Food at the zoo

Outside the window of my "office," there's a papaya tree laden with green papayas and one golden ripe one. The rest of the ripe papayas are sitting in the kitchen counter waiting for consumption. Despite the heat and humidity, it's nice to be working in a subtropical clime.

Right now, everyone is scurrying around attending to this tortoise seminar that the zoo's Conservation and Animal Rescue Center is holding. Some American and one Australian tortoise advocates have arrived and are being led around, much to their amusement. Taiwanese politeness just seems superfluous to Western eyes. In my experience, too. I'm considered a foreigner here too, and I've had someone bow to me after I helped them with their powerpoint. Bow more than once, actually. And I'm like, "What?" Stop that. It would be a lot more fun and a lot less awkward if they just treated me like how they treat each other. Maybe it was just that one girl. Maybe just liked bowing.

They ordered Pizza Hut for the foreign guests, I guess to give them a taste of home in a foreign land. Except Taiwanese Pizza Hut bears little resemblance to American pizza, what with its mayonaise, seafood and sesame seeds. Take a look:

This is a seafood flavor pizza, apparently popular in Japan. It's streaked with mayonaise and is kind of sweet

Look, this one has hotdogs with mustard! Two American classics rolled into one!

The crust is pretty weird too. Why go through extra work to create little fingers of bread filled with cheese? People here must appreciate crust more than Americans do (see above, hotdog crusts).

So pizza here is pretty different, and that's all I have to say about that.