TGIF!

It's been a pretty intense week of studying for midterms and still managing to squeeze in some fun activities. There's only a month and change left in the awesome country of Taiwan, so even with midterms looming, gotta make the most of every day and see as much of the city as possible!

Tuesday was spent study, study, studying for my midterm on Wednesday. After studying for a majority of the day, Tsay, Chow, Ted, Robert, Tiff, Jenn and I decided to go get dinner at Jay Chou's restaurant in Taipei. Jay Chou, for those of you who don't know (I mean, how could you not?) is pretty much Asia's largest pop star, and hails from Taiwan. He has two restaurants in Taipei; they're both called Mr. J and we went to the "original" one (he opened a second, newer one closer to Taipei 101).

The first thing that struck me about Mr. J is how unassuming it is. You'll find it in a random alley way sort of off the the side from a mildly fancy district. The only thing denoting it as Jay Chou's restaurant is a painting of Jay Chou on the second floor; otherwise, you couldn't guess it was his restaurant if you didn't know.

The front door to Mr. J.

The restaurant is littered with really weird paintings of people, like his lyricist and friends and stuff, but this is the only place you'll see his face in the entire restaurant.

The second thing that struck me is how relatively normal the restaurant is. No Jay Chou music blasting all the time. No Jay Chou song lyrics or Jay Chou song names denoting dishes. It's just a normal French/Italian restaurant. And it's pretty darn good at that. And it's pretty cheap. I was really expecting it to be a grand, epic, expensive restaurant, but it's a simple, cheap and good place to eat.

Wednesday, Jenn and I went to the botanical gardens after our midterms. The Taiwan botanical gardens are famous for their awesome water lilies; unfortunately, when we went, they were all dead. Thus, we walked around the garden getting bit by hella mos-quit-oes but still having a good time. We were lucky we caught the garden on an overcast day, or else it would have been hot!

Imagine how pretty this place would have been if all them lilies were blooming!

Jenn 在呼吸新鮮空氣.

我也在呼吸新鮮空氣.

Afterwards we checked out the Chiang Kai Shek memorial. Jenn has been there but I haven't, and we both haven't checked this place out at night. I'm not sure how cool this place is during the day time, but at night, the CKS memorial is absolutely gorgeous. The lighting, the buildings, everything about the place is grand yet mysterious at night.



Thursday was mostly studying for the hardest midterm of the week, today's. For everyone else, it was time to put together a Halloween costume, so I spent most of the day studying alone. It let me have some Justin time (har har har) which I haven't had for a while here in hectic Taipei. It also let me practice my Chinese skills because I had to go out and get some boxes for my own Halloween costume, which I finished up after owning my midterm today. Tonight is our Halloween party but here's a little sneak peek of how my costume turned out:

Time to put some finishing touches on my creation! Until next time, zai jian!

-Justin