If you know me, you know that I love Cinco de Mayo. Sombreros are funny, tequila is great, and it's completely obscure that we should be celebrating it in America. And this year I celebrated it in Taiwan. Lucky for me, one of my good friends that I work with happens to be Mexican! With his cultural background, and my desire to bring everyone together and make margaritas (though sadly there were no margaritas to be had, however we succeeded at pina coladas that didn't taste quite right), the Cinco de Mayo festivities were put together! Abe planned the menu, and cooked everything, but it was held at my apartment because we have a larger kitchen and more space. About 15 people came, and we all ate a lot, and there were still leftovers! We didn't get any complaints about having so many people over, and Anthony even offered some food to the mean night doorman, he tried a bit of an enchilada and said it tasted like pizza. Ha! We caught him speaking English, he always tries to pretend he doesn't understand us, such an snarky man.
Abe constructed flowers out of tomatoes. I have no idea how. There he is cooking, probably yelling at us to get out of the kitchen.
The enchiladas!
Abe also made a fruit basket, out of fruit.
Tequila! Don't be fooled by there smiles, I had to practically force everyone to have a shot of tequila together. It just wouldn't be Cinco de Mayo without it!
Right now it's Firefly season in Taiwan. I didn't know such a season existed! Apparently it's mating time for the fireflies, so they all group up and flash immensely bright out in the woods. We decided to scooter and check them out. We went to a "town"/area called Neiwan, a little over an hour drive from Jhongli. We were hesitant to go due to all the surprise rains, but left around 6 pm on Saturday evening. Also, Peja, a Taiwanese friend, couldn't come with us, so we would have no one to help us in case we got lost. Oh, and we were following a hand drawn map... BUT, we found Neiwan, or at least I think we did. We walked around the street markets for a while, getting some food and seeing what kind of trinkets they were selling. I had some fried taro I think? I'm actually not sure what it was, but it was good. And I had some Egg Pudding Ice Cream! It was fabulous, I may consider making the hour drive again just to get some!
The map to lead you to the fireflies? Maybe, but we found them by some (most likely) drunken Taiwanese man that was really excited about speaking English and kept shouting "fiiuh fly! dis way!" Then he'd wiggle around and should "fiiuh fly!" again. We decided to follow his direction, and made it there. It was a nice walkway a bit up in the mountains with no lights, so a bit spooky, but really peaceful and quiet. There were other people there, but not mass amounts. The number of fireflies wasn't as high as I was anticipating, but still pretty neat to see. Guess they weren't out doing it too much on Saturday night.
Oh, and there was this giant roast pig chillin on the table in the streets.
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