McDonald's

Prior to moving to the wonderful country of Taiwan I was one of the many Americans who told himself that he would never choose to eat at a McDonald's. Something about the meat that I thought tasted like cardboard or the fact that McDonald's and Wal-Mart are trying to take over the world. But things change when you move to a foreign country and all of your ice cream options either contain too much water or the closest Cold Stone's happen to be 2.5 hours away by bus. So McDonald's has become the cool place to be whenever us Berhaners happen to drop by.

The question now becomes what is it that we do at McDonald's? Pretty much everything. I celebrated my 25th birthday there complete with a cake provided by my roommate Joseph and a present from the girls. It wasn't until tonight though that I noticed the sign on the front door that said no pictures and no outside food. Oh well.

Another favorite thing to do is talk about our lives back home. Sometimes the details can get a little gushy but what can you do? I would love to expound upon what it is we are discussing in this picture, but I know I'd get hung out to dry.

The real reason I find myself attending McDonald's at least once a week is for the ice cream. As many of you know I love ice cream and probably eat too much of it. I believe that the ice cream actually tastes a bit normal, well better than the average ice cream available. I have also discovered the joy of peanut butter in ice cream and have managed to introduce it in most of the diet of my fellow teachers. It might not be the prettiest sight to see but it sure tastes great.

The food we don't continue to come back for includes the chicken wings complete with bone and all as well as the chicken burgers with a rice bun instead of the normal bread bun as found in most American McDonald's. Taiwan also seems to have a strange obsession with sesame seeds on bread products. I won't pretend to understand but I don't always enjoy it.

No visit to the McDonald's would be complete without a trip to the garbage can. For some reason I imagined that because McDonald's was well, McDonald's, they wouldn't have to recycle like everywhere else in Taiwan. But that was not to be so. We are required to seperate our trash prior to throwing it away. Gratefully we don't have to wash it first but the first time we went to throw our stuff away we had to pull trash out of cups and unwrap the hamburger wrapper. So next time you attend McDonald's don't think of corporate America, think of us foreigners living it up on soft serve ice cream sundaes.