Dez, Donovan and I went out to breakfast before we were all set to board a charter bus south. Most people slept during the 90-minute drive. I don’t think we all realized we were about to embark on a grueling uphill hike into the jungle. The hike just kept climbing up and up. In the…

On the schedule for the penultimate evening of this trip there has been a placeholder labeled “Kojo’s surprise”. The joke has been that we’re all going to a stinky tofu factory, but the intrigue has only increased the questions and speculation about what it might be. Tonight we all got the answer and boy was…

Today we had an earlier start than most days. Out the door by 7:30am to catch a train to Ruifang in the northeast. A few hours later we reached our first destination: Houtong Cat Village! The small town is littered with cats everywhere you look. You can buy cat food if you want to feed…

Today we headed up to the northeast coast to Jiufen, and a nearby mining town. After a 90-minute bus ride we arrived. We snaked our way down towards the “old street”. There were so many cool pottery shops along the way. The old street is a snaking, narrow alleyway with shops and restaurants crammed along…

It’s Thursday, aftershocks are more sparse, and field studies have resumed. Today it was our turn to visit Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and the National 228 Museum. We walked into the enormous Memorial grounds and it’s hard to describe the scale of the three structures (National Theatre, National Concert Hall, and CKS Memorial). Off to…

It took me nine days to find American-style breakfast cereal in a supermarket. It’s basically a cereal desert over here 🙂 But I have assembled four different flavors and assessed each one based on its texture/crunch, and flavor (on a 10-pt scale). I should note that I couldn’t find any whole milk to most closely…