start at the very beginning

my head is swimming after my chinese lesson tonight. linda grilled me on DC (which i didn't know any of the vocab for.. which makes it hard to follow along/answer questions) and i was proud that she was proud. she's such a serious, no-nonsense teacher that it's the kind of thing where you study extra hard just so they'll think highly of you.
this was our "look sexy" pose, which i'm not very good at. natalie's got it down (far left). these are jimmie's pictures from wine and cheese girly night at RPM last week.

here's tonight's chinese lesson.. past tense.
i watched tv yesterday. zuo tian wo kan dian shi.
i watched tv. wo kan dian shi le.
i've watched 4 hours of tv (and i'm still watching it). wo yi jing kan le si ge xiao shi dian shi le.
i watched a movie. i watched it for 2 hours. wo kan dian ying. kan le liang ge xiao shi.
i watched a movie for 2 hours. wo kan le liang ge xiao shi de dian ying.

woo! i think all of those are right. i'm not going to cheat and go get my book, so here's hoping i understand.
we watched a movie in class tonight! it's fun to get paid for watching movies. every time you change books, you get to watch a movie in english. this week i have twoooo movie classes.
cross your fingers that i find the perfect apartment in DC. it's pretty rough going from paying $40/month to live in taiwan to paying $600 or more to live in DC. it will be worth it though. ballet! yoga! bai gong! culturally varied food that isn't taiwanese food masquerading as another kind of food!!

had to run from you

i've got nothin today, so i'm leaving you with the most awesome wedding-aisle walk in the woooorld.


and this conversation:
[ryan is reciting his spelling words to me, and as he's handing me the list, i rip it in half by accident. the whole class stops what they're doing and looks at me as ryan and i are looking at each other with our mouths open and hands on our face, home alone style, screaming.]
ryan: MEGAN!
class: what happened?!
[megan pretends to cry].
paul: megan, no cry! no cry!

..and this conversation
megan to tsong you bing lady: one day, can you teach me how to make these? i'm going home in 3 weeks and we don't have them in america
TYBL: sorry, i can't
megan: i can make the dough, i just want to learn how to do the fluff thing
TYBL: no, i really can't. you know how you go to the tea shop, and they can't teach you how to make their tea? i also can't teach you how to make tsong you bing because it's not my own recipe, it's the companys.
megan: oooh ok. ..but can't you teach me how to fluff them?
TYBL: no. are you an english teacher down the street?
megan: yep. but i'm going home soon
TYBL: many foreigners only stay one year. i didn't know you could speak so much chinese
..so that was kind of embarrassing but i'm glad that we had a chance to chat at all. i'm not sure why that woman and i haven't bonded before. i've gone there twice a week for a year now. she's always really hot from standing above the grill thing and listening to her ipod, so i just let her be.

i wore my pretty new bright aqua jersey dress today and i felt like a million dollars. i don't know why the taiwanese are so averse to color in general. the most popular colors are dishwater gray, black and purple.

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!

drew talks to me

well, we've reached that part of summer where you can't sit in the living room without there being a pool of sweat under you when you get out of the silly black pleather chairs we have. being at a stoplight on the scooter is like sitting in hell. you're breathing in exhaust. it is so hot. the only solution is frequent lemon ice drinks and cups and cups of green tea.

today phil had a sip of my green tea from coco and he said 'that doesn't taste like any green tea i've had' and i said exactly. tea at tea stands is the beeeeest. it tastes fresh and full of oxygen and flowery. the bottle of 'pomelo green tea' i found at subber today (that was labeled like it's sold in the US) was disgusting. it makes me seriously consider opening a tea shop in austin so i can guarantee fresh tea in my american life.
wunderground has a satellite view and i wondered if i could find my house. i found the palmer events center down by town lake and had to cheat and use the street map view because i was lost somewhere in harris ridge.

it's funny how you can tell maj is a landscaper when you look at the street from a bird's eye view.
one story today. this sweet boy neil, who was added to my 10-yr-olds class about 2 months ago, has been really shy the whole time. his mom told my coteacher that she didn't really even want a kid and that he would be spending a lot of time at school. she has a permafrown.

in the last 2 weeks he's kind of found his place in our class and he's actually been talking to me without me initiating conversation. today we high-fived when he finished reading this section and he backed away and said 'ouchhh' but he was kind of smiling so i assumed he was just playing a game, pretending like i hurt him, so i whacked his hand with my book and he yelped. turns out that his pinkie finger really was hurt! whoops! i offered to kiss it, but we just don't do that here.

after class, i asked him if he had really hurt his finger (in chinese because he doesn't know some of those english words). he said yes, playing dodgeball (duo bi qui - which i understood because i learned all the sports last week!)

and today at bobo's after chinese, i met one of jaime's friends, also named megan, who's half taiwanese, half american. she lives in houson during the school year and her family spends the summer in taiwan. she's probably 11 years old and she speaks english like any normal american kid and speaks chinese like any normal taiwanese kid. so jealous!

it was interesting because she was wearing crocs and so was jaime. it got me thinking how we've become so global with the internet that kids everywhere are playing with the same toys, wearing the same things, collecting webkins. though megan has 26 and jaime has 2. that seems to be a major difference. taiwan hasn't been swooped up in the ridiculous excessiveness.. it's nice.

here is what i know now, goes like this

living with 20 people is an exercise in patience and understanding. nothing divides people like cleanliness habits. my own reaction to the filthy kitchen has been to just stop using it. i haven't cooked anything since december. at the most, i'll cut up some fruit or veggies.

if i don't get the internship, i'm moving into an apartment with tess and katie! it makes me excited about staying here, if that's what ends up happening.
love this note.
well wednesdays are wonderful again now that i've resumed chinese class with linda. i hate the class i teach, but now i can look forward to chinese for an hour after class. it's at the coffee shop, with mellow music and coffee (the golden retreiver) asleep at our feet. i can't say enough good things about linda. she doesn't let you move on until you fully understand. she makes you practice a lot. she talks really fast and corrects your tones.

now i'm very clear on when/how to use 'dao' 'le' 'cong' and 'hai mei'
wo cong mei guo zuo fei ji dao taipei qu. i came from america and went to taipei by plane
wo cong jia li lai. i came from the house
wo hai mei chi fan. i haven't eaten yet
wo jin tian mei chi fan. i didn't eat today
jerry lai le. jerry is coming
jerry yi jing lai le. jerry already came
wo zhen zai lai le. i'm coming now
wo zuo huo che qu. i'll go by train
wo zuotian zai tu shu guan kan le shu le. yesterday i read books at the library
ni dao na li qu? where do you want to go?
wo yao qu taipei 101 ke shi wo hai mei qu. i want to go to taipei 101 but i haven't yet

AAAND, the ever confusing 'how you got there'
kai che - drive a car
zuo qi che - ride in a car
zuo huo che - take a train
zuo fei ji - take a plane
zuo chuan - take a boat
zuo ji che - ride on a scooter but not drive
qi ji che - drive a scooter
qi moto che - drive a motorcycle
qi che - car (noun)

can you grill a turkey?

spent an hour or so at the kuo's this afternoon because mr. chen and mr. wang were there. mrs. chan made fried pumpkin thingies and she taught me how to make them. i took a picture that i'll upload in the morning. she made enough for me to bring some of the extras to the dorm, and they were a big hit.

jimmie and i explored the fruit and veggie market and we did the little night market down the street. now she has a fruit lady and she knows where the tea shop is. i need to teach her the numbers soon so she understands the prices. as we were waiting for my cong dra bing to fry, this woman who was also waiting was asking me a bunch of questions. jimmie looked at me and said 'i can't believe you're speaking chinese.'

things i forgot were weird in taiwan..
long green bell peppers
long, skinny eggplant
the millions of food stands with all sorts of brown animal parts
many varieties of tofu
jelly consistency
old people riding those little 4 wheel chairs down the street
fructose syrup instead of granular sugar
tomatoes being included with other cut up fruit
sidewalks with loose tiles instead of concrete slabs
the lack of 'american style chinese' food

we went to tina coffee for "dinner" if you can call a waffle, fruit, gelato and tea dinner. the super nice woman from the first time i went was there. she told me she gave me a special deal on the gelato but not to tell anyone :X i'm not the best secret keeper there ever was.

i still haven't seen/spoken to keith. hopefully i can meet up with him some time tomorrow or early in the week. time for bed, it is laaate.

dr. snodgrass

when i went to turn on my scooter to drive to chinese, i was just getting this awful screeching without my engine actually doing anything. luckily, we have a scooter shop right down the road so i just wheeled it over there and the guys there fixed it.

first they told me to come back after an hour, then 2 hours, so finally i just gave them my phone number and they called me 6 hours later, just in time for class. at one point when i went over, my scooter was literally in at least 50 pieces. you could see right through the entire thing to the ground. but $40 later, we're back up and running.

so i didn't make it to chinese, but i've been hitting my new flash cards pretty hard. this week i'm learning flowers, clothing and one moreee topic.. oh, traditional chinese (taiwanese?) symbols. my name in chinese is mei gan. the mei part is the mei from plum blossom (mei hua) which is the flower on the taiwanese flag, and also has a symbolic meaning.[editor's note: this is not the flag with the plum blossom. apparently there's a proposed flag symbolizing taiwanese independence.. but this it the 'republic of china's' flag. see the comment some very helpful anonymous person left.]

my chinese book says.. 'Plum blossoms make their appearance in winter. They are representative of people who can withstand severe conditions.'
and the other half of my name, gan, means 'roots'. pretty solid.

i'm behind schedule because i was trying to install josh's copy of the rosetta stone for chinese. i'm half way there but i'm stumped, so i'm going to go try to figure that out. jimmie and keith in 2 days!

hey boy won't you take me out tonight

there are about 4 pictures in my 'taiwan' folder that haven't been posted on this blog at one point or another.
taipei 101 really is a very cool building, inside and out. the kids just call it 101.
two conversations to share today. chinese in italics, as always.
gary: does megan work at da chu on mondays?
me: no, i work in guei shan on mondays
class: you understood him?!
coteacher: you can ask her! you should speak english, but she can understand chinese.
gary: when will you go home?
me: july
gary: will you come back?
me: no
gary: oh.

i figured i should be honest since they're old enough not to freak out. they tell us not to tell the younger kids until we're 2 weeks away from our last class. i'm sure that class will be glad to have a new teacher, to be honest. i smile and bounce around when all they want to do is be dark and teen-y.
i played a game in there today where all they do is throw the sticky ball at various targets, and they'd throw it way over to the side and not even try. lame.
this is near allen's grandpa's house in mao li

i went to paspi for dinner and i haven't been there in a few weeks.. the owner had a bazillion questions for me in chinese that i could only grasp about half of.
as i was getting on my scooter to leave, this guy came out of family mart with 2 containers of juice and i told myself if it was papaya milk, i'd talk to him. sure enough, it was.
me: do you like papaya milk?
the guy: yep
me: it tastes good?
guy: yeah it's really good
me: my friends say i need to give it a try, but i don't think i'd like it
guy: it's really sweet
me: maybe i'll try it

i was all excited because i just learned how to say 'give it a try' and i remembered how to say 'papaya milk' 木瓜奶茶 ! without even thinking about it.
clean clothes. is there anything better?
allen's brother at a temple.
today on my way back from my 3rd rose milk tea of the week at the coffee shop, i just stood in front of the incense at the temple on the corner for a minute. i love how taiwanese temples smell.
coffee, the dog at the coffee shop, has his first lion cut of '09. he laid down beside me when i read today because he knows i'll scratch his back while i read. he smelled like johnson's baby shampoo.

losing my cooling

this week in chinese i'm learning all of the bugs and birds.
hummingbird is fengniao (wind bird)
bee is mifeng and honey is fengmi
owl is maotouying (fur head eagle)
peacock is kongque (keyhole freckle)
..i don't think i know the individual meanings of any of the other ones.
pork with niubang (burdock) and marinated bamboo shoots from the japanese restaurant in guei shan. i eat that once a week or so.

monday continues to be awesome. teddy and lin are at 50/50 with 'thank' you vs 'sank' you. at least now they're aware of when they say it wrong. and we're starting to conquer the 'do does + verb without ing' ..they always want to say 'she does running to the store'. so that's exciting. jasmine is awesome though. it's all because of her.

in my baby class, i reinacted the down on one knee story of yesterday for my coteacher while the kids were writing down chinese definitions, but they saw me and started singing the marriage song. jerry, scott and bill looked at each other and then looked at me and asked if i really had a boyfriend. scott held my hand while i was reading with jerry.
that whole thing was funny enough, but then after class when i went down to the front desk, carol told me that debbie, one of the kids, had told the secretaries that i was getting married. !

patrick told me about OnBeing from the washington post today. they're little mini interviews with normal, interesting people. go to the far right on the menu and go to archives, the 3rd page, and watch the kid. he is awesome.

lost on planet china

tess lent me a couple of books and i'm reading one now called lost on planet china by j. maarten troost. i'm 2 chapters in and it is hilarious/so accurate. i'm just on my way to bed but i wanted to share a couple of quotes.

the two phrases he learned before getting on the flight to beijing were..
"Qingwen, wo bu hui dun zhege cesuo. Youmeiyou beide cesuo keyi yong?"
Excuse me, I am not proficient at squatting. Is there another toilet option?

"Zhege jende shi jirou ma?"
Are you sure this is chicken?

on riding in a taxi..
"There was an unforgiving frenzy to get ahead. We leapt forth, swerved, smited competitors for position, and in leaps and fits made our way into the city. The taxi driver drove without consulting his mirrors, and often, far too often, we'd swerve into another lane, sending cars screeching and swaying in every direction..."

my favorite part so far..
"But this was the mother of all Chinatowns, and these thousands of signs, all presumably offering information, directions, imploring you to buy this and do that, were utterly alien to me. I understood nothing, a sensation that disturbed my psyche. I felt profoundly out of my element."

if you love the ground beneath you

the dorm is falling apart because we all have this sore throat, cold, chills combo in varying stages. i finished the antibiotics i got from the hospital last saturday and i don't feel any better at all, so today i went to the doctor bobo goes to. the receptionist was very grouchy and spoke very fast chinese, but the doctor was ok.

his english was an interesting mix of doctor speak and then completely unintelligible mumbling that went back and forth in english and chinese.
megan: here's the medicine i got from min sheng hospital. i took all of the antibiotics but they didn't do anything
doctor: your ears are not infected. throat ... something something something .. bacterial ... something something in chinese .. viral .. something
me: oh, so maybe i just have to wait for it to clear up on its own?
him: something something ... medicine

anyway $140NT ($4 US) later, i have 4 new pills to take
so now i'm on.. augmentin which is just amoxycillin, ponstan which is an anti-inflammatory and two mystery drugs that are listed as "scanal" which i can't find online anywhere and "aluzaine" is yellow with *standard* on it (stars included) and apparently manufactured in taiwan. anyway whatever they are, they've been working like a charm and i'm pain free for the first time in a week!
also in the category of communication confusion.. i used to go to this little mom & pop tea shop in guei shan, but it's been closed for 2 weeks so chris and i suspect that it's gone. now i've been buying tea from the coffee shop for lack of a better option. i tried to explain it to the coffee shop ladies today in chinese.
me: my favorite tea shop disappeared
them: what disappeared?
me: a tea shop.. you know? coffee shop is 'cafe dian' but i mean 'cha dian'.. tea shop
them: we don't understand

so i get back to school and ask my coteacher, carol, how you say tea shop and if it isn't just 'coffee shop' with 'tea' instead of 'coffee'. she told me that what i was saying (cha dian) really meant 'a place where old men go to have sex with young girls'.
ooohmygod can you even imagine?! i wonder what the coffee shop women thought i was trying to say. who would have thought that 'tea shop' in chinese is really 'bubble tea black tea shop.'
so overall it was a confusing, multilingual day but everything turned out fine.

if you speak english and chinese you can appreciate meiwentees.com. they donate 100% of their proceeds to the jet li one foundation which is for disaster relief in china.
this shirt says mei you which means 'don't have' but it's pronounced 'mayo'. cleverrr.

the spell of the typical

before i forget, i added 'tags' to a bunch of my posts. now you can easily find all of the posts that have chinese words or that talk about the kuo's or some other random things. today i tagged all of 2009 and i should get through 2008 by the weekend.

the sun came out today!
i was busy for most of the day so i just grabbed my camera and took some pictures from the balcony. a bunch of people hang their stuff on the clothesline because the drier costs $40NT ($1.25 US). i tried it once or twice in july, but it makes all of your clothes feel crispy and hard. everyone knows the part of laundry is burying yourself under a heap of hot, freshly dried clothes anyway.
this is the view from my window. the newest girl, kristin, was saying how taoyuan isn't even mentioned in any of the guide books or websites other than maybe a blurb about how it's an industrial town. it isn't very beautiful.
there used to be a giant pig who lived next door to us but he disappeared a few months ago.
that's the view from my bed basically. i love how the tile on the side of that tall building lights up with the sunset. i took that picture justtt before it really turned orange.
augusta brought me some rocks from bali for my collection! i was surprised she remembered. i forgot i had requested them. [yes, i'm getting a lot of mileage out of my floor mat lately for photo backdrops.]
today in chinese jerry and i learned classroom words and restaurant words.
i can remember..
cazi (tsa-zi) - eraser (like for a chalkboard)
fenbi (fun-bee) - chalk .. literally 'powder pen'
diqiuyi (dee chou yee) - globe 'ground ball' somethin. i don't know what 'yi' means there
tiantianquen (teeyen teeyen chuen) - doughnuts .. literally 'sweet circle'
yangcongquen (yahng tsong chuen) - onion rings .. 'onion circle'
maikefeng (my kuh fong) - microphone!
niujiao mianbao (ne-oh jow meeyen bao) - croissants .. 'cow horn bread'
xiguan (shee gwan)- straw .. 'suck pipe'
there are a couple of new blogs on the side
simple + pretty
jordan ferney
simplesong
love them so far.

dear anonymous from yesterday,
i asked bobo about the good pastry and she didn't recognize the name. any hints?
MEK

corey of tongue in cheek, a blog about her experiences as an american living in france, has a really nice post today about living in two places. she sums it up very well.

so many songs and stories

videos from yesterday's fun-stravaganza




you can see how jerry brings out the crazy in us all by contrasting it with the calm of alex.

we found a wood, we unfound a wood

the classrooms at school are divided into two sections and they compete against each other a lot. when one team loses, the other team has some kind of punishment.
this can include..
-ask a QA (they memorize all of these prescribed questions & answers)
-cha cha cha which involved sticking your hands over your head and shaking your booty. they roll the dice and that's how many times they have to do it
-several variations on cha cha cha include 'kiss', 'monkey', or 'sexy cha cha cha'
-model show.. which is usually them walking like normal down the center aisle and then striking some kind of lame pose at the end

-pegouman pegou means 'hips' in chinese.. so they have to spell a word using their butts. it is so cute.

this week is backwards week so i wore my pajamas to class. it was really good until vivian dropped a dry erase marker from the whiteboard and the top flew off and black ink splattered all over my jammies.
none of my kids dressed up or anything so i had them all take off their shoes and switch and put on their jackets backwards or turn their shirts around. it was cute in my baby classes.

other than that.. mr. kuo was gone so it was just mrs. chan and i. she gave me another one of those sticky rice things on a banana leaf.. i don't think i mentioned that the other day actually. they gave me a traditional taiwanese food the other day that was sticky stuff that i later found out is made out of ground up grass of some kind, and then there's bamboo and meat filling.
today was the dessert version though. the sticky part on the outside was hot pink and it was filled with red bean and ginger or something. the sticky stuff had the consistency of like.. silly putty.

on the way home i went to a japanese place i had gone to with bobo a long time ago that i've been wanting to revisit. no one was there but the owners and their little boy.
we had a cute conversation. i'll put the chinese parts in italics
me: do you speak english?
kid: no
me: what's your name?
kid: my name is ben
then his mom and i spent 5 minutes figuring out what i wanted to order and i got to use my new vegetable words! ben sat down with me while i waited for my [delicious] soup.
ben: are you american?
me: yep. i'm from texas, you know?
ben: no, but dora is from america.
me: yeah that's right. does she speak english or chinese?
ben: she speaks a little english but mostly chinese because taiwanese kids wouldn't understand if she didn't. doraemon is from japan, do you like him?
me: i kind of like him. what language does he speak?
ben: chinese. i have lots of doraemon videos

and then my food came. i like ben. his dad kept telling him to leave me alone but he stopped once he saw that we had the kid/teacher connection going on.

sister is the opposite of hallelujah

tonight in my second class we were reading a little story that went something like..
teacher: come in, children! shut the door please, billy.
everyone sit down please.
who can draw a picture?
danny: i can, miss beamer..

anyway i thought it would be interesting to act it out with my class, so i told them all to stand up and follow me. i was goinggg to take them out into the hallway so i could tell them to come in, but when i went to turn the doorknob, we were locked inside.

we happened to be in the only room in the school that has the misfortune of locking from the outside, and my troublemaker of a kid had locked it when he came in from blowing his nose in the hall. jerk! so my kids initially looked at me in horror as we all realized we were trapped, but once we sat down and continued to act out the lesson, they forgot all about it.

it wasn't until the bell rang for break time that they all got up, ran to the door and started pounding on it and screaming "HELP USSSS, HELP US!" my stomach hurt from laughing so hard.

..other than that.. i went to paspi (pasta+pizza) to pick up dinner to go tonight, and the owner and i finally took it to the next level. last time i was there, i asked what his name was and introduced myself. so tonight he asked if i wanted what i always get, and i said yes. i was happy enough with that, but then he went on to ask where i work, how long i've been in taiwan, and some questions about josh, steve and mike who live right down the street from him and frequent his shop. i tried to tell him that they lived right around the corner, but i don't really know how to say 'a little ways down the street' and i forgot 'apartment building'.

i'm always excited to have any kind of conversation with anyone in chinese. speaking of chinese, bobo came to the dorm tonight to say goodbye to chris who's going to visit canada tomorrow, and she taught katie and i a new song.
yi er san shi wu liu qi, wo de peng you zai na li
zai zhe li, zai zhe li, wo do peng you zai zhe li
one two three four five six seven, where is my friend?
they are here, they are here, my friend is here

..the cuteness of it is kind of lost in english. it rhymes in chinese

there's some random youtube kid proving my point.

short story

since i already did two teeny posts this afternoon, i'll tell you my one, short story of the day.

i went to tapenyaki to pick up dinner this evening, and as i was getting on my scooter to leave, the shop owner of this tiny little stand i parked in front of came up to me and asked if i was american. i told him yes, de zou (texas). he looked at me for a second and then this giant smile spread across his face and i could see all of his teeth dripping with burgundy betel nut liquid and he went bowlegged, swooped his arm around his head pretending to rope a cow and started screaming 'COWBOY! COWBOY!'

and the sun shines on the bay

i'm forcing myself to listen to journey's greatest hits because i've been overplaying all of my other songs lately. although i do like 'lights'. when the lights go down in the cityyy.

i checked the exchange rate this morning and it was 33NT to 1US so i literally got dressed and drove straight to the bank. we've been hovering around 35 for a while so i just wanted to deposit my money while it was relatively low. i changed $60,000NT into $1700something US. so i'm excited that it'll hit my bank account in the next few days. i'll finally have more than i came here with!
it was kind of rough buying 2 plane round trip tickets and my camera and my MRI from right before i left. i had a herniated disc in my back and my insurance didn't cover the MRI ($700). so there was 4.5k to make up from the beginning.
anyway i'm back to normal and i couldn't be happier.
on my way back from the bank i stopped to get a 'passionfruit cocktail' which is passionfruit seeds, syrup and coconut jelly and pearls. there's a lot of slimy stuff coming up your straw. i think i've come to terms with pearls though. i don't get them if i can help it, but i actually kind of enjoyed them this morning.

i asked the guy if they had passionfruit smoothies and he answered me with some long explanation which i think had something to do with how it's still winter so they don't have any smoothies.. and i was kind of annoyed that he came at me with so much chinese when i was clearly a beginner, but jerry pointed out that i should be flattered that he thought i could handle all of it after hearing me only say a few words.
mrs. chan gave me this passionfruit yesterday. that's a stupid picture but you get the idea.
i asked if she had any burnt rice in the bottom of the rice cooker today and she said no (it tastes exactly like toasted marshmallows), but she got some rice out and put it in the wok and burnt the edges for me. it was pretty yummy that way too.

we had the best time tonight. i sang 'da xiang' for them, but i don't know a lot of the words since i've just learned it secondhand from jerry, who also doesn't know the words. so they both sang it for me. i still don't have a firm grasp..
i think it's daaaaa xiang, daaaaa xiang, ni de bi zi zen me na me chang?
ma ma shuo bi zi chang cai shi piao liang
which is..
eeeeelephant, eeeeelephant.. how long is your nose/why is your nose so long?
mama says long noses are beautiful

i looove the tune of it. it's a lot more singsongy than that video. i literally sang it the entire drive home from da chu tonight and then continued to sing in the shower.
aunt margi sent me a bunch of pages from the travel section of her paper and some cool travel calendar pages. thanks, aunt margi! i added the pages to my collage strings and the article about indian food had me wondering if i could eat indian twice in a week. i think i might go tomorrow.

ruby rises at dawn

i'm having a hell of a time concentrating to write this while i'm rocking out to the slumdog millionaire soundtrack. i've listened to it 4 times today. so good.
i think part of me might love it so much because it reminds me of this bollywood song on youtube where someone wrote what they thought it sounded like in english, though i think it's sung in hindi, and it is sooo funny.

well dawn and i went to the buddhist restaurant down the street to pick up lunch today. we went yesterday too. i'm not sure what you know about buddhist restaurants. i had never heard of them before i got here. but it's all vegetarian and it's pretty delicious. you can tell its a buddhist restaurant because it has a swastika on its side.
i'm addicted to the deep fried sweet potatoes and fried mushrooms. the sushi is the only kind i've found in taiwan without meat floss or pieces of hot dog or corn or tunafish in it. who thought it would be so impossible to find appetizing sushi in asia? i'm dying for the sushi off of 24th street in austin!
although my beloved japanese restaurant in taoyuan will be open again in 2 weeks. can't wait.
(i bought a bunch of new flashcards.)
jerry and i learned the rest of the vegetables in chinese today.. as well as meat, drinks and actions such as.. fall flat on your face, lie down, sit down, squat, cartwheel, handstand. you know, really useful stuff.

the best part of chinese was bobo teaching us this game taiwanese kids play where you each pick a kind of carrot. i was white carrot, she was red, jerry was purple. then one person says 'red carrot (hong luo bo), red carrot, red carrot, white carrot! and the white carrot does it with another color and you get faster and faster as you go. we played 3 times. her apartment complex has a blood pressure machine. my heart rate was kind of high because i had just been walking around.

class went alright. oh! i had to check over some essays they wrote for this contest that's coming up and i wrote down what one girl wrote about me. it's about lessons they've learned.
My foreign teacher - Megan. She is gentle and soft but she don't like when we say Chinese, so I study "respect". And Megan teaches QA and the New Century book. Although New Century is very difficult, but Megan is patient. I study "tolerant". Megan is a good teacher.

AWWWWWWW.
and my favorite girl, jane, asked about the carpenters song top of the world a few weeks ago so i printed out the lyrics for her today and made a CD with it and a bunch of my other favorite songs and gave it to her tonight.
that class can be really fun when they want to be. at least i can understand more of what they say since i'm learning more and more chinese. i just wish they would tryyy to speak english.

her morning elegance

i'm unabashedly in love with j. crew, but their full price prices are ridiculous. who pays $40 or 50 something dollars for a cotton t shirt (no matter how cute it is?) i keep my eye on their new stuff and then wait for it to go on super sale at the middle of the season and then it's usually reasonable.i've bought a bazillion $30-40 dresses on sale there and i loooove them. and the outlet is wonderful year-round. j. crew is probably what i miss most about not being home (after my fam, ballet, yoga yoga and their chai tea, and mexican food). ..although i did just order and ship this dress and some flip flops to my parents house. it'll be waiting for me in july.

i only have two stories today and they both relate to chinese usage.
1. chris went to my favorite tea place in guei shan the other day and ordered tea with fruit.. and i had previously only ordered green tea from them, so today i decided to try it out. conveniently, i know all of my fruits now so i could order a grapefruit green tea all by myself! the woman was happy for me and i told her i learned all of the fruits this week.
so then a woman comes up beside me to order tea and the woman who works there was telling her how i'm an english teacher but i can speak a little chinese.. for example, i'm learning fruits this week and i could say 'grapefruit'. it's interesting to have people talking about you right in front of you. like being a fly on the wall when you're standing right there.

2. i had a new stamp made for myself because i'm a little tired of hello kitty, and i had them make tess one too while i was there. i went to pick them up today and it's an elderly couple who work there with their daughter and the woman had what i thought was a bag of cherries so i asked if she bought cherries. then we got into this big conversation about how no, they were grapes.. but you can buy cherries down the street but they're expensive. about $200 for a jin (which i learned about in chinese class in Austin. it's like half a pound i think?). we decided they're cheaper in america maybe because we grow some there or we just like them more?they charged me 1/3 less than they had been charging for the stamps and they had never been overly friendly before, but today the woman was following me out the door to keep chatting. so that was exciting as someone who's trying to get a grasp on a language. it's opened up a lot of doors. and it makes being here a lot more fun and special.

do it faster, make it better

today jerry and i went swimming with jaime and joyce in the afternoon. that was an awesome way to spend a sunday afternoon. we went to steve and josh and mike's pool which is in the basement but there's a window near the ceiling so it just feels really cozy and cool like you're swimming in a cave or something.
[all of these pictures are from yesterday when amanda, mr. kuo's daughter, gave me a box of cheesecake bars. she was eating one earlier this week and i asked if she would get me some and i'd pay her back. they are the light of my life right now. so delicious.]
anyway the pool experience was joyce screaming 'MEGANNNN, COME HERE' or 'MEGANN, MY BALL!' or 'MEGAN, YOU SEE!' i love her. she is so much fun. she has those little arms floaties and she can only kind of swim so most of the time she just latches on to you and points to where she wants to go.
oh! the best part of the day/my life was today when i was in the bathroom of the pool after having showered and this woman walks in and i told her that the shower on the far end didn't have working hot water but that i was finished with this shower so she could use it. she asked about the bathing suits on the rack and i said they were my friends but that it was ok, they'd get them when she was done.
all in chinese! and she understood me and i understood her and i knew how to say every word and it was like we were just talking like normal people. it was awesome.
once i got home i did two loads of laundry and miraculously had 8 10NT pieces to stick in the drier. my belt broke :( the metal clasp must have been knocking around too much in the drier and it just broke in half.
then this evening i spent an hour at the coffee shop reading and sipping on an iced caramel hot chocolate that was to dieee for. it might be my new favorite thing there. although really, i love everything they have. and the dog spent some time at my feet because i used jeff's scratch-under-the-collar technique to make a lasting friendship.
i'll leave you with mom's [ok, fannie farmer's] crepe recipe. i'm going to make them later this week. i like to fill them with butter and whipped cream. yuuumm! or applesauce. or strawberries.

p.s. i'm continually adding and subtracting from the blog list at the side so if you ever see one you like, you should bookmark it because it may or may not always be there. i just added designer's brew which will complete the circle. it seems that all of my favorite design bloggers are friends so they're always commenting on each other's stuff. it looks really goooddd, i'm excited to check it out tomorrow.
other recent additions are tongue in cheek (which may or may not be sticking around) written by a woman who lives in paris and posts random things, and homesick texan written by a woman in new york city.. it has recipes and little stories. she doesn't update often enough for my taste, but it's good when it's updated.