For a woman like myself who absolutely LOVES fruit, Taiwan is like heaven! Taiwan is nicknamed "The Fruit Kingdom" and for good reason. The fruit here is AMAZING, abundant, and comes in all shapes and sizes. Taiwan is located in a subtropical zone so tropical fruits grow amazingly here. I thought I knew about fruit before we came here...but I definitely didn't. We have seen fruit that we have never even seen or heard of before. The mangos...OMG...are to die for. Anyway, we went to go buy some bananas from a street market the other day and he didn't speak any English. He handed us some type of fruit (we had no idea what it was) on a branch and I wasn't sure if he was giving it to us for free, wanted us to try it, just wanting to get rid of it or what...but we took it anyway lol. They were the tiniest little things on a branch, they were about the size of grapes, but we could tell you had to peel them because of the fuzzy skin. I went home and peeled and tried it and it almost tasted like a gummy bear with a seed in the middle that you couldn't eat. I wasn't really sure why anyone would spend the time to peel the fruit just to eat the tiniest part around a seed in the middle...but I guess people do. I looked it up and found that the fruit was called a longan. I tried to get Chris to try it but I think my faces when I was trying it threw him off...I couldn't tell if I liked it or not so he wasn't willing to risk it lol!
So that has inspired us (or more like me;) to try more unique fruits. Some unique fruits to Taiwan are the star fruit (carambola), sugar apples, durians, dragon fruit, pomelos, and several others. We bought the carambola fruit today and I really enjoyed it! The shape it makes when you cut it is adorable! Chris is waiting for it to get cold so I will let you know what he thinks once he tries it;) haha! I was also told by a teacher at my school that the pineapples taste different than in the US and they taste like caramel...so we bought a pineapple today as well! Chris doesn't like fruit as much as me so we have only bought the fruit both of us enjoy so nothing goes to waste!
The pineapples aren't the only thing that is different than the US....the staplers, OMG, are so hard to use. Another teacher from the US and myself were trying to figure out how to put staples in a stapler I bought and we seriously could not figure it out for like 5 minutes. We had to ask a student for help haha embarrassing!!!
So that has inspired us (or more like me;) to try more unique fruits. Some unique fruits to Taiwan are the star fruit (carambola), sugar apples, durians, dragon fruit, pomelos, and several others. We bought the carambola fruit today and I really enjoyed it! The shape it makes when you cut it is adorable! Chris is waiting for it to get cold so I will let you know what he thinks once he tries it;) haha! I was also told by a teacher at my school that the pineapples taste different than in the US and they taste like caramel...so we bought a pineapple today as well! Chris doesn't like fruit as much as me so we have only bought the fruit both of us enjoy so nothing goes to waste!
The pineapples aren't the only thing that is different than the US....the staplers, OMG, are so hard to use. Another teacher from the US and myself were trying to figure out how to put staples in a stapler I bought and we seriously could not figure it out for like 5 minutes. We had to ask a student for help haha embarrassing!!!