croaking geckos

11 new skills:
1. enjoying coconut shakes on the beach and only getting a teeny bit sunburned
2. staying awake through 3 hours of dive videos starting at 8am
3. properly identifying the sound a giant gecko makes
4. hooking up a scuba tank/vest (BCD)/accoutrements while in and out of the water
5. getting water out of my mask while underwater
6. tackling the windblown, wavy vacation hair
7. getting to the surface without a scuba tank
8. getting to the surface with a broken respirator that's shooting out uncontrollable bubbles
9. getting to the surface with a buddy, using their air tank
10. learning how not to explode my lungs, fill my blood with nitrogen bubbles or get decompression sickness11. appreciating the serious, scuba instructor side of emil, who i had previously only seen only the silly, tigger suit wearing side of. he's awesome, direct, fun and comforting.

keith and i did scuba in the pool today and it was scary/fun. it took me a few minutes to stop thinking about how weird i felt to only breathe through my mouth, but it's ok now. it all makes me appreciate my kids and how we demo something once and then expect them to copy us without making any mistakes on their first try when they've never done it before. i had forgotten how hard it can be to do something you've never ever done before. but we did it.. in the pouring rain, too (not that it matters i guess, when you're already all wet).

we did 4 chapters in the book and 4 tests. 3 hours of pool stuff. it was a long, scuba-y day. tomorrow we're headed into the ocean for 2 dives. they don't mess around with the progression of things.
HEY i was just watching a show about mt. everest climbers and it was interviewing the men and what their next plan was and the man just said 'i'm headed to thailand to hang out in a hammock on the beach for three months.'

p.s. the internship emailed to say they still haven't decided and they're pushing the notification back one week. good thing i'm too busy to drive myself crazy wondering about that for another week. keep thinking good thoughts.
p.p.s. for those sappy romantic readers, tonight allen said i was his 'angel of the air and water, flying around me and with the fish in the ocean'. we go back and forth with being friends and being sparkley. i think long absences fuel the sparkle.

i am thailand

this is one of jimmie's pictures from last night of tess, steph and carly. cute!
well today we woke up laaate, late. i went to the fruit market in search of mango and tea. i asked a random woman with fire engine red lipstick if she knew where i could buy cong dra bing. she told me to walk around the corner.. i did.. no one was there. so she went with me, and the stand was running late or something. i think she counts as a fruit stand friend though.
then this afternoon jimmie, allen and i headed to songshan to find cute dresses at wu fen pu. you can't appreciate the full ugliness of that dress in the picture. the top was gold and sparkely.
we walked and walked and walked through lanes of clothes. it had rained this morning so everything felt sticky and gross. but jimmie and i both found a couple of dresses we couldn't live without.we ate at the top of taipei main station and met some guys from holland who are traveling. they've been all over the place and they're going to be in thailand in july so i gave them emil and my contact info. they want to do a dive course. they haven't even looked into teaching english. they thought you needed to be able to speak the native language.
we played the closed-eyes maze game on the train home. allen won both times. ..i found these little patterned business cards at carrefour. they have the most random things on them but they're all really cute.

best picture in a long time:
allen and my new dress. i need to lengthen the straps a little but it's totally taiwan fab. and it was six dollars.

i was chatting with josh's girlfriend, elva, tonight and she told me that when she first met me, my chinese wasn't very good, but now it's better than josh's! she's learning a liiiiiittle english and right now all she can say is hello, goodbye, 'how much for one night?' [which josh shouldn't have taught her], and apple.
she had fake nails that were about an inch long, half blue sparkles, half natural, with painted on flowers anddd jewels. she said they cost $40US or so and they'll last for a month.

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.

just dance

allen and i went for japanese at carrefour this afternoon. if i had a penny for all of the breaded pork steaks i've eaten in this country.. but i do love them and i'll never eat this quantity of japanese food at any other point in my life.

anyway we're going downstairs and he pulls this numbered key out of his pocket and mumbles something about how he doesn't know what this random key opens. i assumed it was some key from the hospital and passed it off, but he handed it to me. eventually it clicked that it probably went with one of the lockers in carrefour where you can leave a backpack or something.
i really wanted to see what was in it, and he was getting oddly shy about it and trying to get me not to look, so this crowd of people was forming around us, watching us go back and forth. after a minute he let me open it, and there was a bouquet of roses and a card inside! totally sweet. when i went into the living room with the bouquet in hand, dena just started laughing. he definitely has a certain style.
so my internship phone interview is set up for tuesday night, taiwan time, and i started driving myself insane reading some message boards and researching, but i've decided to just let it go until tuesday and trust that it's going to work out. or that's the plan.

steve showed up at the dorm tonight so i ran for my camera so i could capture his [ridiculous] mustache. he's been rockin' that thing for several weeks now.
we went to paspi the other night for dinner and the owner took one look at him and he just couldn't stop smiling and chuckling to himself.

she's a peach, she's a doll, she's a pal of mine

table 6, robbie, mousa, i thinkkk one of the joyces and heck if i can remember that other girl's name even though she was so good. it was the last day with my jr. high class. it was weird knowing it's the last time i'll see them. their english was so fantastic that it's one of the only classes i feel like i reaaaally got to know because we could talk about more things than our favorite color/food.this is what bleaching cream will do to you. mrs. lin is a bird of a different feather. really sweet but really weird.
the classroom was so awesome. painted walls! open windows! round tables.
allen and andy were my favorite boys. allen played the part of the princess in their 8th grade play. he wore a baby pink ballgown with a gold tiara. andy is just really down to earth and sweet. last week he sliced open his finger while working on his little table out of popsicle sticks during break time so he was out all class.
table 4. willie, andy, jim, allen and sherry.
table 2. meg, amy and jason. jason is the one they call turkey because he laughs like a turkey. he is soo funny and has zero inhibitions. today whenever anyone talked to him he would go stiff like a board and say 'ZZZZZZZZZ' and shake all around.
table 5, stuart, joyce, shelly and i think one more of the joyces.. wellll mrs. kuo boiled some delicious squash today. they agreed that my dress is very watermelon-y. i really love them. they are soo fun and they can read me like a book.
whenever mr. kuo sees my eyes start to get teary he always switches the topic immediately. not like i'm constantly on the verge of tears. but if i'm being quiet or something he always asks if i miss my mom and dad and there's something about saying it out loud that really makes you feel it.
larry, the biggest ham in taiwan. he's awesome. his english is better than ALL of my coteachers. he talks incessantly.
allen and i went to tina coffee tonight. i ordered a waffle and it ended up being a waffle, a pile of guava, tomatoes, apples, grapefruit and oranges all cut up anddd a tea anddd a scoop of gelato. i think that's my new thing. yum.
allen has made a note of every single one of my idiocyncracies. we both copy each other and it's pretty amusing. this involves him saying 'psh, ssss, hmph' or making big dramatic overtures and weird faces.. and me saying things like 'your eyes are in my heart' and 'allen.. i just want to say.. i very like you'.

jimmie will be here in 6 hours!

p.s. how cute is this mug?!

it's a long road we've been walking on

man i love rose milk tea. i like how it comes out of your pores all day after you drink it. it's just black tea with a whole bunch of milk and some rose syrup. yesterday i had a pot of it with a side of waffles for lunch at 'harwana cafe'.

allen and i went to lunch today at a place pretty close to where he works, so the whole time we were there, there was a steady parade of his 'work partners' walking past the plate glass window. i guess i've done that to people i've dated in the past. karma. the delicious dumplings were worth it. $2 lunches are amazing.
this is sherry and i. my beginners class had a demo tonight. ..they aren't dumb, but they aren't good. they're little parrots where they can repeat but they really can't think on their own. it's disappointing. even the ones who you think get it really don't get it when you try to talk to them before or after class.
they all memorized these 17 sentences. my first name is ____, my last name is ____. i want to visit ____. the taiwanese flag is red, white and blue. my favorite holiday is ______. every tuesday and friday i come here to learn english. there are 17 students in my english class. i study english for 30 minutes every day. every day i have to ____. i ____ to do it. i like to ____. i get ___ dollars pocket money each week. i am good at _____. thank you for listening.
at the end of the demo, one of the school administrators asked if any of the parents could do their kids self intro and she'd give their kid 150 stickers. nick's mom actually got up and did it. we were all amazed. she was so cute and nick just hid his face in his hands. good for her though. it's hard to get up in front of people and talk by yourself like that. especially in your second language (or third or whatever).
links of the day
courtesy of keith: greenissexy.org with simple ideas for being green.
and if you didn't watch Gio on OnBeing yesterday, go do it. seriously. it's so cute. archives (all the way to the right), page 3, the kid in the white and red stripes.
and sycamore street press is so cute.
[sycamore street press].

ok ONEEEE more link..
if you love craft projects or handmade anything, check out happy tape. it's the prettiest masking tape in the world. they have a 20 pack for $40 (with shipping) and you can use it for a miiiiillion things. last time i saw it on etsy i thought that was a liiiittle too much, but when it sold out i was kicking myself. add it to the pile of things that will be waiting on my bed when i get home.

the touch of your hand

loooordy lordy i do not know how to begin this story. we'll begin with a coincidence while i think about how i want to word the rest. twbf and i were chatting on skype this morning and he said 'be careful' when we said goodbye and i said 'be careful of what? i'm just going to lunch'.

..but when i was parking my scooter and moving it over a little bit so it fit better in the spot, my foot slipped up underneath it and i burnt the top of my ankle. so today when he met me in the train station and i was holding a giant bag of ice on my foot, he said 'are you the girl who said "i don't need to be careful?"'
so then we made our way into taipei via a train, 2 MRT lines and a bus and we got to a giant mall/movie complex. we shared a rose milk tea, i taught him a fun pen and paper game, and we people-watched for 2 hours until it was time to watch angels & demons.

when we went upstairs to the movie theater part of the mall, there was a big open deck area with a bubble machine blowing a cloud of bubbles everywhere and cheesy love songs (think backstreet boys) blasting over the speakers. i turned around and there was a giiiiant, multicolored ferris wheel. it was really beautiful up there. i felt right at home when 'when you say nothing at all' by kenny rogers (?) came on.
(this is the shirt i bought yesterday. the sleeves are the cutest part, i'll show you some other time).

so we get out of the movie and get in a little glassed-in car on the ferris wheel, we're about half way up and i'm getting crazy butterflies watching taipei 101 get smaller and smaller in the distance. then he asks me to close my eyes for a minute..

when i open them, a card is in my lap and he's literally down on one knee with a little black box in hand. inside was a sparkly necklace, and he asked me to be his girlfriend and said he loved me.. i explained that i wouldn't exactly call it 'love' just yet, and i'd happily be his girlfriend for a month.. but not when i go home.
he said really, you don't think you'll ever come back? and i said no.. i really don't think so. so i guess now i'm a twgf.

when we were sitting on the train going home, we were spelling words in the palm of our hands and this old couple across from us was whispering about us.
i was hoping i could just add his necklace charm onto the one i wear every day.. but i don't think the styles really mesh. it's hard to tell in this picture, but the one he bought seems a lot fancier than my little silver seasons charm.

so that was my day.

through times of victory or defeat

it is really hard to take pictures of kite flying with a camera that lacks a good zoom lens. here's the best dena and i could do today.

i sort of felt like i was walking a dog except that the 'dog' in this case was getting no pleasure out of it.. it was just me holding onto a string. i sat on my blanket studying chinese while the kite just did its thing.
this shirt is one of my favorite taiwanese finds.
tonight my jerk class had the QA 'who do you look up to? why?' and one of the kids who can speak almost zero english, said i was graceful, which i thought was uncharacteristically nice. we had a good time in there today. chinese abounded, but they weren't being hateful.
..although they were talking about boobs a lot which was kind of awkward. they were picking on me and i told them to check in after high school and we could compare notes then. middle schoolers.

twbf and i went bowling tonight. i won 2 out of 3.. but he won't swim in the ocean. i'm supposed to think of a consolation prize. we were a liiiittle more touchy tonight.

when we were saying goodbye, outside of 7-11 with what seemed like hundreds of people walking by/waiting for the light to change sitting on their scooters, he took my hand and said he wanted to tell me something and ended up stumbling over 'i just want to say.. i love you. i mean! i like you.. i like you very much.'
it was adorable/awkward/sweet. so we'll see. the saga continues.

other things to be excited about..
these saltwater sandals that i just found on my blog crush of the week.
[photo from katiedid.squarespace.com]
a pair in yellow is on its way to my house right now. those red ones are calling my name too..