6:03am. I keep waking up so early, before everyone else is awake. The sun is parting the mists over the nearby mountains, and I can hear the cicadas again. Except here there are fewer cicadas than in Japan, or they are quieter in their noisemaking, and you can actually hear the birds singing over the ruckus of the insects. It sounds like a symphony.

10:23 pm. Such a long day. It turned out that my aunt had to get her appendix taken out as it had inflamed during the previous night, so she was rushed to the hospital this morning. After she and my uncle left, we went to the fresh produce market tucked into the winding alleys down the mountain, which required us to walk a bit downhill and then across a bridge that provided a view of a river brown with soil from the recent rainfall, and a sky lightly peppered with white storks and cormorants flitting about their business. The market contained all sorts of fruits, vegetables, fish and meat, as well as cooked breakfast food such as steamed buns, hot soy milk, and fried crullers (deep-fried sticks of dough). Taiwan is extremely dirty compared to Japan, and loud, and a bit ruder, but nothing can beat the variety, goodness, and cheapness of the produce here. We purchased a pair of squids which had been just caught the night before, and were still alive when we selected them - the skin on their backs pulsed with little purple spots which darkened if you ran your finger along them, leaving a streak of violet - as well as assorted fruit and vegetables, and some steamed bamboo shoot and chive buns for breakfast.

Later on we went to visit our aunt at the hospital. That was quite an adventure. We took the subway (a bright, shiny contraption that ran in perfect silence and had good air-conditioning - such a contrast from NYC!) to Tai Da Hospital, where both my aunt and uncle work and teach. It turned out she wasn't out of surgery yet when we arrived, so we picked out a card in a store nearby and wrote notes to her. Then we attempted to get upstairs to the 13th floor, where her room was.

The elevators in Tai Da were crowded and slow. People were overflowing from the "visitors and employees" elevators into the "beds and carts only" ones. Yves and Mom went up first, but I decided to wait for a less filled elevator (ha!) ... Then the doors to one of the elevators slid open and a throng of people poured out along with an intense, sour stench. And some janitor ladies ran in with mops. And I looked down, and there was a brown blob on the ground. Yes. Somebody pooped in the elevator.

Well, that made me hop on the first elevator that arrived that was heading up. Unfortunately the one I got on only stopped on even floors. So I got off at 10th and started looking around for stairs...but there were no stair pictures and I couldn't read Chinese. The only sign that was in English said "Please Take The Stairs - It Makes You Healthy." Thanks a ton, Sign. So I stared at the floor map for awhile and then found the stairs and started running. When I got to 13th floor Mom and Yves were waiting around in the hallway looking bored. According to the desk attendant our aunt was undergoing tests or something. Then a nurse passed by and asked who we were looking for, and then said, "She's in her room already, she was sleeping." It turned out that the desk attendant had confused our aunt with the person next door...

So we went to visit her. And she was lying on the bed and started chatting away with us, and our uncle arrived and our cousin and his girlfriend, and then out from the closet they whisked a bunch of pictures...of her surgery. Literally, of her gut that they opened up and were operating on. My aunt and uncle are both doctors. And there my aunt was, less than an hour from being rolled out of the operating room, and she was pointing out what each slimy little blob was... I didn't know whether to laugh or run away. Haha.

tbc