sesame street elementary

today in my travels around town, i wrote down some of the funny store names:
amiable stylish outlook
the gorgeous hunks
comebuy
family mart
cash city
muggle restaurant (if you haven't read harry potter by now, please stop reading my blog.)
winner pharmacy

i don't really have anything to report today. this morning we had a workshop with brandon about lesson planning. apparently we're going to have a workshop about how to deal with our co-teachers, i'm looking forward to that one. then jerry and i went to lunch at this place called 83 degrees that's open 24 hours. i ordered a caramel macchiato (sp?), jerry didn't know what he ordered, and he totally stole mine because it was 100x tastier and claimed not to know which one he ordered. liar! and i had delicious cold noodles with peanut sauce from 7-11 for lunch. it's their specialty i'd say. i've also been buying the 7-11 brand tea. they have really good jasmine tea and pretty good lemon tea. the 'coffee green tea' was a disaster and their regular green tea tastes like burnt grass clippings.
tonight i had 2 classes. 1 sub and 1 of my own. there are 21 kids in my class and it's all i can do to just get through the material i need to cover. thank GOODNESS for my hello kitty stamp. it saves about 3 minutes that i used to spend signing my name by hand. anyway you have to read the new QA (today it was.. 'which is your favorite season? why?'), write down all of their answers (my favorite season is spring because i like flowers/ summer because i like to swim/ fall because i like 10/10 day, winter because i can build a snowman), and then translate everything to chinese and to the KK (phonetic spelling). THEN they each have to tell you their answer. you do the same thing when you cover a new lesson of any kind except that with the lessons, they have to read the new words to you individually and you mark in their book that they did it. listening to 21 kids takes like 7 minutes and we do that for like 3 activities.
tonight i ate the pasta salad i made this afternoon. josh bought me feta cheese at Carrefour. Keith attempted to buy me some but he spent like 20 minutes trying to find it and then realized he lost his scooter key again so he just got out of there as fast as he could. anyway it was delicious. the best thing i've eaten in the last 3 weeks. pasta, red & yellow bell peppers, green olives, feta and tomatoes with oil & vinegar dressing and some salad supreme. natalie thinks 'salad supreme' is the funniest thing she's ever heard of. i think it's delicious. thank you, majjy.

tomorrow is going to be a long day so i'm going to read and go to sleep. thank you for the comments and emails, aunt pam.

there is only one thing

from today on, i'm going to start writing down all of the engrish things i've been seeing. there are so many things that make me giggle throughout the day. lots of hilarious store names. product names. today i saw 'fancy dress' on a bag. that's a bad example though. anyway i'll keep track of them and share as i get a handful at a time.

i wanted to tell you weird things about taiwan since i haven't been talking much about the country itself.
--stinky tofu. it has 'stinky' in the name, but that doesn't even come close to describing it. it's like the worst smelling feet you've ever smelled, and you smell it from literally hundreds of feet away. it's kind of the smell of the whole city. that and..
--durien. i can't find a wikipedia article about it, but someone's random blog i found says 'It's described as an asian fruit that smells like rotten flesh and tastes wonderful and sweet.' it does smell like rotten-something or other. it's gross. there's a big section of it in Carrefour. gross.
--whitening cream. the ladies here think that having pure white skin is the height of beauty, so a lot of the products contain bleaching agents. i tried to find little disposable washcloth things today, but i couldn't find anything that didn't have 'white' written on it.
--no tipping. there's no tipping in asia! they find it insulting. it's great.
--an extreme respect for the elderly. if an elderly person gets on the bus, the first 6 people at the front immediately hop out of their seats. i talked to the cool WOW class about that thing where they say if you ask a chinese man if he would save his drowning wife or mother, he always chooses his mother and american men usually choose their wives.
--ghost month. it's in august of the lunar calendar and it's when all of the relatives come back from the hell and you have to appease them. during ghost month, you aren't supposed to hang your laundry out to dry or go swimming because they might try to pull you under.
--sun umbrellas. they're everywhere. everyone has them. they're like regular umbrellas but with silver metallic lining. i haven't broken down and bought one yet, but i think i'm almost to that point.

speaking of sun protection, i've been wearing my sunglasses and listening to my ipod a lot while i've been walking around lately, and i've been pretending i'm a celebrity. i think the only way not to let it get to me when so many people are staring at me is to turn it into a game. for some reason, the sunglasses make me feel like someone who's trying to be incognito but it doesn't work because you're soo noticeable. it's fun for now. we'll see how long it lasts.

today was pretty good. i woke up late again and went to Latini's for lunch. i had spaghetti with white wine and clams. it was pretty good. i did my lesson plans while i was sitting there which was nice. this family next to me kept looking at me but i didnt care because the atmosphere in there is so nice. it's decorated with big black and gold accessories and they play really pretty, fun music like mambo italiano and old-style music like that. the food isn't greaaat but the atmosphere is worth it.
it was pouring down rain all afternoon which was kind of nice. it makes you feel so cozy. i got to school really early and this co-teacher named chelsea was talking to me. she's only been here 2 months and she had a million questions. she seems nice.
my little kid class was so adorable tonight. we played duck duck goose and they didn't really understand the concept at first. and they couldn't remember the word 'goose' so they would say 'duck.. duck.. duck.. duck.. ... ...' and just stand in back of the person until one of us reminded them that it was 'goose!' and then some of them would take off immediately and some would just linger around. that class is really warming up to me. i got a new stamp in lieu of signing my name on everything and they loved it. it's hello kitty, fuchsia, and says 'excellent!'. the other big news in that class is that Tiger changed his name to Bill which makes me sad. i guess word got out that Tiger is not a real name. Jerry still lets me call him Jellyfish though, thank goodness.

that's pretty much it. i bought fun things at Carrefour today that i'm excited about. whipping cream and peaches, garlic butter, chocolate chip cookie mix with English instructions on the back (double bonus), stuff to make pasta salad with, and a new razor since mine was thrown away in the great shower cleaning of 2008.
time for bed!

just waiting 'til the shine wears off

this is my new cell phone. it has chinese on the buttons! click on the picture to see a bigger version of it.

this is my room as of yesterday. mom sent me a care package and it had pictures in it so i taped them up right behind where my computer usually is. dad sent me an ethernet cable extension plug thing so now i can use my laptop from my bed! which is where i am now.

let's start with yesterday. i had class at 10 downstairs. there was a kid in the class, kevin, who couldn't keep himself from shouting out the answer before anyone else could. it was driving me crazy. i had to ask him to stop answering questions after a bit. i talked to matt later that day and he said i probably should have had him count to 10 and then if no one else answered, let him answer. that would have been a better strategy.
saturday afternoon i didn't do much of anything other than hang around in the dorm and do my lesson plans for the evening. i chatted with dena and serena for a while about random things. that evening i taught my faaavorite substitute class of highschoolers. i subbed for them last week and then this was my last week. they were a lot of fun. there was a QA about what your ideal husband/wife would be like and they were trying to set me up with their regular teacher, michael. we played spoons again. i'm going to miss that class. i did exchange numbers with the co-teacher, christine. she's a lot of fun.
actually saturday after class, keith picked me up and we scooted to gill and kat's apartment for a little party they were having and christine was there. a lot of the co-teachers were there. everyone was dancing and talking. i talked to beth's boyfriend, rob, for a looong time about how many countries he's been to/lived in, what it does for him, what he wants to do when he's done traveling, etc. his dad is a landscape architect just like my majjy so we talked about that for a while. it was a really good night. emil kept dancing all around me because he could tell i was uncomfortable, but it was alright. i just don't like dancing, what can i say.

today i woke up relatively early (9am) to shower and go to taipei with dena, natalie and alan. dena wanted to see Longshan temple
i think it's one of the biggest temples in taipei. there were people all over the place with incense sticks that they were putting into giant golden containers and then they would pray for a few minutes. there were also big tables set up where you could leave food to be blessed while you pray and then you pick it up before you leave. the temple was decorated so ornately, it was amazing. there were really detailed carvings all over the top of it painted in really bright colors. it must have taken decades to make all of them.
natalie and i in front of the waterfall at longshan temple

after longshan, we got on the MRT (subway) and took a train out to a town called Danshui
where alan and natalie had been last week. it's a harbor town and there's a view of the mountains and the water and it's pretty. the water cools it off a lot.
we walked along the waterfront where there was a big market with all kinds of food vendors and stores full of trinkets. we had giiiant ice cream cones that cost 10NT which is about 30 cents. they were refreshing in the heat. and we went in this funny shop with all kinds of miniature things. i bought some earrings, pictured below. i have yellow shoes and a yellow skirt and i couldn't help myself. i think they're hilarious. they were $1.33 and well worth it.

what else.. everyone had barbequed (im using that term loosely) squid for lunch. everyone except me. i tried a bite of dena's and it was gross. i just don't like squid. it's really thick and chewy. it's like chewing on a giant piece of the biggest, scariest calamari you can imagine. i did have a corndog though. it was pretty good. it was SOOO hot outside today and even more humid. i was dripping with sweat the entire time. but once you get home and shower, you forget all about how disgusting you felt all day.
on the way home, i was eating a worther's candy on the MRT and this woman across from me told me 'no eating anything!' and i said oh i'm sorry i didn't know. the woman beside me mentioned how you can't even drink water and that's why the subways are so clean in taipei. i apologized to the woman beside me because she seemed really shaken up about it and we started chatting. her name is evelyne and she's from taipei. she exports computer accessories to america so she goes to las vegas every year. her english is really fantastic so it was easy to talk to her. i told her all about taoyuan and what i'm doing there, how i got there.. we discussed the differences in food in the US and asia and how they like everything to be hot here because they think it disinfects it. she said she hates american food. she told me a story about staying in a hotel in orlando once and there was a japanese restaurant and an american one and she chose the japanese one, even though she didn't used to like japanese food, just to avoid the american one. we were laughing the whole time we were talking, it was fun. anyway evelyne and i exchanged numbers and i'm going to call her next time i'm in taipei.
so it was a nice day. i have a headache and a mild sunburn, but i had a cup of tea and i feel better. dena did some reflexology stuff to me and it did help, but i still feel kind of bad. she showed me a pressure point in my foot that's supposed to help though. i felt weirddd pinging sensations when she touched it. but i need to go to bed now.

i uploaded all of the new pictures from today to facebook
you can look at them by copying and pasting this link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2476713&l=05382&id=7900530

with amber waves of grain

today was the funniest fourth of july i've had.
this morning i woke up at ELEVEN O'CLOCK! i was so tired and i just kept going back to sleep every time i woke up. it was good except that i had to leave for school at 230 and it made the morning seem very short. i did my lesson plans and then i left for the bus 5 minutes early and it was evident that i had missed it because no one was waiting at the stop. i waited like 20 minutes and then went back to the dorm and had them call a taxi for me. the thing with that is that i have to leave an hour and a half early when i take the bus because it's slow, you have to change buses and you don't really know if you'll catch them all on time. but when i took the taxi, i got there in 10 minutes. so then i had a ton of time to kill. i decided to explore around my school at guei san. i found this little shop with all kinds of hilarious jammies in it and i bought a really funny colonial american looking set of jammies that have like long bloomers and a babydoll top trimmed with pink lace. i modeled it for keith, dena and beth tonight. they were impressed.

anyway then i taught one class and then i had an hour break so i went back out to the street and walked into a cell phone shop and bought a cell phone for $95. now i'm in business. i don't know what my number is yet, but i'll find out tomorrow. it's cheaper to text the US than it is to text here ..?.. but i'm not complaining. and when i turned it on, it asked "english or chinese?" and then it had me set the date, time, and now i'm up and running.

after school, i went to this restaurant called Feebies, which is owned by an american and his taiwanese wife. they have pizza and stuff. i had veggie pizza, it was pretty good. a girl who's been here a year, i forget her name now, is leaving so it was her going away party. it was fun but it was soooo hot inside. they didn't have the air conditioning on very high and it's really humid outside today so we were all just sweaty the whole time. the funniest part of the evening was that this guy, i think his name is jason? brandon? or josh?, bought a big box of those little popper things and all of the americans popped them and we sang america the beautiful. then the canadians sang o canada. then we all sang we are the world :P it was so funny. time for bed! happy fourth of july :)

pool school

i try to remember the interesting parts of my day to tell you but when it gets to the end of the day, everything from the week starts to blend together.
mom said i should post more of the kids names. i don't remember which ones i already named, but my favorites are: tiffany, ally, becky, debby, tiger, jellyfish, eunice, maude, kevin 1 and kevin 2 in the same class, howard, hank, willie, tobby (pronounced toby), bella, brian, sam, ryan, lots of rubies, angel, small,...

the exciting part of today was going to ikea with keith. we scootered on his scooter, got a little lost, but ended up finding it. he had only been once before i so i felt the need to go into IKEA-tourguide mode and point out every single thing i could think of. i dragged him downstairs to get some meatballs only to find out he's a vegetarian. he watched me eat them though and he made a comment that i was literally glowing with joy. i love those meatballs. anyway i picked up a little lamp, a duvet cover so my room wont be covered in little feathery snowflakes at all times, a blanket for the rooftop, and candles for rooftop ambiance.
someone showed me our rooftop yesterday. you open these doors that make it look like you're going to step into a hallway or something, but it just opens to the roof. it's just a big cement pad, but it's a good 10 degrees cooler up there than in our stuffy common area downstairs. anyway like 8 of us went up and hung out on my new blanket and looked at the stars and the scene of downtown and it was very nice.

i'm getting ahead of myself though. after IKEA, keith and i went to a '100 NT store' and i bought some nail clippers and a sticky ball, which is essential for about half of the games they teach us to play. it's a ball made out of suction cups and you can throw it at the whiteboard and it sticks.
and then we went to this bulk candy store and he bought a miiiillion things of candy. it was a really nice afternoon. keith has oddly expressive eyes and facial expressions. he's a lot of fun to be around. crazy canadian though he is.

classes are going well i suppose. i've restarted my non-complaining countdown, so i won't elaborate, but tonight i had a WOW class that was difficult. they weren't very enthralled with anything i tried to do with them. i decided that just having a conversation might work better than trying to play kiddie games with them, and it did. so that was good.

anyway right nowww i'm dying to try out my tiny new lamp. i'm not sure if it's bright enough to read by but i'm going to go find out. i'm 1/3 of the way through the first harry potter book that i found upstairs and i'm a chapter or 2 into like 4 more books.

flower roots.

today was a hilarious lesson in english/chinese communication.
exhibit a: i was taking the bus on the second leg from the middle of downtown taoyuan to a town called Dar Chu and i kept letting all of these buses go past me before i realized it was getting late and that i was supposed to have taken the one that said it was going to Dayuan. anyway, i decided to take a taxi. i get in and the guy says hello. this isn't uncommon. most all of the bus drivers and taxi drivers can at least say hello. but this guy just kept on talking. he asked how long i was here for, where i was from, what i was doing, where i lived.. all sorts of things. so we ended up discussing how i don't really care for the food here because i don't know what's inside these meat-filled buns unless i bite into them. he told me the name of one that i should try, but i don't remember what it is..

exhibit b: i'm on the bus on the way home and this guy looks at me and motions if he can sit down next to me, i take out my headphones and say yes. he asked if i worked at tung an because he met people last week on the bus who were going there. so then we start taking about how he studied in singapore for college which is why his english is so good. he majored in hotel management and now he's working in downtown taoyuan at some hotel with butterfly in the name of it. the best thing though is that he gave me a name in chinese. apparently 'mei' is 'flower' and 'gan' is 'roots' so my name means flower roots. i figure that's probably one of the best possible combinations. tomorrow i'm going to get a stamp made out of it so i can stamp the kids books instead of signing my name 100times a day.

other than thattt.. derek and i went to this little tiny restaurant down the street from our school for dinner tonight. i had sauteed spinach and rice because the meat looked way too frightening. the chicken didnt look normal to me and the rest was odd mystery bits of meat. i'm not brave enough for that yet. but the spinach was good. and i stopped at this little fruit market on the way home and bought a bunch of lychee fruit that i'm excited about. george told me if you eat too many, they start making you feel really hot. good information.

**added later
tonight i went to wednesday night dinner (as is becoming a tradition) with natalie, alan, josh and martyn and we had planned to go to this italian place, latini's, but it closed at 9 so we went to this place right by our dorm named Party. it was like cantonese style food i guess. i ordered 'shitake chicken soup' and it comes and it's BLACK CHICKEN. have you heard of this? hold on let me show you. http://d0.biggestmenu.com/00/00/46/c95d3b0593639cd0_m.jpg
it's like regular chicken but the skin, meat and bones are all black. it actually tasted pretty normal but a little on the tough side i guess. but the color just totally freaked me out so i also ordered a giant bowl of rice.
that was my adventure of the day.

also, dena and i saw an ice cream cart while we were waiting for the bus. it doesn't play a song like the garbage truck does, but it does have an annoying squeaky horn. AND i saw the garbage truck while i was waiting for my bus home. it plays a really loud song and everyone literally runs outside with bags of garbage and hands it to the guy. but not big garbage bags. like HEB-sized bags.

one thing before we part

today was good except that my back has really been hurting. i think i tore a muscle or something because it's been continually burning with searing pain. i've been putting a frozen can of chicken stock on it when i'm at the dorm, but it still hurts a lot.
today i had one sub class and one regular class. both went pretty well. at the end of my regular class, the co-teacher told me she thinks i should use a microphone in class. she apparently uses it during her class time. i told her i'll try to teach the kids to just be quiet when i'm talking first and use the microphone as a last resort. that would be very awkward i think.
anyway that's about it. today was very routine. i made an odd version of stovetop chicken divan tonight because our oven only has one temperature: broil. or that's what i heard. anyway it was still tasty but not crispy like i like.
time to read and get in bed.

look at my horoscope:

This month you'll be happy when you think about all the impressive momentum you've built up over the past few months. A relationship or project will be moving along at a fast clip, and in July you'll find you can now bring things up a notch, to a more sophisticated level. Such progress has to be gratifying!

Mars will be in Virgo from July 1 to August 19, signaling that you're now beginning an important new two-year cycle. If you apply yourself during this critical phase you will have a high propensity for success. Mars will give you both courage and fervent drive, and also impart you with a commanding aura of authority. Plans and relationships that you formalize now will exceed your expectations, and what you accomplish will have staying power. You'll have the edge, for sure, so while you have it, use it, or as they say, lose it.

Saturn is currently in Virgo, adding heavy responsibilities to your shoulders. With Mars conjunct Saturn at the start of July, you may be quite mindful of the long-term importance of the decisions you are making. While it is always wise to be cautious and consider the next steps carefully, in early July you seem to be overly cautious. No need to second-guess yourself, dear Virgo.

You may fear that you made a big mistake by taking on so much, but soon you'll see all those moves were necessary. This feeling may be a lingering residue of having found yourself in a very tight financial spot recently, but realize that as a Virgo, you have an abundance of admirable resourcefulness, so you will work your way out of whatever seems to be troubling you. Saturn has asked much of you, but you've met those challenges squarely. A new and stronger version of you is rapidly emerging. Trust that you will be a force to be reckoned with, because you will be that, and more!

If you need to sign important papers or shake hands on a verbal deal, do so on July 14. The agreement you make will last, which hopefully is precisely what you want to hear!

Despite heavy-duty planetary aspects that have been at play, you'll have a lovely soft influence about to flow through your life this month, too. You'll have plenty of reasons to see friends once the new moon appears, July 2. June brought a heavy career emphasis, but July will provide lots of time to rest and rejuvenate. Travel may be part of the picture, too.

Are you in the mood for love? Get ready for the tender full moon, July 18. Small but meaningful private moments could thrill you. A certain glance, tender touch, slight smile, a stolen kiss, or whisper said at the end of an evening, each in their own way could send your sprits soaring. Enjoy this time to the fullest, dear Virgo.

If you are attached, July 22 reveals what a gem your partner is to you.

Another time to watch for outstanding romance would be over the weekend starting Friday night, July 25 through Sunday, July 27 when Mars and Jupiter will stir up delightful surprises. You may be bewildered by all the fuss others make over you, but this cosmic gift has your name written all over it. Enjoy it! Be out circulating!

Keep the following dates in mind:

Make new friends, socialize, and put work on a back burner: July 2-15

Join a new club: July 2-11

Romance will be out of this world: July 18 (+ or - 4 days), 26-27.

Mars will put you in a leadership position, so forge ahead: All month.

Sign a contract that will provide longevity: July 14.