course by course, one by one

it was the last day of halloween! yippee, as majjy says. man my throat is so sore from screaming cues for halloween songs and shouting over loud, excited kids for 3 and a half hours. it was like a free for all today. everyone was wild.

gene and i. he teaches the class with mostly-boys and i am so thankful to have a guy coteacher in there.
we get to trick or treat at 7-11 at guei shan school
this is my other friday night class. they're realyl sweet. the turtle in the front is elaine, my coteacher. i didn't get any pictures of the front of her =\
ryan's mom made him this awesome suit covered in candy, and we all got to rip off a piece of candy at the end of class
the kid in front in the green and white, paul, is my favorite. he's tiny and cute but his feelings get hurt pretty easily. we joke around a lot though.

outside of school, the boys and i went to IKEA for lunch again this afternoon and we actually walked around the store this time. we tried out a bunch of the beds and chairs. it's almost torture to lie on a real bed for a minute. our beds are literally a plywood box with a 2 inch bamboo mat on top. mine is comfier now with keith's matress, but it still isn't anything like a real bed.

then tonight after work, a whole bunch of us went to bobo's for movie night. she hosts a movie night every friday and it's always fun. she's a fantastic hostess. she always has water and snacks and she's always asking if you need anything else. she also remembers everything about everyone and she always has something interesting to ask you.
time for bed though. 7:30 comes early on saturday mornings.

be our guest, be our guest

this morning i mailed in my absentee ballot. it should be there by the 4th, or so they said. i rode this bike that's been in the dorm for a long time to the post office and it was pretty convenient. shortened my 15 minute walk to a 3 minute bike ride. i also pedaled down to the yoga studio while i was out. i'm going to go to a test class on thursday. the woman was concerned about the class being in chinese, but i told her i can just watch what they do and it should be ok.

amanda sent me pictures tonight so i get to show you my friends in da chu. when i got there tonight, they had a lemon green tea for me :)
mr kuo (on the left), mr. wang and i. mr. wang is allllways sauced up. but he's nice.
amanda and i in front of mr. kuo's at da chu yesterday. she translates a lot for me when i'm there. sometimes they go wake her up so she can figure something out for us.
mr. kuo, mrs. chan and i yesterday. i wish they were smiling! they both have such gratifying smiles. i'll bring my fancy camera on saturday and see what i can do.

it's halloween day 2 at school:
the other teachers are pretty creative
dena made a turtle costume out of a giant box. christine is beside her in the police outfit and i'm not sure who the other people are
meghan as a head on a platter. my kids asked me why she was dressed up like a table after we left her class.
this is my coteacher, carol. her mom made her costume

tonight while i was subbing, my baby class came in to trick or treat. so cute! the angel on the left is ally and she is so sweet and tiny, but she can't speak barely a word of english.
my red book class trick or treating in josh's class

tonight was interesting. my regular coteacher in the class pictured above, emily, wasn't there today so we had a sub. it was clear that emily is the disciplinarian in our class, as they were kind of crazy tonight. we had fun though.
i had to leave that class early to book it over to guei shan to sub a THREE HOUR class by myself. it was pretty long. they're the highest level there is though, so it was easy. we just played a whole lot of games. and there were some kids in there i've subbed for before, so that was nice. there was a girl named josephine and i felt like i was talking to jeffy :P that's my nickname for him.

my name is james

i think these pictures sum up my day:
bobo insisted that it would be fun if jerry and i wore our halloween costumes to class, so we did. it was a lot of fun. jerry made a sign that said 'mr. banana'

bobo wore a cowboy hat and was all texasy :)
princess jerry. check out those chairs. they're at bobo's apartment complexjerry and i went to the japanese place next to bobo's to get the 'lunch box' (bian dang in chinese).
it was kind of funny though, i said 'i like your watch' to this old woman who was standing at the counter, and she started speaking really fast and making hand motions and the people who worked there said 'she's japanese..' and it was like oh MANNN what are the odds.

halloween was fun tonight at school. i was a princess, my coteacher was a maid, and allll of my kids were witches. we just played games and went around and collected candy from the other classes. i got to see my kindy class all dressed up, they were so cute. they're all girls so they were really enjoying my princess outfit.
and i went over to see mr. kuo and them while i was dressed up and they thought it was way too funny. amanda took pictures and she's supposed to email them to me so i'll post them when/if i get them.

going to bed!

you always had an eye for things that glitter

the most memorable moment today was at mr. kuo's in da chu. lately, he's been calling me 'honey' with this giant smile on his face. he, mr. wang, and mr. something always hang out at his restaurant and drink bai jiu, distilled alcohol of some sort, and eat. i had lunch with them on saturday and then i went for an early dinner tonight. mr. wang, who speaks the most english, told me that he cried and cried from sunday until today because 'i no see you' for 3 days.
they wanted to know what state i was from, where it was located, where LA, las vegas, washington and florida were. we also went over the words for north, south, east and west in chinese.
mrs. chan gave me some seaweed soup to try. i took a bite but i really don't care for seaweed soup so i said i was full from the fried rice.
mr. kuo tried to insist that i didn't need to pay because 'we are family' but i feel weird not paying, so i insisted that i pay. they give me free stuff all the time in addition to my meal, i don't want to get the meal for free too.

not too much else happened today. i bought a dress from a lady on the street and she told me my chinese was very good. and on the bus tonight i tried to ask these high school boys a question about a character in my book, but high school boys are notorious for being giggly around here, so they weren't much help. sissies!

time is racing toward us

i wonder if i can find a feature that lets me plays songs on my blog. jerry and i were singing 'let's get down to business.. to escape.. the huns! why did you give me daughters.. when i asked.. for sonsss!' from mulan this morning after chinese. and i told patrick, in austin, about it just now and he said it was stuck in his head yesterday. concidence? trans-continental connection?!

bought my halloween costume today. preview here:
what else happened today..
went to latinis for lunch. justin said 'see you tomorrow' and this guy, dan's friend, said 'you can say that in chinese' so he rephrased it. they make me laugh. dan is learning italian so we try to communicate in spanish/italian. it doesn't work.
made rice crispie treats tonight! emil helped me mix in the rice crispies which is always the worst part of it. thank you soo much, lily. we were all really excited and a few people who had never made them before (i didn't know people like that existed) learned how.
i also baked these potato thingies i bought at IKEA and sprinkled them with dill dip. yumm.

in class tonight, eason was calling me a snowman because i was wearing a gray shirt..? and judy and jennifer are endlessly fascinated by the clasp on my bracelet and every class now they take it off my arm, put it on one of them, and put it back on me. that class was hard today. i had to teach when to use 'before, starts and ends' today. it's tricky figuring out what the usage rules for those words are. every time i thought i came up with an explanation, some kid thought of an exception.
time for bed. i'm beat.

walk with me, walk with me

this morning seems like it was so long ago!
stayed up til 1:30 and decided to catch some sleep before the game came on at 2:30
woke up at 2:30, was completely out of it and tired, set my alarm for 4:30
woke up and listened to the second half. we won 28-24! still ranked first in the country
then i went back to bed and i dreamed that i was dating colt mccoy, the quarterback and we went to this big fancy banquet. it was a pretty football-tastic morning.

then steve, noe, mike and i went to IKEA this afternoon for lunch. i had salmon with radioactive green chive sauce. it was pretty good. i like how that IKEA smells just like the one at home. and i bought some of those raspberry cookies. i think i've eaten 6 so far :X

came back and went to chinese with linda. i have a hard time keeping six, liu, and nine, jiu, straight.. so she had danny, her 5 year old son, teach me how the taiwanese kids learn to count. liu rhymes with whistle in chinese and jiu rhymes with balloon. ..it didn't reaaally help since i don't know the words for whistle and balloon, but it was still funny.
other chinese lessons:
-taoyuan (tao is peach, yuan is garden) is the name of a mythical chinese town where everything is ideal and peaceful
-tung an (the name of my street) means 'a safe place where happy people live'
-da yuan, a town close to where i teach, means 'big garden' because not many people live there so it's mostly open land

right after chinese, i went to bobo's and she, jack, the girls and i went swimming again. joyce was super cute in a ruffly bathing suit. my bottoms had ruffles last time and she was inspired. we had fun swimming and jaime and i tried out everything in the little spa section.
afterwards, they all came to the dorm and joyce and jaime got to meet everyone and see my room. they raided my sticker collection and everyone gave them some of their halloween candy when they visited their room. it was a tiny halloween around here.

the boys and i went to tapenyaki for dinner andd then i came home and watched harry potter 3 or 4 on tv. serena had a contest to see who could hold our arms up the longest and she won both times. i'm weak!

from sea to shining sea

i am so tiredd and i have to get up so early. this will be quick.
-went to lunch at latini's (where else?) with alex and his mom. it was interesting to meet her since we've been reading each others blogs for a few months now but we had never met before. she's super nice and fun and i'm glad we got to meet. she brought me marshmallows, rice crispies, chocolate chips and canned pumpkin to make rice crispie treats and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies! i'm thrilled.

-successfully herded my mostly-boys class to mc donalds and back without any casualties. gene was lovely and it was a fun trip. i was in the front of the line and he brought up the rear. i felt like a mother duck. i'm going to be so neurotic when i have kids. i can feel my blood pressure rising when we have to cross a street or when there's no sidewalk.
moms here take their babies on their scooters without any protection and i just don't understand it. little kids, like 3 and 4 year olds, stand on the scooter in front of their mom and just hold on to the front of it while she drives. if you crash, your kid just goes flying. i can't imagine.

-went to movie night at bobo's. the security guard, a bettel (pronounced beatle) nut enthusiast, asked me to marry him while he let me up on the elevator (they need to use their little key thing for the elevator to work). i said no, thank you. he said 'we're both very tall!' but he didn't persuade me.
bobo's mom is in town from somewhere in the south of taiwan. she's apparently pretty progressive as she's staying in a hotel instead of at their house. she seemed nice. bobo said her mom is only 50 but she told us that she's 36, so i'm not sure if it all adds up..

time for bed! kindys in the morning. saturday mornings are so rough.