these vagabond shoes

i feel like i've kind of failed at showing you pictures of what taiwan actually looks like. i have a bunch of pictures of food but hardly any of anything outside of the big park or this dorm. in the last week and a half, i'm reaaalllly going to try to suck up my foreigner-shyness and take my camera with me everywhere i go. i'm definitely going to get the fruit market, tea shops, guei shan and da chu areas, the train station, etc.
food is easy. it's right inside my house and it can't make me blush. this was dinner tonight. deeeelicious skewers of pork wrapped around mushrooms or scallions ($1 each), and some grilled bell peppers and green beans with a little bit of spicy sauce from a BBQ stand in guei shan. can't beat $4 dinners.
tonight i told my baby class i'm leaving. they were not thrilled at all. carol asked them if they wanted a guy or girl to replace me and they just said "MEGAN! MEGAN!". i'm going to misssss them. one more week though. and my older kid, favorite class ever, class was asking me animals in english and i'd say the chinese. they were super impressed that i knew hippo and crocodile.

p.s. do you think my mom had any influence on my sense of style?

like mother..
(this is her new office space for designmyyard).
like daughter..
(my room 2007).
though i think my yearlong obsession with design blogs has seriously influenced my sense of style. i guess we'll see what post-DC apartment looks like.
hopefully something like..


i've since lost all of those sources. no copyright issues intended.

guess you get used to somebody

it's weird being in your early 20s. you get so used to being in school and always having another grade ahead of you and the same routine year after year without a whole lot of decisions to make, and then all of the sudden you've graduated from college and your whole life is up to you. what job will you do? where will you live? what will you do with your free time? what are you looking forward to?

[these pictures are from my 'i love this' design folder]
i'm relatively happy with the decisions i've made so far. there's just always the nagging feeling that you could be doing more or helping people or doing something that's making more of a difference. teaching kids is really rewarding though. as much as we complain about not being 'real teachers', i think the work i'm doing here is worthwhile. if nothing else, my kids say 'please' and 'thank you' without thinking about it.
this afternoon i woke up at one o'clockkk! i remember turning off my alarm at 9:30 and then i just went back to sleep and it was dreary and cold out, and i knew when i looked at the clock it could be any time between 10 and 2, but what a waste of a morning! the day felt so short since i had to leave for class at 4. on the other hand, i got up at 7 for a year for my job in the real world and i enjoy having the option of sleeping in until 1 if my body wants to. especially on those days when your bed is sooo comfy and warm.

looking forward to.. BLT's tomorrow. seeing my favorite class on thursday afternoon. not teaching on saturday! tomb sweeping holiday.

the luckiest boy alive

who would have thought i'd ever find a shabby chic store right on a little side street in kaohsiung? shabby chic is a style that involves pale colors and distressed antiques. there's a lot of pink, that i don't really care for, but i love the pale aqua. i was all excited to discover the store, and then i tried to explain it to josh and steve. i swore it didn't always have to look so grandma-y..
rachel ashwell is good at making it look young and fresh. she has a ridiculously expensive store called shabby chic. she sells down sofas and punched tin things and white everything. i just like how everything is so airy and open.
this was my attempt in apartment #1, senior year in college. i can't even explain how much i miss sleeping on top of a quilted mattress cover topped with a duvet, underneath another duvet and surrounded by 6 fluffy pillows. it's like sleeping in a cloud.
i have problems with little open jars, trays and bowls though. i like how you can see everything, but it gets cluttered too quickly. like on top of my dresser at apartment #2.
anyway speaking of pretty things, it's nice how there are lots of pretty vines and plants throughout the city here. the picture below is from our trip, but there are lots of vines and tiny gardens randomly interspersed in the city like that everywhere i've been in taiwan.
it's a welcome break from all of the concrete.
i don't know where to put this random picture of the sweetener. instead of packets of sugar, they give you these little containers with fructose. maybe it dissolves better into drinks since it's a liquid? i'm not sure what the reasoning is.
and speaking of drinks, i finally took a picture of a tiny portion of the drink aisle in 7-11. that's literally only a quarter of the drinks they have to offer. it's mostly tea, sports drinks and fruit juice.
time to catch up on some of the books i've been neglecting before i go to sleep.

there are no guarantees in life

i've gone blog crazy the last few days and i decided i'm in need of..

1. pictures
i linked off of jesse's blog to the design-crisis blog all about interior design and other random, sort of design related things.
the writers write like they talk and add lots and lots of pictures. love it and the pictures. (the above photo is from an entry on garland of all kinds).

2. links
the best thing about a blog is that you have the whole internet at your disposal.
speaking of links, here are some i've added recently to my list on the side that you should check out if you find yourself with extra time.
design crisis, mentioned above
tastespotting, delicious recipes with beautiful photos updated by bazillions of people all the time (thanks katherine)
details of the mundane, jesse linked to it on her blog and it's well written and entertaining. i can't stop reading.
if it's hip, it's here, i was hooked when i saw this entry on painted money (though, to tell you the truth, i'm not crazy about the rest of it. we'll see how it goes)3. taiwanese stuff
the whole point of my blog is.. well there are a few points. i want to remember what i did here. i want the people i care about (and random people's moms, i suppose) to know what i'm up to and what it's like to live and teach english in asia. when i went home, i realized how few pictures i have of things i see every day and what it's actually like to live here.
things like beef noodles. it's a taiwanese specialty (and it never looks like it does in that picture. those are heavily styled.)
so i'll try to add more of those things. we'll see how it goes.

i was so happy to see my 'baby' class tonight. they aren't really babies at all, but they're pretty young. when i got there, they formed this glob around me and insisted that i sing liang zhi lao hou which i guess i sang last time i saw them. so we all sang it together. it felt like taiwanese sound of music.

they had changed to a bigger kid book while i was gone, so they were proud to show me what they could do now.
paul was adorable as always. he sits next to me and he says 'are you crazy?' 'nooooo!' and i'll joke with him about things and he just says 'teacherr!' in this pleading tone with a giant grin on his face. he might be my favorite of all. what is it about kids who are physically smaller than the other ones? they always seem much cuter. paul is the little tiny one.

we got a cold snap overnight and it was so cold in my room this morning that every time i stuck my toes on the frozen tile, i just got back in bed and ended up sleeping until 1! when i looked at my watch, i thought maybe i had accidentally added a few hours to the time when i was trying to turn the alarm off.

i bought some white rabbit fur ear muffs and they are sooo warmmm. i felt bad that they were real fur, but i was repeating 'thank you bunnies' in my head the whole way home.

i also bought this coat because i followed becca's love it, leave it, if you're still thinking about it in 2 weeks, buy it rule. sort of. in taiwan, it's 2 hours because you never know if you'll see the same street vendor in the same place twice.
it's tan. i'm not sure how easy that is to tell in this picture. it looks sort of pinky.
it reminded me a lot of a coat i saw on Bill Cunningham's On the Street about when it got cold in New York City one weekend. he does the coolest audio slideshows for the NYT. his voice reminds me of Santa.