stuffy

well, the camera is awesome. the gorge is awesome.
the first night, we got into hualien at around 11pm and stayed in a hostel with a freezing cold air conditioner and a heavy, wanna-be down comforter.
the next morning, after kind of a hassle, we finally were able to rent 2 scooters and start into taroko park. the ride there was amazing. i'm not sure what 'lien' means but 'hua' is flower and the whole town smelled like asian jasmine and citrus trees in bloom. it was so good. and the drive up the mountain was beautiful and got cooler and cooler as you went up.

we checked into the hostel and then headed to the Shackadon trail, which was closed (though we found a secret passageway and got in anyway) and so we walked for probably half a mile or so and ended at a swimming hole that gill really likes.
the water you could see from the road was all gray from the marble bits, but the water at the swimming hole was beautiful blue.

i was messing with my camera and everything went blue for a couple of shots.
after shackadon, we went to this area called swallow canyon or swallow something-or-other. my only stipulation for the day was that i wanted to do easy trails and take pictures of beautiful things. but somehow we ended up hiking up the most difficult trail in taroko. it was 1.5km of nearly vertical climbing on rocks and boulders for an hour or more.

there were all kinds of signs saying 'for experienced, well-equipped climbers only. turn around!
i thought my body was going to give out. we hadn't eaten lunch, we had no water, and i was using every shred of manners and positivity i had in my being. i was obviously still complaining a lot. anyway, we made it to this suspension bridge and then turned around and went back down.


saw this weird plant. any thoughts, majtown?
look gram, mail comes by carrier pigeon to the hostel.
before they took me back to the train station this morning, we walked 'the tunnel of nine turns' which used to be a road, but the traffic was so bad that they had to make a new road, so they turned the old one into a scenic pathway.

and then 2.5 hours later, i was back in taoyuan and on my way to school.
i have a cold and all of the kids are sick so it was a long day.
we got a new guy in the dorm, alex. he's from michigan and seems nice and normal. i haven't gotten to talk to him too much yet.
time for bed. i need some serious rest.

additional pictures here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2522818&l=dbae6&id=7900530

trip

i'm going to taroko gorge with keith and gill tonight and coming back monday afternoon. it's kind of a long journey for a day trip, but i'd like to spend some extra time with keith and taroko is supposed to be reaaallly beautiful.

i bought a nikon D60 today. the sweeetest guy at the camera store helped teach me how to use it, sort of, and showed me all kinds of things because the manual is in chinese. i ordered it the other day and it just came in this morning. it's super fancy and should take amaaazing pictures. i'm really excited.

so that is that! yay for adventures and good tools to document them with.

made from the stars

3.5 highlights from today:
1. natalie and i went with celia to the local high school we'll be teaching at once a week. it worked out that we both teach there the same day at the same time, but with different classes. natalie and i are the only 2 blondes working at our school and thank GOODNESS we were paired up.
the high schools here are hard to explain. they're shaped like big, hollow rectangles and the hallways and classrooms are open to the outside, there are bars on the windows of the classrooms and there are lots of tiled planter boxes with various grasses and other green stuff, but no flowers. anyway, natalie and i walk in and instantly, [what seemed like] the whole school got out of their chairs and came to the windows to see us. there was laughing and pointing and general foreigner-mayhem. we're the only foreigners that will step foot in the school this semester. when i was sitting down waiting for our meeting to start, this gaggle of girls came up to the window next to me and started touching my hair through the bars. it was a bizarre experience for me.

anyway though my homeroom teacher, who made a point that she won't be helping me in any way, seems nice. she hits the whitening cream a little hard, but she seems sweet. and my classroom is totally awesome. it's only used for her class and my class, so i get to decorate it if i want to! it's painted bright colors right now and the chalk board uses actual chalk (we use whiteboards at the other school) and it's up on this platform that's probably 6 or 8 inches higher than the rest of the class. it'll be interesting.

2. picked up my ARC (alien resident card, i believe) and i took a taxi home. the driver, a really cute old man, and i chatted in my broken chinese. i found out his name, that he has 4 children, one of whom is 45, and 5 grandchildren. we both think it's really hot outside but it's supposed to cool off in mid october. and we agree that betel nut, beer and cigarettes are bad, but we like tea and coffee. that's how far my chinese will take me right now.
aaand i glanced at the clock while i was in the car since i hadn't seen one all day, and it was my favorite time, 11:11.

3. keith is back from taipei. he thinks he did awesome on his test. he's going to taroko gorge (it's this gigantic gorge that's 4 hours south by train and 2 more hours on a scooter after that) tomorrow and i don't know if i'm going to go or not. there are various extenuating circumstances, but the biggest factors are that there i'd be going standby to get home in time for class, and i think i'm coming down with a double ear infection.

3.5 made dad's kraft spaghetti sauce with capellini on toast tonight for keith's homecoming and it was delicious as always.

[all but one of] my exes live in texas

day 1
today

so much has changed in 2 and a half months. my room has filled up, i've made friends, i gained a boyfriend-not-boyfriend and lost him, i've learned some chinese, and i've begun to learn what it is to be a teacher.
all in all, i'd say it's all happened as i had imagined when i applied for the job in may. i guess i've always felt confident in my own abilities, but actually moving here and starting over and building a life in a country where i don't speak the language has really made me feel very strong.

my bed on day 1
my bed on day.. 79
desk june 19th
desk some time in july
desk sept 4

it's keith's last week in taiwan. it's going to be lonely while i readjust to driving myself to work, making my own fried eggs and tea in the morning, washing the frying pan and retreiving my own mail. i also have to find someone to tell every detail of my day to (though my blog is lovely, i can't see your facial expressions and you can't see my hand motions). but! it'll be fine and we have the internet.

todayy was pretty good.
--keith gave me a short scooter lesson in the basement of the school. i'm freaked out, but i have to learn some time.
--emily bought me a really funny leopard print change purse with pink, heartshaped spots. i always joke with her about how taiwan-fabulous her clothes are.
--in my high school class, i called this kid Sean ALL CLASS LONG and they only corrected me in the last 10 minutes when i actually wrote 'sean' on the board. his name is really Eric. OOPS. i turned so red. i think my coteacher and i have fully bonded in there though.
--and the food people gave me a special dessert because yesterday was my birthday :) it was green papaya slices with passionfruit sauce. so tasty.

da na na na na na

this post is all over the place. i'll fix it tomorrow. i just wanted to give you the birthday rundown while it was clear in my mind.

today was maybe one of the best birthdays ever!
i opened presents throughout the day which was fun and took a whole lot of self restraint :P
started with some of gram's. a frilly top and a black skirt first, which is what i ended up wearing today. i got a whole ton of compliments.

jerry and i went to chinese lessons and joyce beat us counting to 30. we're nothing against a 3 year old native speaker.

then serena and i went to latini's for lunch and alex was there reading so he chatted with us for a while. keith met us there. i had escargot again, delicious.

this is alex, me and jerry at TGI Fridays tonight for dinner

the bus was wayy too crowded so i took a taxi to class and the driver, a woman, was HILARIOUS. she kept reading the street signs written in pinyin, with american letters, and butchering them. i kept screaming BU DUI from the back seat. we had a funny conversation in broken chinese and english. she told me i had a long nose but that i'm very beautiful. who knows.

my coteacher bought me a pretty necklace for my birthday :) and made my class say happy birthday to me. i shared my twizzlers with them that mom had sent a while ago. i don't think they liked them. they're kind of plastic-y for them.

this is keith surrounded by and covered in all of my presents :)

steve is the one who's right in front, then alex with my sunday and jerry. i didn't really get any good pictures of the people who came to dinner. keith and jerry invited everyone to fridays and dena, martyn, josh, noe, justin, steve, alex, natalie, alan, serena, leila, gill and katie all came. it was a lot of fun. noe and i split beef fajitas that were delicious and i had a margarita and someone bought me a (virgin) pina colada and then the fridays people brought me ice cream and sang happy birthday.
when we got home, keith gave me his present, a lucky cat! i've been searching for one for weeks and weeks and he went to this special town and searched all over and had a whole team of ladies help him find one for me. it's a piggy bank and it's traditionally on the counter at restaurants because it symbolizes good luck and prosperity. i love it. it's taiwan fabulous.

and that was my day!
thank you, family for sending the cards and especially the pictures. i didn't get to show my class today, but i did show them the card with the chinese characters from uncle john and family and they thought that was way too funny.
time for bed :)

frank, frank, frank, frank, frank.

look how cute gram and spanky are.

classes today were insane.
i just picked up a new baby class today. they've been learning english for 2 months and they haven't even finished their beginners book so we have to teach the rest of it in addition to the first really hard book they have. today they had to write down:
Q: Who are your English teachers?
A: Sherry and Megan are my English teachers.
when i wrote it on the board, they were screaming 'so looonggg!' and i said 'you're not in baby class anymore, this is short!' and they all groaned like what have we gotten ourselves into.

some wrote it like:
W h o a r e y o u r e n g l i s h t e a c h e r s
and some wrote: whoareyournenglisteachers
and lots wrote:
Who are your Engl
ish teachers?
so i had to explain the concept of keeping words together because 'a' is a word by itself, so you have to push the letters in each word together so people don't think they're their own word. it was bizarre. and they've never heard of a period or a question mark.

3 boys in there refuse to speak english so i didn't give them any stickers today. we use stickers as incentives. they can pick out little prizes that would remind you of what you get at pizza hut with tickets, but it's more like office supplies.

after that, my other class seemed like a breeze. i showed them the pictures of the fam and they were all enthralled as the others have been. and i had a map so i showed them where texas was. they were pretty impressed with how far away i live.
the annoying/cute thing in there was that toward the end, they wouldn't stop repeating everything i said for about 20 minutes. it started off ok because they have to repeat after me for the new words and the new lesson, but they'd repeat me when a kid wasn't paying attention and i'd keep saying their name. frank never pays attention so i'm constantly saying 'frank, frank, frank, frank' until he looks at me. so today the whoooole class was saying it.

i also had kind of an interesting snippet of a conversation while i was checking the new words with these 2 kids, iris and kevin 1 (we have 2 kevins, kevin 1 and kevin 2). iris was looking at my eyes and she said 'your eyes are so beautiful!' and kevin started looking at them and he said 'they're blue and green' and i said 'and yellow!' and they said oooohh. and then they said we have brown eyes. everyone, brown eyes. and they were touching my hair and telling me how many colors they could count in my shades of blonde. it was kind of a weird moment. imagine what it would be like if everyone in your country had the same color hair and the same color eyes.

tonight the usual suspects played spades again. justin and i won.
and at midnight serena presented me with cookie dough :) and i opened gram and spanky's jam and maple syrup, but i'm leaving all of the wrapped presents until the afternoon. i'm pretty excited though!

when i give my heart, it will be completely

chelsea took this picture with her cell phone. it's steamed pork buns. probably my favorite thing to eat in this country.

Gotta love Sleepless in Seattle's soundtrack. It's been one of my favorites since middle school, but i lost the CD sometime in college and just rediscovered it. Listening to my newly-synced iPod was lovely today. Nothing like listening to across the universe and a wink and a smile while it's rainy out.

I woke up so late this morning. Didn't get out of bed until noonish. I thought for sure I had woken up super early since it was so dark out, but it was just rainy. We were due for some serious rain, as we haven't had any since July really. I treated myself to 'le chang cha na cheeay' (a hot vanilla latte) and patiently wrote out my lesson plans while people pointed at me from behind the glass at Starbucks.


In my baby class, we had a section where you were supposed to glue down a picture of your family and then have people ask questions about the picture, but I didn't remind them ahead of time, so most people didn't have pictures. I brought some of my family though. They were veryyy interested to see everyone. They oohed and aahed at Jeff and Matt and one of the mom's asked if the little girl in the picture of dad and I was my kid, but it's really me when I was 6. The kids were interested to see what I looked like at their age. It's a really embarrassing picture of me in a flowery dress and a giant, puffy, hot pink head band.

My other class, full of 8-11 year olds, was enthralled with my mom. They said 'oooh beautiful! beautiful!' They also commented on how cute Jeff and Matt were. It was pretty entertaining. In that class, when I asked if anyone wanted to see pictures of my family, they all jumped out of their chairs and swarmed around me in a giant crowd with outstretched hands.
me looking pretty beat at the end of the day, eating dinner

After work, Chelsea gave me a ride home. We stopped at a Hong Kong restaurant and had yummy steamed buns filled with pork, and I had curry with rice and pork. She wrote the Chinese characters on my flashcards of Pinyin and English words and I said the Chinese and she guessed the English. Some of my pronunciation is off, but she could figure out 90% of them which made me feel pretty accomplished.

UT won their first football game against FLA Atlantic, woo!
2 more days until my birthday :)