不知不觉 - all change is gradual

Another breakthrough of sorts:
I had a really long conversation with my parents last night, all in Chinese, using some of the vocab words that I've learned. And I was able to read the exercise book that comes with my text, something that I never would have dreamed of doing just one short month ago.
It's really great to be able to detect my own progress, because I talk about this with my single class teacher and he tells me that I'm improving, but I couldn't tell. Until yesterday, that is. And I think that for me, confidence is really important because I do still have those moments with people on the street where I have nothing to say except "...huh?" It's really nice to know that I can communicate in Chinese.
Yay!
I have also decided that I should probably take better advantage of the cultural opportunities while I'm here.
And I've had 2 bowls of beef noodle soup, total. Sad. I'll have to defs change that before I go. But really, each bowl tastes like it has an entire cow in it. So that was 2 cows. I dunno if a human should eat many more than that in the span of 2 months.
Last night, we went to eat in the Shida night market, which is super awesome and probably has the cutest clothes of any night market I've seen. I had one of those bao wans (I have no clue what they're called, actually) which is like a glutinous outside around meat. Basically a steamed bun with glutinous outside instead of a yeasty bread outside. SO GOOD!
And I also went to this great vegetarian buffet. Mmm vegetables.
I love eggplant here, and today I figured out it's because they use basil to make it. And I love basil, especially in drunken noodles. Which are impossible to find here. Alas.
But I've also been eating a lot of zhua bing, which is scallion pancake but with this egg/cornstarch thing in the middle and it's SO GOOD.
OMG.
And cua bing, which is snow cones, basically except we get the xue hua bing which is snow ice. And it just looks like a shaggy dog. And tastes MUCH better than a shaggy dog.
Yup.
Also, things for next year's students, which I've been thinking about, but want to write down before I forget:
Live near ICLP - this means along Heping Dong Lu Section 2, if you can. But more towards section 1, if you can, because that's the Shida night market, which is much more interesting than section 3, where I live. It's sorta hard to get to school from the MRT - Gongguan or Technology Building but both are about a 10-15 min walk from class. And really, 8 AM class demands an easy way to get to it.
Make Taiwanese friends - or else you end up speaking a lot of English - fun but not so good for learning Chinese.
Eat lots of things - but make sure that none of them are stinky tofu. Mostly, you'll smell that one coming.
Sweet. Until the next.