i hear in my mind, all of this music

http://www.theshadygrove.com/menu.html
2 months! shady grove, here i come.
roasted vegetable chili. roasted chiles, sweet corn, fresh veggies and beans topped with cheese, onions and jalapenos. i get it without onions and jalapenos and it is soooo delicioussss. they serve it with a hot, slightly sweet flour tortilla underneath. i could die.

thomas asked me where he could find frito pie and it got me thinking about places to eat in austin. tonight, my class had a pizza party because 3 kids each got one of their friends to enroll, so we got a reward. the pizza was like chinese food on top of a pizza. it was bizarre. it was honest-to-goodness beef with broccoli on top of a cheese pizza.
i brought in one of the books spanky sent me and i had to explain what a radish was. i also demonstrated wheelbarrow racing. they thought that was kind of crazy.

the big news at the dorm is that we're getting 3 new people in the next week or two. mike, .. now i cant remember the other names.. chris and danielle. mike is supposed to be here tomorrow and the other 2 in the next 2 weeks. even though for practical reasons, more people in here isn't a good thing, i'm still excited. who cares if there's less fridge space and we need to buy toilet paper more often.

if you haven't watched the video i just posted, go watch it. the design of it alone is inspiring, but the message is even better. i donated $12 to help 2 girls in bangledash.

and! UT is ranked first in the nation in college football right now. last time i was out of the country for an extended period of time, we won the rose bowl.

starts with a girl

found this on one of my favorite blogs tonight and thought i'd spread the word. watch the video, it's awesome.

not to pull your halo down

oh man, a week away from chinese really throws a wrench in the learning process. jerry and i were pretty behind today. we're learning dollars and cents, how to ask for change, and how to write big numbers. it's too bad it's so useful in everyday life or i could just gloss over it.

the hospital was funny today. we got through all of the planned material and had some time left over so they asked if i wanted to know anything about taiwan or if i had any questions about chinese, so i got out my homework books and they helped me with some of my characters. it's funny when someone who isn't in elementary school is learning something new because it seems like they should be better since they're older, but in reality, i'm an elementary student when it comes to characters. they were all laughing at my practice so far, but it's only been 2 months, so i didn't feel bad.

i've been going to keith's juice lady who opened a new store on my way to the bus stop home. he always used to give her the wrapper from his straw as there's a lack of public trash cans throughout taiwan, and i've continued the tradition. yesterday i had a pine-orange-banana smoothie and today was strawberry banana. she speaks english and she's a friendly face after a long day.

mom surprised gram by flying to new hampshire for her birthday. we got her 80 bulbs for her birthday and mom's going to plant them and hang out with spanky so gram can run errands this week. i'm jealous that she gets to visit.

that's the news for today.

happy birthday gram!

gram is 80 today, holy moly. thank goodness she broke her hip when i was 10 so i would have a good reason to fly out and spend some quality time in new hampshire. i've visited nearly every summer since then, and now gram and spanky have become some of my best friends. gram and i are always getting into giggle fits on the phone over various things and i call for recipes and i get the sewing group gossip. it's fun. i love my grandparents.

today was a lot of fun. it was good to be back at school. my first class is opening up to me a little more now and we played some fun games.
my second class is loud and fun. i hid this kid, kevin 2's, flip flop in my back pocket for a while, and kevin 1 drew a lot of attention to it, and i turned bright red and everyone was commenting on my blushing. it was pretty embarrassing but that class and i are pretty close. they can be a little unruly, but it's because we're having fun which is ok with me.

here are some more pictures from matzu. i'm going to go watch grey's anatomy, do some chinese homework and go to bed.
me pointing to where we were located at the time
me, josh, leila, dawn and alex

latini's

bruce took some pictures of latini's (and the coffee shop next door.. only the dog, really)
http://www.wretch.cc/blog/wolaramirez/9779053
if you want to check it out :)

i went there for lunch and dan made me some kind of noodle and salad dish. it was pretty tasty and not on the menu. i am so fancy.

'cause money can't buy me love

we made it back from matzu all in one piece.
this morning i tried to get on the earlier plane, but there was a 30-person long waiting list and i was #30, so i had to wait until 7. we tried the famous 'matzu bagel' today which is sort of like a bagel, with various fillings. this man made them for us with egg, onion and hot dogs scrambled together and served on a bagel thing. it wasn't very delicious.

then in the afternoon, leila, meghan, josh and i hiked to the top of the tallest mountain and took the road back down, which took the better part of the day to accomplish. i think i'm done hiking for the rest of my life. i just wasn't made for climbing up steep hills. but i'm glad we did it.

once we got into taipei, we ate dinner at the train station because it has a reallly good cafeteria upstairs. i had hummus, falafel and pita bread. sooo tasty. i was so happy to get out of matzu and back into civilization. and then we all went for coldstone before we caught the bus home. it was a good evening as far as food went. the specialties in matzu were the bagels, fish noodles, and this rice they make with the dregs of red wine, which is this red, pulpy stuff. it tastes kind of vinegary and weird. not my favorite.

here's the link on facebook if you'd like to see pictures with commentary. i'll add some in to my blogs from the last few days, too. glad to be back!

matzu day 3

i guess since i bought an hour of internet time, i might as well write today's blog while i still remember what we did. it's always kind of lame to write it a few days later.

this morning, we woke up bright and early to catch the ferry to the biggest island, nangan. it was much bigger but everyone else says they like ours better. i liked nangan though. it would remind you of the san diego zoo or wild animal park. it was really green and lush, with random manicured flower beds along the roads. there's a vine or tree that has flowers that look like purple morning glories that's really pretty everywhere along the road.
we spent most of the morning bouncing around from place to place, looking for somewhere to eat breakfast. we finally settled at 7-11 after we weren't really able to find anything in town.

the funniest part of the day was finding a store that sold military uniforms and all of the accoutrements. these islands are dominated by the taiwanese military, and to walk in to a little store and buy their uniform was pretty funny. most of us bought a little hat that has the sun from the taiwanese flag on it, and the soldiers were saluting us and stuff. i asked one in chinese if he liked my hat and he said yes, it was very beautiful (in english). i'm not much of a hat girl, but it was fun to wear it for the day. josh bought a full uniform. hat, pants and jacket. he's going to wear it for halloween.

other than that, we checked out some of the tunnels along the sea where they used to keep ammunition and ships and keep watch. we watched an informational video at the tourism office.dawn in the temple to matzu. this guy was making funny hand gestures.

that's about it. lazy day! ..headed home tomorrow.