is a good view of the grill with yours truly in the back. Each person has their own set of massive tongs and you cook the food to your preferred level of done...ness. (?) <-- I'm not fixing it. This is my blog. Leave me alone, haters!


We ordered meats of litereally every kind, vegetables, rice on the side...just so. Much. Food. It was a crime how much food we were served and how much we ate.

We paid for 4 rounds of food but we struggled to make it through the 3rd round and told them not to even serve us the 4th round. We were so done.

The Bryans being all cute and stuff.

You grill that food, Megan!

Our first attempt at a group photo.

We were able to fit everyone in the photo better this time.

Sam and Momo. What an adorable couple. <3

This date with Sam and Momo took place over a weekend. The next Wednesday, so about 3 days later, Taiwan celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival. This is one of the only days off of work that we get this entire semester and it is a holiday that everyone celebrates with close family and friends. In practice, it resembles America's Independence Day in that there are fireworks, barbecue, and spending time outside at night looking at the sky. In attitude it's more like that of  America's Thanksgiving where people travel home to be with their families. Knowing that we don't have families to spend the holiday with, Momo invited us to join her Mid-Autumn Festival celebration at Sam's house. We gladly accepted and had yet more barbecue.

This was similar to how it worked at the restaurant, except it was outside and you went and grabbed what you wanted to grill yourself instead of having it served to you. We secured out own little grill, had a nice friend help us get the coals burning (which he did by blasting them with a blowtorch repeatedly), and grilled ourselves a ton of meat. And by a ton of meat I mean a TON. Like, way too much meat. Beef, pork, chicken, chicken legs, clams, mystery meats that I have no clue what they were but they tasted good, you get the picture. We grilled and we grilled for hours. We met a bunch of friends. Some spoke English; some didn't. All of them were incredibly nice and we had a good time.

Because our bodies really needed MORE meat that week.

Kim (bottom left), Me (center-ish), Josh (right) all enjoying the spoils of grilling.

The end of the night with all of our friends new and old.

During the drive back home I began to feel ill. It was a bit extreme for simple motion sickness and once I got out of the car and still felt sick I knew that something was wrong. I'll spare everyone the details and just say that I was food poisoned. Woo! Food poisoned in Taiwan take 2! It's not surprising really considering the fact that we were eating almost exclusively meat and it was all being grilled haphazardly at times on a tiny grill. There were times when the flames were nearly out and had to be reignited and other times when the blazes were out of control and had to be snuffed out, so it's not like the temperatures were truly ever in control. It was a great time and I don't regret it, but I will say that I went vegetarian for the next 3 days. After gorging on meat for a few days in a row and then having to purge it all, I was done with meat for a while.