so you think you're lonely

exciting news for anyone who remembers the best part of the '90s. american apparel brought hypercolor shirts back.
they're the ones that change color in different temperatures. they have about 5 or 6 different colors for $34 and it's exciting because you could sort of find them online before, but they always had stupid prints/logos on them.
exhibit A:
they're all over the blogs right now. apparently most people don't remember them as fondly as i do. this afternoon in the dorm we were discussing how it would be kind of embarrassing to wear them now that we aren't 13 because under your arms and your boobs will always be a different color.
exhibit B:
we had the most fun in my first class tonight. they're the perfect age where they're old enough that you can be sarcastic with them but they don't think you're lame. and jasmine is a lot of fun and she doesn't try to control my lesson but she helps me when i need it.and in my little kid class we had to help them with these little stories they're going to recite at our demo in a few months and we were telling them the words they didn't know. my kids were shocked and delighted to find out which chinese words i knew, which was fun for me.
we were playing a game where theyre standing in a circle drawn on the ground and if they lose the rock paper scissor, they have to ask a QA and their circle gets smaller. if you step out of the circle or if you touch the desk or whatever to keep your balance, you lose. carol and i played with the last 2 kids and when our circles got too small, we picked up the kids so their feet wouldn't touch the ground. it was a lot of fun. i wish every day was monday.

with dignity and grace

i hate carrefour on sundays but oh how i love these little cakes that they sell by the door.
they're filled with some kind of pudding stuff. dena said she thinks it's lemon but i think it's vanilla custard? whatever it is, it's delicious. although sometimes if the lady has just made them, it's like molten lava. so this afternoon i attempted to make crunchy cornbread stuff that turned out to be a disaster.. i can't remember where i found the recipe, somewhere online. anyway it was supposed to be made in a 9 by 13 but i made it in a 7 by 10 or some silly sized dish from IKEA and the middle didn't want to cook so i lifted up the crispy top, scooped out all of the uncooked middle and put it in another dish and then put the top back on and cooked them both for a while longer.

it wasn't appetizing at all because it stuck to the bottom of the pans so i had to scoop it out with spoons and then it was just like a pile of crunchy mess on a plate. jerry came over to try it and we decided it just needed to be thrown out. it wasn't disgusting but it wasn't tasty. but! i did learn how to carmelize onions.
..so at first i wasn't a big fan of the nail art. but now i think i kind of like the gold with white roses. it's funny because my brain knows it's ugly but the rest of me reaaally likes it! i keep pointing to everything and taking longer to get the change out of my change purse just so i can look at it. i'm losing my mind, aren't i?
the highlight of the day was a delicious strawberry banana smoothie. it makes me want to make smoothies every day for every meal. and we're coming up on mango season.

something that is beating

spa days are my favorite days. i had a 2 hour, full body massage at the spa between latini's and the coffee shop, and it was fantastic. i woke up with a cold so my head was pounding and my body felt achey all morning, but the massage was perfect.
my masseuse (thank you, spellcheck), jessica, spoke a little bit of english which was nice. we had one hilarious problem because my nose was all runny from laying on my stomach for an hour, so when i had to turn over i asked for a tissue and she thought i was crying! i tried to explain that i had a cold.. but she just heard the word 'cold' and then turned the AC off and put some extra blankets on me.
the top picture is one i took a while ago and all of the others are from their website. the picture above is the room where you soak your feet in scented water of your choice.. i like rose but today i had chamomile. after your treatment you hang out, read magazines, have your nails painted on the couch, drink tea and eat tiny little cake with a tiny little spoon.so that was a nice day. i went in at 345 and left at 8. i have some awesome asian nail art, but it isn't photographing well with the glare from the light so i'll post that tomorrow.

then as i was paying, beth was at the front desk of the spa talking to nicky so i went to latini's with her and jerry was meeting her. who knows how she talked him out of his lair. anyway the 3 of us ended up spending the night chatting. it's 4am and i just got home. i really like beth. she reminds me a lot of my friends from home.
and i got to chat with faj on skype for an hour. so jealous that they're testing out the new jet ski without me. 3 months.

scooter shoes

the paths that your eyes wander down

conversation from yesterday at the kuos.
i hadn't seen mr. wang or mr. whatever his name is in 2 or 3 weeks, and mr. whatever brought me an iced coffee and tiramisu.

mr. kuo: megan! mr. wang and mr. chen here to see you!
mr. wang: megan! i love you! will you kiss me?
me: long time no see! where have you been?
..i start to survey the scene and notice that their eyes are all a little squinty and they're all toasted.
anyway i try to sit between mr. kuo and mr. chen, but mr. chen is smoking, so i have to sit by mr. wang. mr. kuo gets up to give me the tiramisu and coffee
mr. kuo: mr. chen give you cake and coffee!
me: yahooo thank you, tiramisu is my favorite
mr. wang: megan, i love you. will you kiss me?
me: ni hen lao de ren han wo hen piao liang han chong ming (you are old and i am pretty and smart)
mrs. chan was hovering behind me nervously laughing the whole time. they're all harmless but it's new to me to have an old man declaring his love to me every 5 seconds. mr. kuo always apologizes to me the next day

i'm going to find/kill the mosquito that's loose somewhere in my room and then go to sleep. i'm almost finished with joy luck club which i think is cute and even better because it has lots of stuff about asian culture that's funnier when you're living here. jerry said he didn't like it in the past but i think he could appreciate it more now than he can at least try to read some of their weird pinyin where the author tried to phonetically spell a chinese word.

it's supposed to warm up tomorrow. fingers crossed. i think all of this cold, dreary weather has gotten me a little down. i've been missing my friends and home in general this week. ..how many girls get pep talks from their moms that involve the words 'existential aloneness?'

Remind yourself that you are well loved and not alone. It is the feeling of separateness- existential aloneness that hits us sometimes in the pit of our stomach. You aren't without true support. Really.

april

lisa rupp's free printable april calendar.

you never call, baby, when you say you will

wednesdays make my chest feel tight because i dread my teenagers all day. what is it that turns normal, nice kids into terrors? they spoke chinese all class, were throwing stuff across the room, etc. even my nice girls weren't being nice. jane said 'megan you are so pretty.. APRIL FOOLS'. and i made that girl a CD last week with a song she expressed interest in! jerk.

in other april fools news, the taipei times published this article today on how the "pandas" that china gave taiwan (which stirred up a lot of controversy. this isn't their native habitat so they're going to die eventually, and we're going to be blamed for not taking good enough care of them. taiwan wanted to send them back.) were actually bears dyed to look like pandas.
there were some hilarious quotes.

The Taipei Zoo’s head of ursidae ex-procyonidae care, Connie Liu (劉長春), said she became suspicious when the pandas, Tuan Tuan (團團) and Yuan Yuan (圓圓), began to spend almost all of their waking hours having sex. Pandas are notorious for their low libidos, which make them difficult to breed in captivity.

“Let’s just say Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan would tuan yuan at every chance,” said Liu, referring to the combination of the panda’s names, which means “to reunite” in Mandarin. “They would do it doggy-style and every armchair zoologist knows that pandas favor the missionary position — when they do it at all. Their behavior caused chaos. Children screamed and parents became irate.”

“Whenever the moaning from the panda enclosure gets too loud we gotta go in there and hose ’em down with cold water,” he said. “After a while, parts of the animals’ black-and-white patches started to turn brown.”

Local media reported yesterday that, in December, traces of melamine were found in Chinese bamboo that had been shipped to Taipei to feed Yuan Yuan and Tuan Tuan when the pair were rejecting Taiwanese bamboo and had each lost 3kg.

a couple of guys in the dorm were pretty insistent that newspapers don't take part in April Fools and that it had to be real.

nothing interesting to report today except that i went to a new japanese place for lunch with bobo and it was really yummy. and i went to pizza hut tonight to pick up a tiny pizza for dinner and i started speaking chinese and using crazy hand gestures and the guy just looked at me and said 'i speak english.' whoops. ..i told him it's ok, i need the practice.

oh! i almost forgot. new girl! her name is kristen, she's from florida, never been to asia/taught before. she was in the military for 10 years. blonde. she seems cool.