a kiss to build a dream on

there's not much that gram, jeffy and i have in common when it comes to music, but we all know the words to a kiss to build a dream on. it was my favorite song in 8th grade

things i find puzzling about taiwan:
-the buses. i ride one of the most popular routes, bus #15, home. there's always a giant crowd of high schoolers waiting to go home when i get out of class, and the bus driver lets everyone and anyone who's standing there on until no one else is waiting. the aisles are full, the front section by the driver is full, the stairwell is full.
but then, once people start to get off and seats open up, the people who are all crammed at the front a) don't move toward the back and b) don't sit in an empty seat. so the back can be almost completely empty but the people in the front are all squished together in a big huddle. it doesn't make any sense to me.

-there's a 7-11, family mart, OK mart or some other kind of convenience store literally on every single corner in the whole city, and then bunches more that aren't on corners. wikipedia says: Taiwan has a high density of 24-hour convenience stores, which in addition to the usual services, provide services on behalf of financial institutions or government agencies such as collection of parking fees, utility bills, traffic violation fines, and credit card payments.

i brought a package of pretzel sticks to class tonight and there was a mixed, but generally positive reaction from the kids. i think tomorrow i might bring my precious parmesan goldfish. i'm pretty sure they don't have goldfish here.
in other food-related news, i made meatballs and sauteed zucchini and onions with dill tonight and it was tasty beyond words.

well then don't be afraid to take me by the hand if you want to

if you haven't heard michael buble sing 'wonderful tonight' you need to youtube it right now. i'd send you the link but i think taiwanese youtube would be really slow for you. anyway some italian guy (i think he's italian..? it doesn't sound like spanish to me) sings with him and it is soooo goooodd. so good.

jerry and i went to chinese this morning and then we went to latini's for lunch and it was a bunch of fun. we're getting to the point where we can say a lot of general things in chinese which is fun. and since i've been learning and practicing on the owner and the waitstaff this whole time, they always understand what i'm saying which is really nice. lots of times in the real world, people look at me blankly or just refuse to try to guess my meaning.
jerry and i split a delicious pizza and i had a vanilla latte because it was rainy and a little chilly out.
anyway after jerry left, i was the only one in there and i asked one of the guys, justin, if his girlfriend was very beautiful. 'ni de nupengyou hen piao liang ma?' and justin told me i'm more beautiful than her. i told him you're not supposed to say that!
and he asked me, in english, if i had been to taipei 101 and i said 'ni ke yi shuo zhongwen' which is 'you can speak chinese' and he said it again. so things are moving right along in the language department.

i think i got back on the teaching bandwagon tonight. i brought my kids lifesavers and pretzels and they brought me some candy and we had fun in both classes. it's pretty odd to be the rule maker though. i still feel like i'm pretending. they asked if they were allowed to eat the candy in class and i said sure. in general, i'm trying to go with maj's rule that if you don't do anything stupid, you can have a long leash.
the thing is that i never learned what happens if you cross the line. when i was little, the fear of the unknown was enough to keep me from testing the limits, but a lot of these kids don't have that. in my saturday class, i have a kid who i asked to move seats and he looked at me and just said no. i can't really do anything to him though since if there's a discipline problem, they say it's the teacher's fault for not being fun enough in class. so i just held up class until he moved. who knows!

just the sound of your voice, the light in your eyes

jaime being a model at the park

today was a lot of fun. this morning before my chinese lesson i went to play with jaime and joyce at their house. we colored and hung out. it's funny how they're shy for the first 20 seconds i walk in and then the next thing i know, joyce is hanging all over me like a little monkey.
blurry joyce, cute as can be

chinese was easy today. we focused on 'yo mei yo' which is 'have/don't have' and 'yao bu yao' which is 'want/don't want'. linda and i had a pretty funny argument about how you say 'i see the table'. the book has an exercise where you write 'i see _____ but i don't see _____' and i wrote table and pen in the blank and she said i can't say that. you can only see/read/look at newspapers, magazines, tv's and movies. i was trying to ask, what if you want to say 'i see the table?' and she said you need some context like 'i went to linda's house and i saw her new table' but no one would just say 'i see the table'. i tried to explan that i wouldn't usually say that, but we have words to say it. who knows!

after that, bobo called to tell me she and jaime and joyce were riding bikes at the park by the dorm, so i took my camera and went over to play again. i brought a package of pretzels with me and they were a big hit. joyce and i tried to play badminton but it really wasn't working out for us. she rode her tiny bike all around and i walked after her. another parent was saying 'meiguo lai!' to his kid which means 'an american is coming!' which i thought was kind of funny.
when we were done, bobo took me to hot pot (a restaurant) with them to thank me for playing with them all day which was really nice of her. hot pot is kind of taiwan's special thing. you have bunsen burners built into the table and then they give you a big bowl of vegetables, tofu things and cabbage and you cook it in broth for a while. kind of like the melting pot. it was pretty good. i ordered beef and she ordered congealed blood, which i passed on. maybe next time..
i had a ton of fun today. girls between the ages of 0 and 12 are my target audience. i hope i have a whole gaggle of girls or a husband who doesn't mind me girly-ing up my boys.

if you want to see more pictures of us at the park, you can click here to see the album

the line forms on the right, babe

730 comes early when you're used to waking up around 10:30, and this morning the sun was insisting that i get out of bed by shining right in my eyes.

there are two girls in my kindy classes that are made of pure joy and sunshine, vivian and nicole. both are at least a foot shorter than anyone else in their class and nicole is just the cutest little thing in the whole wide world. she always wears dresses and she has long hair that curls up at the ends and bounces all around. she loves to throw the dice way above her head and run around in circles before it lands and she's always sneaking looks at me and grinning.

vivian has glasses and sometimes wears an eye patch. her older sister is in the class and the two of them have so much fun together. vivian is so sneaky though. she's always peeking at my flash cards and screaming out the answer before i have a chance to turn them around. but you can't get mad because she's just so cute and happy all the time.

got the spanky update from dad tonight. apparently when he was out of it, he commented on how the xray machine was really slow and loud and how if it was a GE, it would have been better. he worked for GE all his life and he, and our whole family by default, are die-hard GE fans for life.

well, i went to my first KTV tonight (karaoke)
this is josh and noe singing some american song. it's like regular karaoke but you're just in a little room with your friends. the KTV places are amazing though. they look like hotels. the lobbies are really fancy with marble and oversized flower arrangements, and then you go up the elevator and there are numbered rooms.
i think they went through 2 24 packs of taiwan beer. it's a shame i didn't get a better picture of the label. taiwan beer is very popular here. it's a dollar a can at 7-11.
i'll post some more pictures once bobo posts hers on facebook. mine didn't turn out very well.

this is my project for tomorrow

there's an old hotel right on the beach

my kids were going insane tonight and i have the biggest headache. sheesh. i think i kind of dug a hole for myself because i started pretending to have kung fu fights with my mostly-boys class, and one of the kids keeps hitting me really hard. i don't think i translated 'pretend'. he's also just a fiesty kid though. he and his brother are twins and they're really small and adorable.
they recite lessons to us at break time and his brother, alvin, was trying to recite to me tonight. when they don't know it well enough, i say 'goodbyeee' and they have to try again later, but alvin just kept walking to the back of the line on his own tonight because he knew he had no idea what he had to say.

i went to latini's for lunch because i haven't been there since.. sunday? is that possible? and i was practicing my characters and jerry walked in unexpectedly with his booming NI HAOOOO and we had a quick lunch.

it was a quiet day though. i made a package of the mashed potatoes gram and spanky sent and accidentally poured a cup of scalding water all over my hand :( it just kind of tipped over on me. everyone commented on my clumsiness, citing the scooter burn, scooter accident, and burnt hand.grandpa len, as we called him 10 years ago, continues to do well in the hospital. dad used the word 'chatty'. time for bed! 9am class tomorrow. i'll leave you with this picture of matt

me and mrs. jones

ohmygoddd i love michael buble so much. i love the songs he sings. i love the way he sings them. (listen to this. it is so pretty.) when i was the swing girl, the coolest job i've ever had, the piano player used to play 'me and mrs. jones' sometimes when i would swing.
(if you didn't know me before this blog, it was at this themed restaurant, old san francisco steak house, where there was a swing that hung down from the ceiling and a girl would get on it once an hour and hit bells on the ceiling with her feet. the rest of the time, she's a hostess. i worked there during college.)

gram and spanky's boxes came today!
2 of them, full of more things than seemed like would fit in the boxes. candy corn (my faaaavorite), black ballpoint pens, mashed potatoes, hot chocolate mix, a couple of cute shirts, tea, childrens books and stickers and colored pencils and crayons, cheese and a million other things. mustard and pretzels, baking soda, baking powder, a tape on learning chinese.
i've been thinking about spanky a lot the last few days. he's being operated on today, or he was a few hours ago, for the tumor on his kidney. he's tough though and he's the ideal patient. he does everything the doctors tell him to. aunt carol emailed an hour ago to say it went fine though, so i feel better.

steve is my saving grace on thursdays and saturdays. he's letting me use his scooter to get to my hard-to-get-to-by-bus classes and it's really really convenient. we went bowling tonight with the usual suspects and i drove us home on the scooter tonight since we were just going down the street and it was so hard! it defintiely feels different to drive with an added 200something pounds. but we made it.

time for bed. i can't waaiiiittt to read the transcript/watch clips of the VP debate. goodnight!

that's not even the half of them, kids. how do you spell 'spoiled'? :)

end up where i have started

it's a new month! hello, october. i like the first day of a new month because it's time to rewrite my schedule and look at a new picture for another 30 days. this calendar is inspirational words from women. october says 'do not delay. the golden moments fly.'

this will be quick because a) not a lot happened today and b) i need to write up 3 lesson plans quicklyy before i read. it makes me feel like a real teacher when i get to say 'i need to write a lesson plan.' ..anyway, jerry and i went to chinese today and i think we need to get back on the flash card train. there's no other way to learn the characters then to memorize them, and we've fallen way behind on that.
bobo made me feel better about my characters. my coteacher told me it looked like an elementary schooler wrote them, which i interpreted as 'it looks like a 6 yr old wrote that, it's so messy' but bobo said she probably meant it looks so by-the-book that it looks like an elementary schooler who's just learning so they do everything neatly. who knows.

after chinese i went to starbucks and then to the hospital for my lesson. while i was waiting for the ladies to arrive, this guy was talking to one of the girls and i noticed he was wearing a shirt from american eagle (their logo is an eagle and it's pretty recognizable) so i asked where he got it.. he said he lived in boston for a while to learn english, go to school, and watch baseball games. he said he had seen me in starbucks before and gave me his card. it is so tiny:
look at it compared to a normal business card. it just has his name (bruce), email, and blog. it's funny to me when people say they've seen me somewhere. it's weird to be so recognizable.

i finished harry potter on the bus tonight. and i tried doing some chinese character practice but these jerks sitting next to me were talking about me really loudly and i put my book away so they would stop. they were calling out all of the words i was learning and laughing hysterically. it's embarrassing to have a bunch of kids talking about you in another language, causing everyone else to sneak looks at you.

the best news of today is that the weather was beauuutiful. it's cool and not very humid. i was wishing i had brought my hoodie with me because it was almost chilly waiting for the bus after class tonight.