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!

the start of something new

i'm proud to say i've never been hung over before.. until this morning. man. i felt pretty awful. i didn't get to bed until late last night and then i woke up and just felt dizzy and awful for the first 6 hours or so of my day.
in the afternoon i headed to latini's but it was so busy and loud in there that i ordered soup and a panini and had them bring it over to me at the coffee shop, where it was mellow and wonderful and dark. today i found out what the woman's name is who works there in the early afternoons; minami. that's going to be hard to remember. it's like miami with an n..?
i ordered tea with grapefruit, orange and honey in it. she doublechecked with me to make sure i wanted it iced. today was super rainy but not cold out. the taiwanese have a weird thing about only drinking hot things in the winter. i always get weird reactions when i asked for iced coffee or iced tea when it's cold out.
then this afternoon bobo's family went to visit jerry and we all walked over to josh, steve and mike's apartment down the street to play in their awesome ball pit. last time we went, we played for a good hour or so before we got busted. this time, the janitor was on us in about 10 minutes. apparently there's some issue with us being too heavy and he's afraid we'll crush all of the balls.

it was fun while it lasted though. there were two little boys in there with us, allen and jonathan. i was speaking to jonathan, who was probably 4 or 5, in chinese and he would just come up to me speaking tons and tons of chinese in his squeaky little voice and i couldn't understand 75% of it. i did know hao wan ma? 'isn't this fun?'

drove home in the pouring rain. i had left my helmet upside down so it was full of a couple inches of water. whoops! and i hadn't brought my rain pants since it didn't really feel like rain when i left.. so my jeans were soaking wet by the time i got home.

then this evening martyn, steve, mike, josh and i went to TGIF for martyn's last dinner. i'm going to miss martyn a lot. he's like our dad in a lot of ways. he's a good cook, he always has tips about how to drive safely on the scooter and conflict avoidance. he's always level headed and positive.
(that's jaime's classic confused face. she's very expressive.) and it's lesley's last night. she leaves tomorrow afternoon. i feel like we were just starting to become friends. but we'll have gchat and email. who's going to bake stuff with me now and be my puffy coat buddy and snark about people?
but we already have 2 new name tags. krissy, as i mentioned (and misspelled) last night, and then today someone found 'jeremy' next to jon's door. it's always changing around here! we'll see how it goes.

more pictures of today and last night can be found right here

trill a cheery tune

waking up at 1 really shortens your day a whole bunch. heyy itunes has something called 'genius' which groups songs with similar musical qualities.. just like pandora [which only works in the US, incidentally]. too bad it only selects from songs you already have in your library. i think half the fun of pandora is that it pulls random songs that you've never heard of and expands your music vocabulary a little bit.
if you haven't already checked out pandora, you should. you just plug in a song or a band that you like, and it plays songs that have the same kind of instruments or that are from the same genre. i've discovered some cool bands that i would have never otherwise heard of.
they hired a new girl at latini's. i think she told jerry and i her name is 'priss'. it seems like she speaks english relatively well. she told me that she's seen me around because she lives right by the school i live at. i introduced jerry and i, and told her we're in there a lot, so i'm sure we'll be seeing much more of her.
and bernice is back! i think she chose a new name, but i can't remember what it is.. i haven't seen her in ages. she only works on weekends since she's in high school, and i usually go during the week.
the lantern festival started up in the big park across the street. that explains all of the fireworks we've had for the last few days. i think it lasts two weeks. wikipedia says it's on the 15th day of the lunar new year, so we must be building up toward that.tonight jerry and i just did the whirlwind tour of the tents that lined the edges. there were lots of crafty things and a bunch of traditional food vendors. this man was blowing glass into persimmons mostly. i think its persimmon or tomatoes or pumpkins or apples.. one of the 4 ;)
i've been dying to show you a fresh squeezed juice thing. this is sugarcane that goes through a machine and gets extruded. you regularly see these stands along the streets. it's usually sugarcane, oranges or pineapple and a cup is around 75 cents.
i tried a sip once and didn't really care for it. it just tastes earthy like you would imagine a handfull of sweet grass would taste if you made it into a smoothie.
tiny quail eggs. the stand owner's friend was laughing as i took a picture of it. now they know how it feels to be put on the spot for just being yourself.
dumplings of all kinds. i'm too much of a wimp to try them. they look a lot scarier in person. enlarge the picture and you can see how there's all kinds of stuff sticking out of them. maybe once i learn more food characters.
fancy corn dogs. they're pretty yummy.
jerry being eaten by the claw.
i thinkkkk that there was a contest for best lantern. some were made out of these tiny yogurt drink bottles that come with lunch boxes (like that robot looking thing in the upper left). most were paper though.

turtles!
there was a big paper temple set up since there's no temple in the park.

i'll ask my kids more about it this week. i can't believe we've gone a week without school. tomorrow's the last day and then we're back at it. i miss most of them. i'm excited to see their new clothes! for chinese new year they traditionally play games, eat fish, eat rice cakes, play mahjong and get new clothes.

that's how you know

a couple of weird things happened in america in the last 2 days. specifically in upstate NY where my mom and dad's families live.
1. my grandpa mannix was in a picture on the front page of their local paper, listed as 'unidentified man' in a story about the NAACP founders in their town. they wrote a note in the caption asking people who knew who he was to call the paper, and apparently when my aunt called, the editor told her she was the 21st person to call that day.
2. my 10 year old cousin, martha, wrote a letter to her state rep and she got a ticket to the inauguration! she gets to go with my aunt and the state rep's office is paying for their airfare and hotel. awesome.
sean, emma, julia and martha at my graduation in 2007
that's a makeshift gate on the corner right by our school.
during the holidays they had a giant blown up santa in front of 'welcome party', this restaurant on the corner next to the coffee shop. when i got back, santa had been replaced with this guy.
panini! at latini's. i think i've eaten at least 50 of these. it's homemade bread with tomato, basil, mozerella and salami.
dan was nowhere to be found when i was at the restaurant, and justin told me he was upstairs working on his model trains, so i went to check it out. i had to climb under a table to get these pictures.
tiny men!
a double wedding in a tiny church.

i forgot to tell you yesterday we watched this insane show on the discovery channel about animals living in extreme environments and we learned that frogs can freeze over the winter and then thaw out and electrocute themselves back to life when it warms up with their own electrical currents in their neurons.

It is able to prevent cell and tissue damage by circulating large amounts of cryoprotectants (such as glucose) throughout its body before it freezes. The cryoprotectants act as a natural form of antifreeze that prevents the insides of the cells from freezing. High levels of cryoprotectants inside cells also minimize the amount of water that diffuses out of the cells, which reduces both the amount of ice that forms around the cells and cell shrinkage. In addition, the wood frog's body also prepares for freezing by moving some water to areas where it would do the least harm, such as between layers of skin and muscle. Through these mechanisms, the wood frog can survive at temperatures several degrees below freezing, with 65-70 percent of its body water in the form of ice. While frozen, the wood frog has no heartbeat and does not breathe or move. However, because it is possible for its body functions to resume, the frog is not dead, but rather preserved in this frozen state. When the temperature warms up, its body thaws and resumes normal activity.

crazy, huh? i guess you need to see the video to be sufficiently impressed.

a bunch of girls in one of my classes ambushed me before class while we were waiting and they quizzed me on my chinese knowledge. we went through all of the colors, parts of your face, random articles of clothing, some fruit. they think it's way too funny to hear me pronounce words.

long day. time for bed!

p.s. look where my blog is!

not pretending

the biggest news today was the bone chilling cold air that came in overnight. yesterday was cold, but today is that crisp winter air that goes up your sleeves and stays in your hair long after you've gone inside.
..not like being inside helps here. it was THIRTEEN DEGREES IN MY ROOM TODAY. actually, it's in C so it's not as bad as it sounds.. it's 55 F. that's pretty cold for a bedroom though. right now i'm at a balmy 17.
this is where it felt like the water in the sink was coming from when i washed my face this evening:
i subbed 2 classes tonight and it was a school i had never been to called wu ling. they just built it so it's all tiled and mosaic-ed and pretty, but there are only a few classes so it feels reaaally cold and kind of bordering on creepily empty.
they have these awesome glass whiteboards. that was the highlight of the 4 hours i spent there. it's like writing on a freshly cleaned ice skating rink. it screwed up my depth of field though. more than once, i thought i would touch the board sooner than i did and found myself grasping for it.

i went to get my scooter keys out of my purse after class and they weren't there. panic set in as i realized i must have left them in my scooter. so i went out to look and was horrified to discover that it really wasn't where i left it. luckily, as i turned to go back in to the school and freak out, i saw it had just been moved a little closer to the school and they had put my keys in the little pocket in the front so they weren't as obvious. lesson learned though.

i left my heater on for 20 minutes or so tonight and it was so toasty. it warmed up my room a whole 2 degrees in that time and when i got out from under my blankets, it actually felt a little bit warm in here.
if you closed your eyes, you'd think you were sitting in front of a fire place.
p.s. went to drop off the napkins i bought for the coffee shop at crate and barrel tonight. they put a pretty paper napkin between the cup and saucer, so i thought these red and green ones with holiday-themed english words would be cute. fanny (from the coffee shop) wasn't there, so i went to say hi to nikki at the spa and dan and linda from latini's andd fanny were all there just chatting. i had the necklace i bought for linda in my bag just incase that happened. i think she liked it. she's not very fussy, but it was a pretty simple double-stranded "black pearl" necklace that my friend erin made. so yay for dropping off presents and giving back to people who have given me so much.