The daily grind.

Taiwan is sticky. And as my dad says, "How you say it... been raining cat and dog?"

I went underwear shopping yesterday and my boobs are officially different sizes. One's a B and one's a C (Asian bra sizing makes me feel so good about myself!). But girls here are literally flat as boards. I feel like my boobs, pressured by the media and the population of flat-chested Taiwanese girls, are deflating at top speed to assimilate to society's expectations of them. Yes. Boobs have feelings too.

I'm still jetlagged, so I've been waking up at 6 in the morning. I go for a run around the local park, where old ah-mas sit around on benches chatting up a storm. Given the billion degree weather and my intolerance for it, I'm also dripping wet when I'm through. My mother and I walk to the outdoor market a couple of blocks down to pick up groceries for lunch - water spinach, tomatoes, eggs, clams, edamame. Duck wings and seaweed for the walk home. Basically all of this for $6... you have to love the exchange rate. Sanitation is in doubt, but since when does anyone in Taiwan care about sanitation? I was examining this fuzzy-looking thing while my mother was picking out pork bones to make soup. 10 seconds later I realized it was the ear of a full on hog's head... good grief.

In the afternoons, it rains. My mother believed otherwise and refused to buy an umbrella (so that's where I get the stubbornness.) We emerged from an accessory store to the pouring rain and had to shop down that single side of the street with the meager protection of the overhang for about, 1.5 hours. Fun.

I also came across a cockroach on the towel after my shower. It's my second showertime cockroach encounter at my dad's Taiwan apartments. This either says something about my dad's level of cleanliness or something about what I deserve for things I've done in past lives. My dad claims he's never seen a cockroach here though, so it must be the latter.

Anyway I'm going to head out soon to the drugstore. I love Taiwanese drugstores. Just yesterday I picked up oil absorbing papers, fake eyelashes, a nifty comb, nipple tape (cool huh? I thought so too), among other things. Every trip to Watson's is seriously an adventure... and they are full of cool Japanese products with labels I can't read. Somehow this is reassuring, like if I don't know what it's for how could it possibly go wrong?