Supper in Taichung

Sunday night we went to Taichung (the 3rd largest city in Taiwan) with our roomate Mark and his girlfriend Karen. They've taken us out everynight this weekend - which was great checking out new places and eating good food.
Taichung is only about a 30 minute drive from Homei - if you have a car. Thank goodness Karen took us. (It's about 40 minutes by bus and train otherwise). The freeway that they've built is unbelievable. For any of you that have seen War of the Worlds - the freeway that is above Tom Cruise's backyard looks about the same as this one. It's built about 200feet (a don't really know) above ground and goes right over top of the small towns in the area. It was so neat to be on it. Jeff and I were both in total awe!
I, of course, being a worrier though was thinking to myself - what if there was an earthquake - this would be alot of cement to tumble down to the ground. (I think about earthquakes quite often as we are sitting on 6 interconnecting fault lines).
So Taichung - get this - the 2nd largest department store - Sogo's has about 17 or 18 floors of shopping!!! Could you imagine. The bay and sears would be teeny tiny compared to this place. We just drove by but do plan on getting there to take a look around sometime soon. Jeff said he's not all that excited about going in there with me......i wonder why?
We went to a nice litte restaurant and had a nice meal. Jeff's chicken wasn't quite cooked so he had to send it back but my pasta tasted delicious.
Taichung is a beautiful city. There are trees along the streets, parks with grass and plants, streets that aren't overflowing with garbage. I REALLY liked it there. I'd love to live there as opposed to in Homei - but Homei is a lot less expensive - we have jobs here and it will be easier to save our money here. So - we'll stay here as long as we can - but if we end up leaving Homei - Taichung would definitely be the first on my list.
Homei is just so ugly - there are no trees - and the trees that do exist are half dead. There is just cement, more cement, stinky sewers, and garbage. I'm just going to pretend that I'm walking around Taichung when we're out and about in Homei. It's really not that bad - if you close your eyes and plug your nose (heehee)
Michelle