Friendly Fremont

My favorite area of Seattle is Fremont. Why Fremont? Fremont isn't dangerous like the University district, and it isn't noisy or crowded like downtown. In Fremont, you can walk at a relaxed pace and explore the area slowly. When you take a bus to Fremont, you can get off the bus near an intersection between Fremont Ave N and N 34 St. As far as I know, bus of UW (#31/32) and Downtown (#16) arrive there directly.

 

My friend and I took bus #31 to get there. After we got off the bus, the first stop is "waiting for the interurban". This place isn't written up on our teacher's 50 City Walks card, but it is shown in my Seattle travel guide book in Taiwanese. Local residents or visitors sometimes put decorations on this statue. It looks fun!

We kept walking toward the direction of Evanston Ave N. We found the "Fremont Rocket",  a very big rocket connected to a roof of a store. Actually, we were not interested in the rocket. Haha~

Then we kept walking on Evanston Ave until we found the Statue of Lenin at the intersection bewteen Evanston Ave N and Fremont Place N. The Statue of Lenin is a huge statue. You can see the picture. I looked so small compared to the statue. Lenin was a very important person in Russia history.

 

What is our next stop? If you go to Fremont, you have to go to this place, the "Fremont Troll". The Troll is ready to climb out and its left hand is pressing down on an old mini cooper. Every time, when I take my friends here, there are always many visitors taking photos.

 

After we visited several places, we got hungry, so we decided to go an American restaurant, called Blue Moon Burger (703 N 34th St). It is in my travel guide book. We ordered two different kinds of hamburgers and a half and half (half fried onion ring and half French fries). It cost around $19.00. By the way, the clerk of the restaurant was friendly and nice to customers because he told us that we could drink free sodas if we ate at the restaurant. Haha~

 

After we finished our dinner, we went to the bus stop. While we were waiting for the bus, we saw the Fremont bridge being raised. WOW, we were so lucky to see it. In our country, no bridges can be separated and raised.

Above is my half day Fremont trip. In Fremont, there is an annual parade every June. This June, my friend and I also went to see the parade. The performers seemed be almost all local presidents. They had heavy makeup and played some musical Instruments or danced. Some people wore fairy-tale costumes. The most special thing is that we saw several naked people with body painted. I have never seen anything like this in Taiwan. Finally, I really recommend Fremont. You can take an afternoon to visit it and find some interesting things there.

 

 

 

 

 

    






     

Taiwan Night Market

What best represents Taiwan? No doubt!! It's the night market. In Taiwan, every city has at least one night market or more. Taiwanese people love visiting the night market, especially on the weekend. On the weekend, if the weather is good, the night market is always so crowded. It is a popular social activity. Parents take their children to the night market to eat and play games. People also go to the night market for dating. A gathering of friends go to the night market for a dinner or  shopping. Therefore, I think if you have been to Taiwan, but you didn't visit a night market, it means you didn't visit Taiwan.

What can you do in a night market?? First, you can eat Taiwanese traditional food or exotic cuisine. However, every night, the market has different famous food. For example, if you go to Rao He Street Night Market, you have to try charbroiled pepper bread. If you go to Shilin Night Market, you should try Oyster omelet or BBQ or Stinky tofu. Of course, you can also eat Thai cuisine, Japanese cuisine, and Hong Kong food in the night market. People also eat steak or hot pot here. Maybe you will ask me what kind of food my favorite food is in night market. My answer is fried chicken and BBQ. I could eat them every day!! But, they are unhealthy foods. :(

After you are full, you could also go shopping or play some interesting games in the night market.  That's why Taiwanese people love going to the night market. It is so fun in our night market.

So, I really strongly recommend that you visit our night market if you have a chance to visit Taiwan. You will experience Taiwan’s night life and culture at the night markets.

BTY: These pictures come from another blogger’s website.

My Seattle

Last Friday, my classmates and I went to Seattle's Gas Works Park to see the fireworks. The fireworks show started at 10:20pm. The fireworks were very beautiful, and I think it was more beautiful than the fireworks in Taipei.

Last weekend, my friend Alison was visiting me from San Francisco. I took the train to Tacoma airport and waited for her. Before this, my other friend Anne gave me a large box of cherries because she went to pick cherries on Friday, and I was very appreciative. She is so sweet~~

After I met Alison, our first stop was to go to Pike Place Market because she was so hungry. We ate fried fish and had a cup of chowder soup. After this, we went back to the U-district and drank milk tea. When the sky started to be dark, we walked home.

Last Sunday, I took a tour around campus with Alison. She took many pictures of the buildings. Then, we went to Chinatown to eat at Jade Garden restaurant. This is HONG KONG DIM SUM. I recommend it strongly because the food is very delicious and is reasonably priced.

 

 

 

When we finished our lunch, I took a bus home because I had to do homework, and Alison stayed downtown to enjoy the sights. I was so sorry about that...> <"

 

Introduction

 

Welcome to Iris's blog. My Chinese name is Mei Ling Pan, and my friend usually call my English name "Iris". I am from Taiwan, and I have studied English in Seattle for 3 months. Why do I choose Seattle the city to study English? My several colleagues told me that Seattle is wonderful city, so I decided to study English here. In this blog, I will introduce you about myself and share my life in Seattle.

Family

I was born at Chiayi city, a small town in central Taiwan and lived at Chiayi until I entered college. When I graduated from university, I moved to Taipei due to work. I only have one older brother and he works for a bank. My parent are both  tour guide now. They really loves this job. Chiayi city is surrounded by many mountains, and the one of mountains is called Alishan. The tea leaf of Alishan is famous in Taiwan. It smells fragrant and tastes very smoothly. Many foreign visitors to buy it as gift.

 

 

 

Education and Work experience

I graduated from university 10 years ago. My major is business management. After I graduated from university, I started to work in the IT industry. In the beginning, I worked in sales and purchasing. Finally, I got a chance to join a laptop manufacturing company in Taipei in 2007, and my first job in the company was buyer. After two years, I transferred to project team. Before I quitted the job, my job is to manage project. As a project manager, I have to work with team members, a China factory and customers. Actually, I focus on product that already started to ship out, so I always need to handle many customer complaints or big change event, like Microsoft windows change.  Sometimes I may need to participate in an entire day meeting or conference call because I manage many projects at the same time. My life is so tight every day due to my job.

 

Interest

My hobby is travelling, watching TV and seeing a movie and having a dinner with friends. In the weekend, I like to see a movie with my friend or arrange a dinner or drink with my friends. Sometimes, my friend and I also like to visit a night market to eat Taiwan traditional food as dinner. In Taiwan, every city both has night markets, and the top 2 of the most famous night market are Shilin night market and Raohe Street night market. In Taiwan night market, you can eat many Taiwan traditional foods, such Stinky tofu, Pig blood cake, oyster omelet. My favorite Taiwan food in night market is Taiwan fried chicken, deep-fried vegetables and meat. I also love playing small game in a night market, and it's very fun for me.

 

When I have longer vacation, I like to travel. When I feel tired in my job, I usually arrange travel for myself. I have been to Italy, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, Japan, China and the US. I think my favorite country is Japan because Japanese food meet my flavor and Japan is also clean.

 

 

 

In past three months, I have been visited many places in Seattle. I will continue to explore Seattle during I study in here. I hope to make many friend from different country. I think it will a very different experience in my life. Hope we both have wonderful and unforgettable memory in Seattle. :)