i know it won't be easy

the highlight of today was a lovely woman who let me go ahead of her in line at carrefour because i was buying 2 things of ice cream and she thought they would melt, though in taiwan they package ice cream in individual styrofoam containers so nothing does seem to actually melt before you get it home. since that was the most noteworthy part of my day, today i'm leaving you with images of pretty things.
this bedding from anthropologie. it's cotton but says dry clean only. who does that?
handmade necklaces with your initial from becoming.
handmade calligraphy stamps from emililies on etsy
prettiest wool felt handmade hydrangea headbands by louandlee (also on etsy, also available in adult sizes).
custom rubber stamps at paperwink.. which i think i've posted before, but they bear repeating.
pretty handmade purse at SaidosDaConcha on etsy

it's no use pretending

these are twbf's pictures from sunday. we went to lunch today in carrefour and i gently prodded him to upload them. we went to a japanese place called '8 things' and it was pretty yummy. i had a fried pork steak thing and it came with a bazillion sides. fruit covered in mayo (yumm doesn't that sound appetizing), miso soup, green vegetable thing, rice, strawberry jello, egg custard, fake crab slices, salad.
we have a new kid in my first class, ricky. when i asked him how old he was, he just said 'i'm 9.' and not 'i am nine years old' in robot voice like we teach the kids. i really hope i don't liquify his brain with the memorization we do. it really isn't effective at all. today i tried to vary a question and they couldn't answer me.

our new word was 'fine' and even though when you ask 'how are you?' they automatically spit out 'i'm fine thank you, and you?' they have no idea what they're saying. it's sad really.
jaime and i have an agreement that she can take pictures with my camera whenever she wants as long as she puts the neck strap around her neck. she's really good.
i felt bad today because my favorite girl, lisa, had a birthday on friday and i must have told her i would bring her something today because after class she asked me what i brought her. i apologized and told her i'd bring something next week. she said 'ok but don't say "everyone look at lisa! i bought her something," you can just give it to me by myself'.

monochrome

you HAVE to look at this.
[new york magazine.]
5 people who wear the same color every single day. keep going until you get to green lady.

why each little bird has a someone

today i present some nature pictures leftover from yesterday.
jerry skipped out on me in chinese today so bobo and i forged ahead in the book. i know more ways to say 'five minutes until 3' than i ever thought possible. i need to show mr. kuo what i just learned so he can help me practice. a few months ago i learned kuai wu dian which is literally 'quick five oclock' but it means 'it's almost 5' and he says it to me every day now. mrs. chan just says 'hello!' and points at the clock.
jaime had no school today and we had plans to go swimming in the early afternoon, but it was kind of chilly out today so bobo said we should go to lunch instead. the two of us walked hand in hand to carrefour and had a grown up lunch at sushi express. she noticed that everyone was looking at us on the walk over and in the grocery store.
it was fun to have a couple of one on one hours. she told me who she likes and who she thinks is 'soso' in the dorm. kids basically like people who will spend quality time with them and keep their promises. i'm glad to be high on her list.
afterwards, we went over to the dorm and whipped up a delicious batch of HEB brownie mix that i imported at christmas break and we painted our nails. she only let me paint her pinkies because she isn't really allowed to paint her nails yet.
nothing really from tonight. i almost lost my cool with a kid in my second class. i led him by the arm back to his chair. i hate when some kid is up at the board trying to figure something out and then the whole class gets out of their chair to yell the answer at them or point to something.

oh and i gave my 2 months notice. my last day is july 7. now i just need to figure out when/how long i want to go to china so i can change my ticket home.

p.s. check out famille summerbelle. their stuff is so fun. [image from famille summerbelle].
you can check out the designer's home on design*sponge today

on earth together

it was a beautiful day in taiwan today. tess and i left bright and early to meet twbf at the train station, and the three of us traveled to a buddhist temple up in the hills of taipei county.. i think.
we met bobo and her fam as well as alex and dawn there.
it was packed and i guess someone told kristen that today is buddha's birthday..? i'm not sure if that's fact or fiction, but there were a million people there, regardless.

when i went through the gate, i was intercepted by a team of old women who were pointing at my legs. one lifted up my arms while another roped me with a wrap skirt to cover my knees so i could enter the temple area.
we had lunch at the temple. it was probably one of the most interesting experiences i've had in this country so far. we were split by gender, so i checked twbf at the door and hoped he would be fine mingling with alex and jack. i'm sure they were fine. alex speaks chinese pretty well.

at lunch there were giant, hoola hoop sized metal bowls full of various buddhist restaurant food. i had rice with squash, boiled spinach-like stuff, and some kind of unidentifiable paste of squash with something that was "good for my health" that may or may not have been hominy.
everything was fine until bobo told us we literally had to eat everything in our bowl. when dawn went to leave, they put a ladel of water into her bowl and made her drink the 'soup' of 3 grains of leftover rice. i was horrified, being a relatively picky eater, and found a way to cleverly hide the 2 chunks of mystery tofu-with-bits underneath joyce's bowl and dunked it into the water before they could spot it.

you washed your own bowl in water the color of the ganges and then put it into the 'clean' rack. i hope they wash it again before they let people use it. it defintely wasn't clean. then we went on a 2 hour nature hike up a mountain with flowering trees peppered in along the way. it was beautiful when the wind was blowing. the flowers fell down like snow.
jaime and joyce were saving the prettiest of all of the flowers to make a chain with when they got home. i think they all wilted by the end of the day. i tried to teach a life lesson about how flowers need the tree and leaves to help them live.
jaime spent a good 20 minutes trying to make the perfect rose out of fern leaves. apparently josh taught her that trick.
joyce was exhausted by the end of it.
it was a really lovely day.

the only thing that could make it better? leg massages in the evening! tess and danielle and i went over to the reflexology place and had a 20min back massage/40min leg massage. it hurts but it felt really good on my tired legs.
spent some quality time at the coffee shop with a cup of rose tea and mashed potatoes with bacon and cheese from latini's. yum. perfect day.

you can click here to see the rest of the pictures from today.
and p.s. look at my new blonde hair :)

i'm loving having you around

adventure of today: getting dyed blonde in taiwan
thanks to a good samaritan, i missed the fast train and wound up on the super slow train to taipei. then i encountered a series of helpful people including a flier-passer-outer, a taxi driver, and 3 guys who work in a kitchen who were in a back alley on a smoke break. thanks to those 3, i ended up at the salon.

it could be a very long story but the highlights are..
-dark purple satin merlin robes that the attendants helped you put on in the middle of the waiting room of the salon
-the attendants themselves were dressed in khaki one pieces that would remind you of what mechanics wear.
-my stylist, peter, spoke lovely english and i told him about 400 times that i was completely freaked out and that i would definitely be in tears if my hair turned out orange at the end of it
-when i got my hair done in austin over christmas, i asked my normal stylist what the worst thing they could do to me would be.. she said leave the color on too long. it should be 10 or 15 min
-peter told me he intended to leave it 30min
-i told him to come check me at 15
-he didn't come. i demanded that someone rinse me out
-they said wait a minute
-i stood up and just made a mini-scene until someone walked me to the sinks
-it turned out very well! it's more or less the right color. no orange, no green

the real highlight of my day was a man in the train station telling me my chinese was very good. i asked him a question and then we started chatting. i never get tired of encouragement.

tonight we had a big birthday party for katie/jerry. it included pinatas, tequila, balloon animals, pin the tail on the donkey and various other party games that tess dreamed up. super fun, super messy. a beer and a bottle of vodka both crashed and flew into a million pieces on the tile.
big day tomorrow. time for bed.

if i were you, i'd take precaution

my parents are moving from a big house that we grew up in..
..[which has become hard to see behind the trees that have gotten so big], to a smaller, cuter house 15 minutes north. small, cute house is from the '50s and it shows, so it's undergoing a transformation.

i've learned lots of housing terminology. it used to have a 'shed roof.'
but now we have a gable with gingerbread.
(there's fajjy!)
it was just painted this weekend and my mom has been trying really hard to get a picture that accurately shows the color differences. there are 3 greens and 2 blues.
anyway other than giving color commentary, i got a lot done today. i went to the wet market to pick up some wax apples for picnic with twbf and this old taiwanese woman was speaking to me a mile in a minute in what i think had to have been taiwanese because it sounded completely unfamiliar.

on the way out, i spotted what i thought was a dog with its legs out out of the corner of my eye, but as i walked past it i saw that it was actually a GIANT [part of a] dead pig with its legs stretched out. it gave me the chills and i think i actually jumped, as the butcher turned to look at me and laughed.
twbf and i found a teeny patch of shade at the big park and he had packed a picnic that was adorable and sweet, complete with snoopy hand wipes. he bought probably 7 or 8 different kinds of bread from a bakery and had apples and kiwi cut up in tupperware and tea and orange juice. i contributed wax apples and pumpkin seeds.
there was one sweet moment when i was eating some chocolate cake thing that had a giant puff of whipped cream on the top and it started to fall and i couldn't react fast enough but he caught it in the palm of his hand.
(my tea spilled alllll over my red book and i didn't even notice until it had been sitting in tea for an hour. it smells like passionfruit now.)

following the discussion from yesterday, i should mention that he was concerned that i'm still kind of sick with a little cough and stuffy nose and that i was drinking iced tea. i tried to make the case for drinking cold things when it's hot out. you just can't win that one with taiwanese people.
i'm getting my hair highlighted tomorrow in taipei. cross your fingers it doesn't turn out bright orange or any shade of dirty blonde with a greenish tinge.