Green noodles, wet concrete, tragedy, and good news on the job front.

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So the plan is to do job applications in the morning and explore the city during the afternoon. We now have a phone which is a godsend. I take Melissa over to Taipei 101, where we discover "Jason's" supermarket in the basement which sells everything you could ever wish for, Shillin night market where we eat the biggest fried chicken in the world, and Taipei Main station where we finally try the delicious beef noodle soup that Taiwan is famous for. She takes me to Tianmu, a popular ex-pat area between Beitou and Danshui where we wander, eat Japanese food and generally don't exert ourselves too much. The Japanese restaurant is really cool. Melissa has some beautiful sushi and I have some vivid green noodles that I dip in raw egg and chilli powder. I probably wouldn't choose them again but it's an interesting experience. This is in danger of becoming a food blog so I will try and reduce the amount I jabber on about what i'm stuffing my face with. I would like to emphasise however how happy I am with the culinary side of this city, especially after my fifteen months in Korea where the food was extremely limited and one dimensional.

Anyway after a morning's job applications I get a lot of responses. I've finally knocked up a tip-top cover letter and schools are calling me up trying to organise interviews. This is really positive but none of them so far have offered to help me get my ARC (alien resident card) which I need to stay beyond my 90 day visa stamp as well as to work legally. They are also only offering a few hours a week which isn't much use at the moment. So I begrudgingly reject all the interviews and carry on with the applications.


The next day we wake to some dreadful news. Melissa's stepfather has died during the night back in The States. She's understandably devastated and it's a massive blow to her when everything was going so well. I try and console her but she's so far from away from her family there isn't much I can do to help her. I head out to the store and walk straight into a pool of wet concrete in my flip flops. Just when I think today is turning into one of the all time greats the phone rings. It's a school asking for Melissa to come for an interview right away. She somehow pulls herself together and we dash across town to Dazhi to get her there within the hour. Half an hour later she emerges looking brighter than she has all day. They want her to go back tomorrow to do some demonstrations and have offered to help her with her ARC. I'm so proud of her. A silver lining on an otherwise horrible day.

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