a woman on the go

wooo scooter!
i scootered to school today. it wasn't as scary as i thought it would be. i've figured out how to lean when i want to turn instead of trying to turn my handle bars. it's kind of fun. i imagine it's what riding a broom feels like. you just lean to the side and all of the sudden, you're moving over.
this is keith's helmet. mine is cuter but it doesn't protect my head as much. they have really cute ones that look kind of like an updo though. i want one of those, but i haven't seen them in any of the helmet shops i've checked out.

i showed mom and jeff my picture just now and jeff ran out to get his picture taken on his motorcycle. we are so fancy.

so aside from riding my scooter, today was pretty good. i'm learning how to write characters now in chinese class. i can recognize 'she, him, me, you, nice to meet you, mr., ms., hello, last name, first name, full name, what, country, american, chinese, japanese, and the 'question particle.'' and i can write me, you and beautiful.
the top one is ni (you) and underneath is wo (i)

after that, i went to the hospital to teach keith's hospital ladies. we went over phrases they need when they answer the phones and stuff. 'hello, may i help you?' they originally had 'what feels uncomfortable to you?' and i changed it to 'what hurts?'

what else did i do today. made pork tenderloin for dinner now that we know the oven works. it was DELICIOUSSSS, so delicious. i gave a piece to steve, martyn and noe and we agreed. and it's so easy. martyn's going to buy one and we're going to try stuffing it with bread crumbs and apples. i'm so excited. tonight i just made it with salt and pepper.
ok i'm going to dry my hair and read some before bed. zaijian!

ta shi li aime ma?

a quick list and some pictures.
1. dena graciously offered to take me to e sun bank to wire money home. in the next few days, i'll have $1,538 US ($50,000 NT) more in my bank account at home! woo!
2. drove around a little more on my scooter. i'm learning to lean into turns instead of trying to turn my handle bars so much
3. had lunch at latini's with jerry. no one was there so danny sat and helped us practice chinese. jerry speaks very loud and very pronounced chinese :P it makes me laugh but he's doing very well.
when we started, it was easy:
now, it's all in chinese!
it's not easy. i've named the characters in my head; 'little person with swishy thing next to it', 'little person with tiny washboard', 'thing with little tail', ...
4. i downloaded project runway, episode 9 anddd sleepless in seattle today. time to catch up on tv
5. one of my kids was looking at me today while we were reading the QA and they said 'megan, your (points underneath her eyes) is black.' ..guess i need more sleep

it's only green lights and all rights

i miss ripley. look how cute she is.

i rode my scooter to bobo's today! i knew i had to just get out and do it at some point, and it finally stopped raining this morning and bobo only lives down the street (down kind of a big street, but close anyway) so i just hopped on and went. i'm not so fantastic at turning, but it doesn't seem impossible. so that was the big excitement. i rode around the empty park for a while after class and tried turning a little more. i just need more practice.

jerry and i continued on our mission to learn chinese this morning and i think we're doing very well for two blonde kids from america. jerry studied a lot this weekend and i think he's surpassed me in vocabulary knowledge. i need to hit the flashcards. but i win on day to day use. i speak chinese all over town.

what else.. talked to dad this morning, mom and jeff in the afternoon and i just got off skype with gram and spanky. they're sending me a box full of things i neeeeed like candycorn, ovaltine, and baking soda. i am ridiculously spoiled, in the best possible way. but i think i'm set until christmas after this.
jeff, spanky and dad

and the book update. i finished siddhartha. i'm working my way through Without Reservations, Harry Potter 2, Going Dutch in Beijing (about how to be culturally correct around the world), Notes from a Small Island anddd what's the last one.. i just started one in taroko called The River at the Center of the World about a guy who travels up the Yangze and tells all about chinese history. it's pretty interesting. so on that note, time to go read.
i dream of my bed at home. even though it lives in the pink room at the lake now, it's still the comfiest place on earth.

ding hao and all of that

is there anything better in life than hot brownies with vanilla ice cream? i don't think so. thank you, willbo for the brownie mix. i think i was the belle of the dorm tonight.

typhoon day #2. imagine it raining pretty hard for 48 hours, only stopping for maybe 3 hours altogether randomly throughout the 2 days. no sun, no blue sky. i can see how people in england and seattle get permanently gloomy.

but it was a pretty good day, all in all. around 2 i went to the spa to chat with nicky for a while. she gave me a pineapple and cranberry pastry thing for the moon festival, and i had a cup of tea and we chatted for a while about taiwan vs china. she said when you live somewhere where you're in constant danger from typhoons and earthquakes and the threat of war, you just get used to it and it isn't a big deal anymore. she also said lots of taiwanese people have two passports so they can evacuate to canada or the US if necessary.

after that, i went to latini's for lunch. i had mashed potatoes. they're baked with bacon folded in and then topped with cheese and broiled. so good on a rainy day. and i had a latte. i didn't used to be a coffee person because i thought it would be lame to rely on a substance for my mental wellbeing (one day at the office, we ran out of coffee, and we basically had to shut down because people couldn't function), but it's comforting to drink something hot from a mug when it's gross outside. and tea just doesn't have the same kind of depth to it. maybe it's my imagination.

anyway danny's son was there, also named danny, and his wife, linda, who i had never met. turns out that linda is studying to be a certified chinese teacher, so she was helpful today when i had a question about pronunciation. and since we were the only ones in there, danny sat with me for a while and asked about texas and my family and why i'm in taiwan, how long i'm going to stay. i think it was a big step for us.

came home, watched The Interpreter which was pretty good, made brownies that will sent me for my birthday, and i had tomatoes with salt, pepper, sugar and balsamic vinager for a snack. so tasty and it reminds me of fajtown. anddd i just got done chatting with gram and spanky on skype and keith and becca on gmail, so i'm pretty well set. this morning i talked to mom and dad. it's really not hard to stay connected since we have the internet. i love technology.
time for some Alice and then bed!

dream a little dream

today was pretty gray. it rained literally all day long so we were all stuck in the dorm. a bunch of people got into cleaning mode and cleaned the living room. serena and i hauled up one of the long couches from downstairs so now we can lie down which is nice. i spent a good deal of time sprawled on the couch.
someone put the shelf that had been in keith's room back together and we put all of the books and random stuff on it, so everything looks much cleaner.
dena talked me into bringing up "my" big lamp that i had in my room. it really belongs to the dorm, so i guess it's fair that i don't have it to myself anymore, though my tiny light is pretty weak by itself.
emil posted this sign the other day and i was pretty excited. so far, everyone's been washing their dishes after they use them which is a big improvement from the pile of dishes that were there pre-sign.

we watched Chocolat which was good for a rainy day and then steve and i ventured out around 6 for dinner to this tapenyaki place down the street. i needed to get out of the dorm after being couped up for 8 hours. we got pretty well soaked though. there's a lot of wind and the ground is like a giant puddle. most of the planters weren't draining so trees and bushes were sitting in 3 inches of water.

josh bought a turtle. it's on the coffee table right now but i think it'll eventually end up in his room.

anddd we all played scattegories. i won with 50 points, i think the next best was 43. it's one of my favorite games.
but that's about it for today. a bunch of us are thinking about going to get massages tomorrow. i know i can't spend another day stuck inside all day. one is enough. it's weird that houston/texas is getting hit by a hurricane at the same time. it feels like the whole world is under water.

oh! and i got to chat with keith on gmail. best part of the day by far. this is us on my birthday.

all my lovin'

the guy at starbucks started speaking to me in english today and i told him i wanted to order in chinese, so i did (yi bei re chiang tsao latte), and he said i was very good and then asked if i wanted him to speak to me in mandarin or english from now on. we're going to try mandarin and see how it goes.

that isn't houston, its taiwan. we've been getting crazy amounts of rain today. i went to my first class but my second class was canceled. i wore my yellow jellies (which i highly recommend, and they're on sale) especially for the rain, but they got full of water and kept slipping off my feet. i was trying to walk down the sidewalk and i kept losing my shoes which was making me giggle up a storm. i took a taxi home because i literally couldn't walk to the bus stop, my shoes just wouldn't stay on, it was all very cinderella.

serena and i went to carrefour for dinner and found a thai place we didn't know existed. we had green curry coconut chicken and it was deliciousss! i'm excited about that place. it's pretty cheap and the decorations are nice and it feels like you aren't in taiwan for a minute.

after that, we walked in the torrential downpour to bobo's down the street. we got to play with jamie and joyce for an hour or so before they had to go to sleep and then we watched Scorpion king II which was about as awful as you would imagine. but it was nice to be at a movie night, regardless of the movie.
nowww i am headed to bed after a little reading.

so much to see and do

emily gave me a pomelo for moon festival :) apparently it's a chinese grapefruit and they're being sold by the box around here lately. they're associated with moon festival.
mine wasn't very tasty. it was like a grapefruit that was old and dried out. but they're not supposed to be juicy. dawn said they usually taste better than the one i had though. who knows.
josh, the newest new guy, has been very helpful in pointing out interesting things we hadn't discovered yet about taoyuan. he was eating these weird nuts that come in a shell that looks like devil's horns. and he knows a baked potato guy downtown. and lots of other neat little tips and tricks.

so when i walked in to my junior high class this morning, they all started clapping. it was embarrassing but cool at the same time. it was fun to write in chalk on a real chalk board. i felt like an actual teacher.
they know a lot more english than i had expected. apparently i'm teaching the highest possible level of english in a high school. they told me they all go to english cram schools after school. their conversational english was really good. they asked me if i had a boyfriend and how old i was. probably should have lied about the latter. they were pretty shocked to hear how young i am.

i had some time to kill before class so i found somewhere to sit downtown and do my lesson plans and i ended up chatting in broken mandarin with a parking garage security guard for a while. he wasn't as forgiving as a lot of my taiwanese friends are, but we made it work.

it was a hard day though emotionally. everything literally looks different to me now without keith. i kept thinking i saw his scooter or i'd want to text him and then it would hit me over and over again that he isn't here and it was really a tough day. lots of spontaneous bouts of tears. it doesn't help that my hormones are all out of whack and i didn't get any sleep last night.

it's time to read and head to bed. i can barely keep my eyes open.