you'll be wed in a dilly dilly dress

i've listened to the following artists/CDs at least 10 times each in the last 2 weeks.
oren lavie/the opposite side of the sea
andrew bird/armchair apochrypha
eisley/room noises
kate havnevik/melankton
loveeee them.

almost as much as i love my jr high class. they may be 13/14/15 but they seem just like my friends. the teacher moved their chairs around so they wouldn't be as apt to talk.. that didn't reaaaally work. the worst part is that i used to have their names down based on location and now i have to start over again! this week i picked up willie, amy, robbie, jim and amy. i keep forgetting my favorite girl's name. she sits right up front now though, so it won't be too long.

they asked interesting things over the break. amy 2 wanted to know if they think hair color 'is more important' in america. and they wanted to know how i order the tea i bring to class.. do i point? do i look at the english menu? no. chinese! [wo xiang yao yi zhong bei bing de lu cha. yi dian dian tang]. my favorite girl observed that i always get green tea.

today was a review day so we did some little plays and then the second half was a pub quiz with facts we've learned the last 2 weeks. it was hard but lots of fun. i love that they all say hi and goodbye to me and they say 'megan' a lot which is so much better than 'teacher, teacher!'. i feel like i was just their age, it's weird that i'm 10 years older.

tonight we had a demo in my second class so i didn't get to hang out with the kuos but i did go say hi and they had food on the table waiting for me, so i took it to go and ate it quickly before my second class. they take good care of me, i'm really lucky to have them in my circle here.

the demo went so well. a few things went wrong (like asking them to spell umbrella. duh! they can't even spell 'dogs') but the whole thing showed how much fun we have in class and i was wearing my power teacher shoes so i felt like i was representing myself well.

then when we got out, it was raining cats and dogs but luckily i remembered to bring a change of shoes so i wouldn't ruin my pretty shoes/wouldn't have to wear them for all 4 hours that night and i had my rain pants. when you're properly equipped, it's actually kind of fun to drive in the rain. crazy trying to keep your balance while you wipe your visor with your left and and steer/accelerate with your right hand.

stopped at the thai place to pick up panang curry on the way home and i was drenched because it's at the halfway point. last time they charged me $150 and this time it was $130, so we're making progress.

2 things to think about:
free rice added categories to their website. now you can do the traditional vocab or math, periodic table, a bunch of foreign languages (unfortunately no zhongwen), and my favorite, countries on a map. good practice for the pub quiz. i'm at 2,730 grains today. lots of free time..

Let us assume you met a rudimentary magician. Let us assume he can do five simple tricks--he can pull a rabbit out of his hat, he can make a coin disappear, he can turn the ace of spades into the Joker card, and two others in a similar vein. These are his only tricks and he can't learn any more; he can only do these five. HOWEVER, it turns out he's doing these five tricks with real magic. It's not an illusion; he can actually conjure the bunny out of the ether and he can move the coin through space. He's legitimately magical, but extremely limited in scope and influence. Would this person be more impressive than Albert Einstein?

a pretty flower in a vase

the weather today was so beautiful it just makes you feel like nothing could be wrong. jerry and i learned a bunch of new words in chinese that i actually care about. our new book is reaaaally cool. it has lots of cool illustrations.
little lesson?
yenjing with high pitch for both words - eyes
yenjing with forceful 'jing' - glasses
yin xing yenjing - contacts (yin xing is invisible)
yenying - eye shadow
jiemao - eye lash
jiemaogao- mascara (gao means tall)
zhentou - pillow
beizi - comforter.. another set of tones with the same words means 'cup'

so i'm excited. our new book is all vocab so we should be on fire with our chinese pretty soon.
yuum whole duck. i haven't tried that yet but i want to.

yahoo we just got a new girl in the dorm right now. her name is tess and she's blonde! that's all i have right now. steve is touring her around. we all have a little contest to see who will be the first to meet the new people. i've only been first to meet one person although now i can't remember who it was.. martyn just peeked in my dorm to whisper that we got a new girl :P
i brought my new book to mr. kuo and we did some words. he was pretty funny tonight. i think he was happy to help me pronounce stuff correctly. when it got close to class time, mrs. chan came up to me and said 'hello!' and pointed at the clock. part of me is learning chinese just so i can have more in depth conversations with her. it kills me that i chat up a storm with her husband and i don't know her at all. she just makes me tons and tons of food.

so good day. i just feel really optimistic and good today like everything will work out. i spent a looong time looking at blogs tonight full of creative people my age who are making interesting things and doing fun things. i think we have a lot going for us since we grew up with the internet. it can be such a good resource.

have you heard of Coraline? maybe i'm the only one who hasn't. it was made by the same people who did nightmare before christmas and it looks awesome. hard to believe it's all stop motion + animation. so many tiny little components.

march

one of my favorite design blogs posted this free download/printable march calendar by lisa rupp. it's meant to be 8.5 by 11. yahoo march!

and you search for a chair, but there's nothing at all

weird day. it felt so long. this morning i woke up and made myself get out of bed and walk to carrefour to make jerry chicken soup before he got out of chinese at 11. he had a cold in class on monday and i wanted to do something nice.. but i didn't get my act together in time to drop it off. he picked it up later in the afternoon though. man i love chicken soup. could it be any easier?
classes were ok. tuesday feels so long. i was so frustrated with my first class. they didn't know anything and it was very evident that even the kids who i thought could read really aren't good readers at all. i need to get back to basics with them.

tonight i got home and alex was in the living room and justin mentioned trivia night and alex actually showed interest in going out and doing something, which doesn't really happen too often, so i told him i'd go if he went. he rallied, so i went. they assign the teams randomly but it ended up being me, alex, and this guy from the south group of schools named pat. he was really interesting. he worked at the Lush factory for a while. ..i guess the more i drank, the more interesting he got. funny how that works hm.
when i got home tonight, look what was in my wallet! the ellusive $2000 bill. i'm not sure when i got it. i guess they paid me with it tonight? i didn't even notice. time for bed. it's reallly late.

men and machines

whew! little panic attack. being without the internet makes me ansy, but when my actual computer is broken, i go crazy. everyone else's internet was fine but mine wasn't working.. and my computer kept saying 'tcp/ip connection unable to connect' and none of the forums were helping. but i just restarted my computer a million times and when i came back downstairs to my room, another internet connection magically appeared in my network connections and it worked.

i'm sure it would be been alright eventually but the thought of toting my computer to a computer store downtown [when i don't have a bag/backpack it fits in easily and it's been rainy the last few days] and then to try to communicate my problem tp people who may or may not have spoken much english was overwhelming 5 minutes ago.

other than that, today was easy. chinese, latini's, a long nap and then 3.5 hours of class tonight. in my second class, we could hear chris screaming out QAs in the class beside us, so our class answered back through the wall. we thought it was pretty funny but he said his class just thought we were being weird.

i'm going to just sit and decompress for a bit.

something to think about:
You have a brain tumor. Though there is no discomfort at the moment, this tumor would unquestionably kill you in six months. However, your life can (and will) be saved by an operation, but the incision will leave you significantly less intelligent, less logical, and with a terrible memory. The surgery is in two weeks. How do you spend the next 14 days?

..i think that one would be better if it gave you the choice between living for 6 months after the surgery or just for 2 weeks with a regular mind. otherwise you're just thinking about what you'd like to do before you die. although i guess we would all choose 2 weeks.

tcp/ip unable to connect

my computer isn't letting me connect to the internet because it can't find itself an IP address :(

everyone else's is fine.

i guess i'm headed to the computer store tomorrow.

MEK

[all i ended up doing to fix it was restart my computer a few times and it magically found a different internet connection to use that ended up working. search the forums if you actually need help. sorry.]

violin interlude

isn't it nice when you can say 'let's go to the hot springs tomorrow' and a group of people says 'that sounds like fun, i'm in.' this morning jon, dawn, chris, danielle and i set off for wulai. today was gray and a little chillier than it has been lately, and it was a perfect day to sit in boiling hot water for a few hours.
jon had never been and he agreed that the mushrooms wrapped in bacon and grilled are by far the best food in taiwan. man those things are so tasty.

there were a lot more people this time than last because yesterday was a big holiday. there were probably 100 people or more crowded along a 50 yard strip of river. we were the only foreigners there, which drew enough attention, but when dawn, danielle and i peeled off our clothes and were tiptoe-ing along the rocks in our teeny bikinis, it created a noticeable scene. especially because all of the taiwanese people were in jeans and black t shirts.
i bought some handmade indian shoes that i had been pining after ever since i saw them when we went to wulai the first time. right now they're really stiff and sharp around the edges, but assuming i can stand the breaking-in process, i think they could be really nice. they take 'pointy toed' to a whole new level.
danielle and i went to a big reflexology spa in taoyuan when we got home from taipei. she had gone a few times before and i was grateful to have someone who knew what was going on. she requested her usual guy (#5) and i had #13. first they soak your feet in a little spa thing with jets while they work the knots out of your shoulders and back. i usually ask for light pressure, but since i couldn't communicate with the guy, i just let him do his thing. i don't think i have any knots anymore.

after that, you sit in a comfy chair and they massage your feet and legs for 45min. it was lovely. painful at times and tickley, but really good. i could do that once a month. it costs as much as an hour of work.

when we got home, danielle made me a cup of tea with her fancy tea leaves. you can keep reusing them and they just sink to the bottom when it's ready. yum.

something to think about:
You have won a prize. Either you can spend a year in Europe with a monthly stipend of $2,000 or spend ten minutes on the moon, but not both. Which option do you select?