excuse me while I wash the taste of decomposing garbage out of my mouth

Disclaimer:the amount of food I consumed today is obscene. Really, it's not ok at all.

So after not being able to fall asleep until about 3 in the morning last night, Gina and I woke up bright and early at 6 am. Being the fit and motivated people that we are, we started our day off with a 2.5 mile jog. It's safe to say I now know what it's like to run in a cloud! Let me tell you, Atlanta has nothing on Taiwan's humidity. My sweat wouldn't even evaporate-ick. Anyhow, we showered and got ready for the morning activities of breakfast (cereal for the last time wahhhh) and orientation/welcome reception/lunch. This is when all the craziness began to start.
I have so many freaking amazing titles for this blog, because of it. One idea was "Gabi tries shower: Hilarity does not ensue". Our shower has four settings. "scalding", "blistering", "frigid", and "igloo". Needless to say the entire shower was spent on my tip toes changing the water every time it got too much to bear. Awesome.
The orientation got me so excited; we have so many opportunities ahead of us that are going to be AMAZING (I'll write more about it as I go). And after the orientation we had our welcome reception. Everyone is so happy for us to be there and so accommodating. It's really different from our way of life where we assume that if someone comes into our country, they have to speak our language and do things our way. They are such gracious hosts and will bend over backwards to help us out. It's refreshing! We got welcomed by the president of NTSU, watched a dance, played some games, and met our buddies. I have (atleast) four: Viola, Yi, Addway, and Child. They all introduced me this guy (can't remember his name, so I will call him grey polo)and then proceded to tell me how he "thinks I am beautiful", "is single", "would make a great boyfriend", and "wants to kiss me". Naturally I turned beet red and started hysterically laughing. Nothing else was said. We then had a huge buffet lunch with different meats, vegetables, fruits, and rice dishes. Everything was so good!
After a quick rest period we took a tour of the campus and went into the city to get a foot massage. It felt SO good after sprinting hills this morning. Then the real gluttony began. We walked a block or two to the hot pot restaurant for dinner. There's a big pot of broth (half spicy, half regular) and we pick food off from what looks like an oversized salad bar, filled with vegetables,noodles,seafood, meats, and dumplings, and put it in the pot to cook. Gina and I, determined to try everything, filled up our plates and dug in.

Not exactly sure of everything we ate, but fish balls, yucca, baby fish, tripe, and various parts of squid were involved. AMAZING. Not kidding. And then came the dessert! There were puddings, cakes, pastries, and of course ice cream. We had ourselves a nice little sampling platter. Stuffed, we headed out to walk off our meal in the night market. WRONG the night market upgraded my food baby to a food triplet (or atleast a twin). After getting over the initial shock of so many things going on at once, Gina and I went on a search for stinky tofu. We had decided that there was absolutely no way we could to Taiwan and not try it. This dish was not hard to find-all we had to do was follow the overwhelming stench of rotting garbage until we found a stall selling it.
This "national delicacy" appears innocent enough (see picture) but really smells foul. If you can get yourself to put the smell aside and bite into it, It actually tastes like a slightly tart fried tofu. The real killer is the aftertaste of stale garbage bag. Gross. One bite was more than enough. I think our faces say it all:

yeah, awesome. And THEN we had to sample like 80 billion different baked goods because they all looked so freaking amazing
I took so many pictures in the night market and could not even begin to capture the environment-I'll post the pictures to a flickr account and facebook later. On the bright side, I did get a bossy pair of heels for 8 US dollars. Love this country. but for real, I'm exhausted and need to rest up for my run and our first day of class!!