across the ocean floor

i've officially become the teacher crying children go to, regardless of who their regular teacher is. don't know how you could turn away a crying kid, no matter how silly the reason they're crying seems. sheesh.

getting really excited for this weekend! we're celebrating my birthday, abha's engagement, guillermo's welcome to austin, and andy finding out he has job stability. should be fun.

lazy weekend

this weekend we got a "cold front" and it was in the 70s on saturday morning, so we opened the windows!

and now of course we're back in the 80s in the mornings and i just wanted to post the pictures to remember how nice it was. it's supposed to cool down again this weekend.

jeff found all of dad's old cameras and filters and books, so now you always see him with a camera around the house.

one day he walked over to the train tracks a block from our house and this guy called to him. turns out he was a professional photographer. he wanted to adjust his lighting so he asked if he could take a few pictures of jeff and ripley.

random/cool. i'm surprised ripley didn't try to eat him.

pocket full of diamonds

becca sent the link to the professional photos of her wedding and i'm sharing some of my favorites. first, let's just marvel at what a GIANT i am:

the ceremony room was so beautiful and i'm glad they got this picture of it because it was impossible with a regular camera.

same with the reception room
the photographers were what you would imagine indian gangsters would look like. fedoras. odd facial hair. kinda gangly. anyway we were all trying to be very serious when they were having us take these 'fun' pictures..

and the rest are pictures where you can just seeee the love between bec and nirav. so sweet.

(these two are my favs)

but now it's found

these two boys, chase and leon, haven't been able to remember my name all week. i greet them as they come in off the bus and they put their hand on their foreheads and tryyy to remember, but they just haven't been able to. they're two of my very favorites, too. well-behaved, nice, honest, awesome. but todayyy chase came bounding up to me with a big grin and said 'HI MS. MEGAN!' and leon was a few yards behind him and got up to me and just smiled and said 'hi ms. megan.' so cute.

my birthday is a week from today!

andd i found out they sell koala yummies at HEB in the international foods section! they're expensive, but they're there. on a side note, half the people who find this blog find it because they googled 'koala cookies' and i have that one post on blonde in taiwan about them. weird huh? p.s. they were apparently recalled in hong kong and macau for high levels of melamine during the great chinese melamine scandal of 2008. OOPS. maybe that's why they're so tasty.

shutterfly

i'm not even being paid to say this, but you really need to sign up for shutterfly's emails. they have a deal twice a year or so where you can make a free photo book and just pay for shipping. i've made one of taiwan, one of studying abroad and now i'm making one of camp. the quality is really good and it's something like $9 for the shipping. it would normally be $30 for the book (8 by 8). above all, it's nice to have your pictures of something all in one nice little hardcover book with typed out captions. you get to choose your own layout and colors and font and everything. pretty fancy.

on the topic of consumerism, will everyone do me a favor and please go out and buy lavender scented ivory body wash. i think they're phasing it out because you can only find it once in a blue moon at HEB. maybe if we allll buy it, they'll keep it around. :)

just got home from grocery shopping. love grocery shopping at night. and i got to read two stories with the cutest boy in the world while everyone else was sleeping today. good day.

second tea of the day

i found the cutest boy in the world. he goes to my school. he's blonde, adorable and his eyes turn into little tiny winks when he smiles. i love him. he is the best.

much better day today. but man it's been a looonggg day. woke up at 7:30 and couldn't sleep. busy nonstop since 10. i have no juice left in me. not even enough to write this.

take it easy on me

things i learned today at school:

1. i love rules. i need rules.

2. you have to teach kids to greet you

3. it only takes two tries to teach them to say please and thank you reflexively, especially when snack is involved

4. second graders are too cool to sit in circles

5. my name is easily confused with 'martin'

6. kung fu originated in china

7. a whole set of math bingo flashcards fits in my pocket

it was a crazy first day. tomorrow will be better because i'll have some idea of what's supposed to be happening. that will be nice.

p.s. my smart boyfriend saved us each $70 on tickets from china to taiwan today. bless you, bad chinese websites and cheaptickets.com.

not sleepy

i would trade in a lot of my real necklaces for homemade necklaces with 7 mismatched plastic beads on them any day. kids are so cute. mine weren't there today. they all start tomorrow. prettyy excited/little nervous.

it is blistering hot in texas right now. over 100 every day. like a wall of blow dryers are pointed at you at all times. pretty gross. hopefully this month will just fly by and then we'll be gone for all of october and when we come back, it'll magically be fall.

have to be out the door at 730 tomorrow so i'm going to see how early i can fall asleep tonight.

went fishing

maj and i cleaned out the kitchen drawers/cabinets today and i regret not documenting it. we took all of the spices out and we had SEVEN things of red pepper in various forms. flakes, crushed, ground. we ended up giving matt one of everything that we had multiples of and now there's a huge pile of stuff for him on the counter.

helped gmo's roommate, geoff, move in today in 100 degree heat. do not recommend.

and the tickets to china are booked! flying into beijing october 4th and flying out of taipei october 27th. (did you know you could do that? it's called an 'open jaw' [or multi-city on airline websites] ticket and it cost us only like $100 more than flying in and out of beijing, but saved us the $500 it would have taken to get from taipei back up to beijing). staying with a friend i met on the diving trip to thailand. she lives in hong kong. i also bought a fancy backpack at REI yesterday. it's red, german, has a million straps andd a fancy airflow thing in the back to stay cool. it was also on surprise clearance. no price tag, but i asked chris, my new bestie at REI, and he price-gunned it.

first day of class tomorrow. excited to meet my kids. crossing my fingers.

how grandma is your grandma

jeff, maj and i were cracking ourselves up tonight after determining that we have the most grandma-y gram in the whole wide world. jeff described it as 'putting six grandmas in a pressure cooker and then not even straining it, then boiling the remaining stuff down into a grandma-y sludge. that's how grandma she is.'

and then the check list was born. see how grandma your grandma is:

does she knit baby sweaters for every newborn she knows? YES!

(every time we asked a question, jeff answered with a jump, an uppercut and a YYYYES!)

does she have a famous apple pie recipe? YES!

is she squishy? YES!

does she use aquanet? YES!

does she get a weekly perm? YES!

does she have a cute grandma laugh? YES!

does she send you a hallmark card on every single holiday? YES!

does she wear a super-thin nightgown with matching robe? YES!

is she in a church group? YES!

does she volunteer in a soup kitchen? YES!

does she know how to get stains out using nothing but lemon juice, salt and sunshine? YES!

is she a questionable driver at night? YES!

does she have a carefully tended garden? YES!

does she hang her clothes on a free-standing clothesline? YES!

does she ply you with cookies and treats? YES!

does she know all the neighborhood gossip? YES!

does she have an eerie ability to quiet fussy babies? YES!

does she invite strangers she meets in the airport to her house to visit? YES!

has she adopted all of the neighborhood kids as her own grandchildren? YES!

does she have a sewing room? YES!

does she make you quilts, sweaters and socks? YES!

does she send care packages to school/your overseas residence? YES!

does she always have two kinds of trident gum in her purse? YES!

..the list goes on and on.

samba saravah

majjy got a really cool offer that we're crossing our fingers for, and she had these fancy pictures taken for it. thought i'd share some of my favs.

so the school is going to work with me and i'm going to have a classroom for the month of september until i leave for china in october. the director of the school even offered me more afternoon hours, which i'm still crossing my fingers for. it's really up to admin. but it's the best of both worlds. save a little cash, still go on the trip. then they said i could sub when i got back if i wanted to.

buying plane tickets tomorrow! we're waiting til october 4th so i can still be here for the TX/OU game on the 2nd. and my lonely planet travel guide came in the mail today. getting excited.

i tried making zabaglione, italian custard, today. fail. it's just 4 egg yolks, 1/4 c sugar, 1/4 c marsala wine. it said 'whisk until doubled in volume and thick' so we thought we did that, and it was pretty tasty. but it was kind of foamy.. and then when i went to look at it an hour later, the wine had separated out of it. i think we just needed to keep whisking.

this is my very favorite. i think she looks like a ballerina. ..probably because i wore that top as part of a halloween costume one year.

change your ways

so today during the interview i was basically offered an afterschool teaching position. part time. 3rd graders. but i really don't want to skip a month-long trip to china for a part time afterschool job. full time? sure. real job? ok. 20 hours a week to end up netting 3k in 4 months AND miss out on china? no thanks. plus, i already bought my sleeping bag.

it folds up to the size of a nalgene bottle (5 by 10). and i know you're thinking 'but megan, it isn't even a real backpacking trip. you won't be sleeping outside, you'll be in hostel beds and train sleeper cars.' but nowww i'll have my own little sanitized comfy pouch to sleep in. and what if we have to sleep overnight in a train station or otherwise sketchy outpost?

anyway now that i'm turning down the second job, i'm fully committing to china in late september. and only applying for jobs i actually want if they're offered to me (what a concept, right?). it's hard though when you start feeling pressure to just make money regardless of how you make it. but now my name is in the sub pool for that school and 2 school districts. so we'll see.

she's gonna teach me how to swim

i'm in love with smitten kitchen and her summer salad recipes. today i made the chopped vegetable and watermelon salad and ate 3 bowls of it throughout the day. it has a million things in it.. cucumber, watermelon, tomatoes, bell pepper, mint, feta, greek yogurt, scallions, oregano, radishes. super refreshing and cool on a hot day. the dressing is really thick and delicious.

and matt came over with some of his bread. i loaned him my artisan breads in 5 minutes a day book and he's been sending nonstop pictures of bread all day long:

some were from yesterday. anyway it's really tasty and it turned out better than all of the bread i've tried to make from that book. i'm going to go to his house one day and see how he does it.

interview tomorrow at a private school!

like an electric eel

you know when you know something bad might happen, but you hope it won't, so you keep doing something you know you probably shouldn't do anyway? that's what happened yesterday when i was trying to tighten a loose knob on my dresser. i went a liiiittle too far and it just shattered in my hand as the acrylic literally reached its breaking point.

so it left my already sad looking dresser looking that much worse. now. usually when things break in this household, they stay that way for a pretty long time. or they get some kind of ramshackle half-fix. did part of me just want to superglue it on there and call it good? yes. would it be all wonky and probably break again soon? yep.

and i remembered a couple of weeks ago when guillermo and i were chatting about how he can't stand things being 'ate up' which i've learned is a military term for screwed up.. and how he fixes everything immediately. so, in an effort to be more like a person who fixes things well/immediately, i headed to anthropologie after a really nice lunch with andy downtown.

anthropologie is heaven. they have little bowls painted like flowers that are actually measuring cups. they have patterns you could never dream of but that are exactly what you wish you could dream up. it smells good. the clothes are pretty. but my personal favorite thing is the knobs.

there are three whole little spinny things like that! all full of beautiful acrylic, ceramic, and enamel and brass and just everything. i spent half an hour just looking at every single one of them and then 10 minutes trying to choose some for my dresser.

eventually i decided on these simple, clear, diamondy looking ones. at $6, i only got 2 for the little top drawers and figured i could add '4 diamondy knobs' to my 'things to buy/do when i have a real job' list. but thenn on the way home, i remembered maj telling me that hobby lobby had cute knobs. and i did find these little ceramic ones for $3 each.
so voila! new dresser.
the other big adventure of the day was making this recipe for chili rellenos with hatch chilis which are in season now. it had a few ingredients i had never heard of/used. the most interesting of which is epazote. wikipedia told me 'Epazote is used as a leaf vegetable and herb for its pungent flavor. Raw, it has a resinous, medicinal pungency, similar to anise,fennel, or even tarragon, but stronger. Epazote's fragrance is strong, but difficult to describe. It has been compared to citrus, petroleum, savory, mint and camphor.'

REWIND. did you see 'petroleum' snuck in that list? and they aren't lying. it doesn't smell like mint or citrus. it smells like gas. luckily, it doesn't taste like it. i don't know what it tastes like, but it was good in the chili rellenos.

i wouldn't recommend that recipe though. it was relatively complicated for not such an impressive turn out. maybe because i used 2 tsp of epazote instead of the recommended 4 T. what can i say, gasoline herbs make me nervous.

hole

gram: i didn't see hole in the birthday book

me: what?

gram: i didn't see hole in the birthday book

me: huh?

gram: i said, i didn't see hole in the birthday book

me: ooohhh.

and then we just giggled hysterically for the next 5 minutes about the mystery family member from yesterday, hole. gram's laugh just makes me laugh and then the fact that we can't stop laughing makes both of us laugh.

this picture is from last week. jeff is wearing my shirt from high school. i'm wearing matt's shirt. matt's wearing my shirt from college. typical.

abragadabra

maj found a folder labeled 'megan kindergarten do not throw out' in the attic.

kinda funny to remember what it was like to be 5. in my world, that meant lots of princesses..
below says:

hand

dots

Lips

ABRAGADABRA

lots of bows..
and then, a shocking discovery.. our 6th family member: hole.

weird, right?
jeff and i were in tears laughing.

big rock candy mountain

today we had a head to head chai faceoff. tazo boxed mix vs this recipe that i found on mary beth's blog at salt and chocolate. she's mentioned it a couple of times and i happened to have all of the ingredients except the condensed milk, so i decided to give it a go today.

let me preface this by saying i've been on a chai mission for quite some time now. becca's mother in law has a "recipe" for chai.. but it has no real measurements. bec just gets a little jar of spices from her once in a while. not easy to recreate. but i've tried all kinds of internet recipes over the last year.
the boxed tazo wins for ease and overall taste. it tastes justttt like the chai at my favorite DC coffee shop, tryst. wouldn't be surprised at all if that's the mix they use when you order it. a cup there is $3.72. a box of the mix at HEB is $4.99.. and you can make something like 10-12 cups with it.
the website recipe was pretty similar tasting to the tazo brand.. but it just didn't look as nice. and i didn't have ground cloves, so i just threw whole cloves and whole peppercorns in and i fish them out when i make the tea.
it's cheaper, especially if you don't have to buy any of the spices. condensed milk was $2. and it will probably end up making the same amount.
the end :)