taiwan

i'll be honest and say by the time we got to taiwan, i was so tired of carrying around my heavy tote bag with my camera in it that i largely ditched it in favor of a tiny wristlet with money and keys in it.. so there aren't a whole lot of pictures of taiwan.

we stayed at bobo's new house. katie had moved out on friday and we showed up on wednesday.

jaime and joyce made me little cards :)
the first day we went to 101.
in case you never make it there.. this is what it looks like from the top on a cloudy day:
the color of the glass makes it look kind of interesting and ominous inside the observation deck. the whole floor looks like this and has little displays against the wall. one tells you about the top 10 tallest buildings in the world.
if you go upstairs, you can look out through the bars and pretend you're in a giant wine glass as you hear the wind whining through them.
if you go downstairs, you can see how sparkley the damper is.
don't know why but this air aquarium is my favorite thing in taipei main station. i find it every time i walk through there. in reality, there are just some random plants in there and there's a hole you can kind of stick your nose in. but the sign is hilarious and the air does seem kinda fresher than normal.
this is lianwu from the market. people kept telling me it was out of season, but it wasn't. thank goodness. it is so yummy and only in taiwan. couldn't find it in china or HK.
best danbing in the whole wide world.
typical scene at the kuo's. i love that it even includes mr. kuo's favorite notepad and his glasses.
we took a whole bunch of pictures but they're all on other people's cameras.
this is when we met up with alex and his new girlfriend, emily, at shilin night market.
beer on the street.
lunch with my old coteacher, augusta.
and her sweeet 8 month old baby, naomi. she sat in my lap until our food came. her newest game is throwing stuff on the floor and having you get it for her.
this was the morning we left. we overslept, took 4 minute showers and were in the car on the way to the airport before we knew it. look how big joyce is! she doesn't even look like the same kid.
and that is the end of the trip pictures! all of the ones i didn't post are in this album on facebook.

some people i want you to meet

these are the people that i look forward to seeing every week. funny they're almost all food related. i guess when you don't cook, the people who make your meals become very important to you.

tsong dra bing lady who always sees it's me and then just nods and makes my food because she knows how i like it.
the people who make my stamps in guei shan
tea people in guei shan. there's one more woman but she works when the other 2 aren't there. i see them every monday and friday
linda, my chinese teacher
tina coffee ladies
ching xin tea shop people where i pick up green tea almost every day
ji dan gao woman in carrefour. we always smile and wave when i go to/leave carrefour, regardless of whether or not i buy ice cream or cakes from her.
..you've seen these three before. look how cute bobo's haircut is!
grandma of grandma's
fruit market ladies. the grandma gives me a new fruit to try every week.
time to go to dinner with allen but i have about a million more pictures to upload tonight if i can find a spare moment. halfway down the to-do list!

give it to someone special

it is so hot in taiwan. uncomfortably hot. it's like when you have a sunburn and you feel heat radiating from your skin. only one more month though!

i'm just floating on a cloud now. a month seems like such a short time, so i'm just enjoying the everyday things. this afternoon i went over to bobo's for chinese and then stayed to play with the girls. jaime was singing 'last christmas' and joyce would sing, but all she knew was 'last christmas, i gave you my heart.. blah blah blah dah dah .. SPECIAL'. she sung it at the top of her lungs in the car with her own madeup words at least 6 times on the way to pick up lunch. and she was extra lovey dovey and wanted to be picked up every 2 seconds and taiwanese people on the street were giving us the funniest looks.

i was thrilled to see my babies tonight and they're two of my favorites so they were equally excited to see me. they wanted to know all about thailand and some of them got hair cuts that they wanted to show me, and we just got back into our groove. it was nice. my little boys let me hug them without even really pretending to run away and scott just came and leaned against me while we were reading without me even doing anything. working with kids really is so much fun on the good days.

tea lady, stamp man, grandpa (i haven't mentioned it in months and months, but there's this little corner store right across from the school and we call it grandma's because this old woman is always behind the counter, but in the morning, it's her husband with parkinsons who continually hits himself with a long rod) and the cleaning lady all said long time no see to me today, so it was sweet that they noticed that i was gone and came back.

tonight as i was walking back from dinner and ice cream with tess and katie, i saw alex inside the coffee shop, so i went to say hi to him.
alex: welcome back, did you have fun on your vacation?
me: yeah, i had a lot of fun
fanny: how strange that the foreigners are speaking chinese to each other

stars shinin' right above you

hands down, the worst part of this job is the inevitable goodbyes. you have to say goodbye to your friends, your kids, the taiwanese people you make friends with. steve is leaving next week but tonight is the last time i'll see him since i'm headed to thailand. he's the kind of guy you marry. dependable, super nice, easygoing, wants a lot of kids, fantastic bowler, blushes like a girl. if we had the sparkle, i would snatch him.

joycie and i said goodbye today too, but not forever. she and jaime are going to their grandma's house for 3 weeks. she's like a whole different kid than i remember. she must be a few inches taller. she can say things i didn't even know she knew how to say before. we spent the afternoon playing with her webkin and some korean kids game website that we can't read.

we're getting somewhere with the automatic please and thank you.
joyce: megan, you do this one
me: i'm sorry, i think you forgot a word
joyce: you do this one, please
..5 minutes later..
joyce: you finish this puzzle
joyce: you finish this puzzle please
..15 minutes later..
megan: joyce can you hand me that marker?
joyce: please?
megan: pleaseee can i have that marker? thank you

i went to tuesday night bowling tonight since i knew it was the last time i'd get to hang out with steve and it was a lot of fun. i did hoooorribly, but it was ok. the bowling guys (and julia) are all really awesome. now it's 2am though. time for bed. cross your fingers that sleeping on wet hair will result in beautiful waves and not crazy morning hair.

p.s. jimmie is way more ballsy than me and she took pictures of the market where we've been buying fruits and veggies. tell me you would be able to walk past all of that hanging meat to get to the fruit in the back!

o canada

jaime and joyce are the cutest kids in the world. this is a picture joyce ordered the other day. she has a flashcard book and she picked out a picture and i drew it. including principal howe. i think it's hilarious how you can't tell the difference between the ones she drew and the ones i drew.
they're extra lucky because my grandma sent them stickers andd wrote them letters because jaime and i drew a picture and mailed it to her. bobo said they're going to be sooo excited tomorrow morning when they see them and she couldn't believe my grandma would do that just because she liked jaime's picture so much.
it was a team effort from the sewing group. i think norma found the webkinz ones. norma, deedee, fran, joyce and gram meet once a week for 'sewing group' where they all bring a bag of sewing or knitting which they leave at their feet as they all chat, drink tea and eat cake.
i forgot to tell you about frank and the big test yesterday. frank has a giiiant smile and big, flashy eyes and he's cute as can be, but he never ever pays attention in class. the rest of the class will be reading and he's looking up at me or looking around or causing mayhem. he never ever knows the answer to anything.

but yesterday we had a big test and he was awesome. he could recite the lesson, ask me questions, read another book and everything like a pro. i gave him 48/50. i was so proud of him. we always announce who got 100 and i announced frank's 96 and the class was in awe. good for him.
today was low-key. we sat by the pool at jon and chris' apartment for an hour or so to celebrate canada day. i went to tea with keith, who wiped his sweat all over me. gross. tonight i had fun in my jerk-kids class in spite of their unwillingness to smile. linda complimented me on my improvement with chinese over the last 6 months which made me feel good.
there were even some stickers for me! and a cool plastic sticker map of america with all of the states that you can stick to the window and peel off. thanks guys!

if i leave before you, darlin'

these are bobo's pictures of the water gun extravaganza.
well i had my interview tonight. they asked questions that i wasn't really prepared for.
who inspired you to go into public service?
if someone was writing a memoir about your life right now, what would your legacy be?
(is it just me or does joyce look noticeably taller?)
if you were running for office, what would your campaign slogan be?
[note the onlookers.]
i feel like i answered as well as i could given the 2 seconds i had to think about my answers. fingers still crossed. she said something about another department making the final decision, so i think how i look on paper is the most important part. they'll let me know the first week in july.
tonight we went bowling for steve's birthday. there must have been 20 or so people there. i finally met mike's much-talked-about girlfriend. she seems nice. she looks eerily like him. mike was wearing socks that she knitted for him.

smooth jazz has no lyrics

squirt gun fight 2009 was soooo fun. allen and i went to carrefour and bought 6 big squirt guns. we came home and filled them up in the kitchen sink and then i passed them out to chris, danielle, tess and dane while we were all sitting around in the living room, half an hour before we were supposed to go to the park..
it started with one little squirt.. and then an all out war broke out. we just couldn't sit there with loaded water guns without shooting each other. thank goodness we have vinyl couches and tile floor. everything was soaking wet. it was sooo fun.
i'm going to steal jimmie's pictures because she has a waterproof camera.

around 6, we relocated to the big big park where we met bobo's family and jerry. we decided to use 'banana' as our code word and shoot jerry when he walked over.. he was about to go fill up his squirt gun and tess randomly said 'jerry.. do you have a banana in your back pack?' and then we attacked.
jaime and joyce came armed with these silly little bamboo 'squirt guns', if you can call them that. it was a piece of bamboo with a little hole in one end and a plunger. they had a range of about 3 feet. they also had water balloons that refused to pop and just got covered in grass and bounced away when thrown. i think eventually they comandeered some of our squirt guns.
joyce was adorable. she would come up to you and say 'i'm for your team!' if you pointed your gun at her, but she attacked indiscriminately. 6 yr olds.
i didn't see allen for most of it. jimmie said he was just running around in circles shooting from the outside.
the big park was pretty mobbed since it was 6pm on a sunday, and a crowd gathered around us to watch. some people were laughing and vicariously enjoying the whole thing, while some people were just staring blankly like they didn't know what to think. looking back on it later tonight, we decided that a group of 20somethings and some kids having a giant water fight in the middle of any public place would probably attract a lot of attention.
what a fun day! after about an hour, all of our guns broke. the pump thing would break or it would just spray mist even after you pumped it up. bobo brought a big bucket and it was dumped, gatorade cooler style, on me one time and on tess one time.

no typhoon. i'm hoping the rain will come in about an hour just when i'm ready to go to bed.

watch the speech.

man it was nice not to wake up at 7:15 this morning for class! what a nice saturday.
this afternoon tess, bobo and i went to song shan to hit up the cheap clothing shops. we found a lot of brightly colored stuff this time thanks to bobo. apparently last time tess and i went, the street we went down was mostly clothes from korea which are all cream, dusty pink and gray.
i found a couple of dresses and a top i couldn't live without. i'll show you pictures after i've washed them in our newww washer. our old one was dying a slow death, so now we have a new one with chinese buttons. one of the secretaries labeled it in english this evening.
after shopping, i went over to bobo's because i haven't seen the girls in weeks and weeks. joyce's hair is longer every time i see her. we colored up a storm and played about 20 rounds of hide and seek.
when we couldn't take any more hide and seek, we headed for the big park. now every time we go, the first thing they want to do is cartwheel. people always watch us play.

this evening i went to this place called tina coffee. all of the teachers have been going there lately because they have a sandwich/coffee or tea deal for $150. i brought my chinese homework/flashcards and camped out at the counter for 2 hours tonight.
[you have to click to enlarge that pic to fully appreciate how adorable joyce is. i would leave all of my possessions here in order to fit her in my suit case if i didn't think she'd get all banged up in the cargo area.]
one of the women working there helped me order something, since the menu was all in chinese, and we chatted for a long time. i think i might become a regular there in my last month.
tomorrow i'm headed to the zoo with allen and i'm all excited because i get to practice the zoo animals.