Playing some more catch-up

I'm still a little behind, so I'll just briefly go over some of the highlights.
A couple weeks ago, we moved into our new dorms. Previously, we had been staying in the building next door with 4-person rooms. Now, we are in the graduate student dormitories, with 2-person rooms. The good thing about this move is that we now have no curfew, whereas before, we had a 12:30 AM curfew. Bad thing...there were ants everywhere when we moved in. I guess this is because we are now on the 2nd floor instead of the 10th floor. Fear not! They are all gone now thanks to my trusty anti-bacterial spray. Haha.

Another note-worthy event is our trip to Shilin night market, the most famous night market in Taipei. There is everything there...street food, clothes, shoes, jewelry, souvenirs...and everything is so very cheap. I finally got to try stinky tofu (chou dofu). It really was not as bad as I had expected. Truth be told, I was left wanting something...I was a little disappointed. The feared stinky tofu was really not as horrible as people make it out to be. In addition to this, I ate fried chicken filet (jipai) and a tofu dessert (douhua). It's a lot of fun, and there are so many people there that you have to walk sideways most of the time, especially on the weekends.
Another thing to know about Taiwan: there are night markets everywhere...I've been to three so far---Shilin, Shida, and Banqiao. My favorite is Shida because it is a little tamer than Shilin and the clothes seem to be of better quality. For food, though, I would definitely go to Shilin.

One weekend, the TA's took us to Danshui, which is right along the northern coast. There, we saw Fort St. Domingo, which used to be where the Spanish and British had the start of their colonies in Taiwan. I really enjoyed it because it is really interesting to see the history and evolution of the island. After the fort, we walked along the old streets and along the Fisherman's Wharf where there are various vendors selling food and random knick-knacks. My favorite part was at night when we went up to the famous Lover's Bridge. It was nice to take the ferry across the water and watch the sunset. Overall, I would say Danshui is kind of a tourist trap, but still a nice day-trip location...and so close to Sansia (only 1.5 hours on the MRT)!