be sure and take lots of pictures

do you think in george strait's song, 'run', when he says take a truck, take a chevy.. that chevy paid for it to be in there? doesn't he do chevy commercials? am i losing it? anyway it makes me laugh to listen to country in taiwan. it's one of the weirder juxtapositions i can think of.
dena had a papaya yesterday and offered me a piece and i reluctantly tried it.. the last time i had papaya was in 11th grade AP bio and it smelled/tasted exactly like throw up.. so i've stayed away from it since then. but the piece dena gave me tasted just like a lily smells. so today i bought one of my own.
it's kind of a test of wills because the fruit stand that opens early is way in the back of the market and you have to walk by the slaughtering station in the middle to get to it. i bought a mango and the papaya and the old, old woman who works there gave me a teeny little plum to try.
i'm a convert. papaya is delicious.
both classes were really fun tonight. i'm slowly bonding with this girl cindy in my first class. she has a crush on this kid tiger, who sits right up front by where i stand.. so she has no choice but to flirt with him in front of me, so we have a secret understanding. sometimes i pair them up during games and stuff and we always wink.

tonight she had her MP3 player and gave me one ear phone during break time so i could listen to her songs. she and i always end up at the drink place at the same time before class so we speak chinese while we wait. it's interesting how it opens up a new world for them when they can say things to you in their own language.

whales of tales

one of the girls who lives here, katie, has a blog too and it's very cute.
my favorite post is about the crazy things she's seen on scooters..

1. A family of four
2. Someone drinking a soda while driving
3. A golden retriever
4. Babies
5. A man with 3 massive propane tanks
6. A young child sitting on the back with no helmet, no shoes, and not holding on
7. Someone texting
8. A person with crutches
9. A big macho guy with a bit of a scowl on his face riding a pink hello kitty vino
10. A person riding with their dog and the dog was on his hind legs with his front legs up on the handle bars.
11. 2 people riding and the person on the back was holding an umbrella to protect them from the rain while driving through the market
12. A scooter that had a plastic grass floor added on.
13. Another dog one — 2 people on the scooter. One dog on the floorboard. Another dog running alongside on a leash. They were beagles.
14. A woman sitting on the back of a scooter not holding on riding side saddle (because she was wearing a skirt, of course).

time to sink way into the blue

today is a very random picture day of leftover things from weeks gone by, for lack of anything better. this is a passionfruit smoothie from coco. loooove their smoothies. lemon, mango and passionfruit are to die for, but their 'california fruit' smoothie is disgusting. pineapple jelly bu hao.
so i today found out that one of my exes, if you can call him that.. we dated for a month, is engaged. it's weird to be the last person someone dated before they got engaged. so close and yet so far.
that bread looks so yummy but it's really that yucky taiwanese bakery bread. they use so much sugar that the bread is unrecognizable. it isn't even the right texture on the inside. it's like white sandwich bread that's all airy and soft. you've been in taiwan too long when a) you start thinking shirts like this are cute and b) that theyre so cute, you're moved to buy them. tess and i are going shopping on saturday afternoon in taipei and i plan to buy a MILLION flowy cotton tops/dresses to take home.
(you know i've gone silly when i noticed my bag of nuts & things had spilled all over the inside of my bag when i was already running late for school and i felt the urgent need to photograph it before i stuffed it in my mouth and ran downstairs).

nothing interesting to report except that one of my kids tonight, ryan, keeps coming up to me with his giant dictionary and asking me how to pronounce words. last week it was 'kangaroo rat'.. this week is 'chimera'.

p.s. raise your hand if you think the tacky pillow ruined this otherwise cute bedroom
[photo from house beautiful].

through times of victory or defeat

it is really hard to take pictures of kite flying with a camera that lacks a good zoom lens. here's the best dena and i could do today.

i sort of felt like i was walking a dog except that the 'dog' in this case was getting no pleasure out of it.. it was just me holding onto a string. i sat on my blanket studying chinese while the kite just did its thing.
this shirt is one of my favorite taiwanese finds.
tonight my jerk class had the QA 'who do you look up to? why?' and one of the kids who can speak almost zero english, said i was graceful, which i thought was uncharacteristically nice. we had a good time in there today. chinese abounded, but they weren't being hateful.
..although they were talking about boobs a lot which was kind of awkward. they were picking on me and i told them to check in after high school and we could compare notes then. middle schoolers.

twbf and i went bowling tonight. i won 2 out of 3.. but he won't swim in the ocean. i'm supposed to think of a consolation prize. we were a liiiittle more touchy tonight.

when we were saying goodbye, outside of 7-11 with what seemed like hundreds of people walking by/waiting for the light to change sitting on their scooters, he took my hand and said he wanted to tell me something and ended up stumbling over 'i just want to say.. i love you. i mean! i like you.. i like you very much.'
it was adorable/awkward/sweet. so we'll see. the saga continues.

other things to be excited about..
these saltwater sandals that i just found on my blog crush of the week.
[photo from katiedid.squarespace.com]
a pair in yellow is on its way to my house right now. those red ones are calling my name too..

leave it up to me

remember last week when i was a bad teacher and forgot that i had promised one of my kids i would get her something for her birthday? today we got that all ironed out. it's amazing what you can find at the stationery store.
i was just going to buy this cool whiteout tape with little pieces of clothing printed on it, but then i saw all of these pretty beads and they were just calling to me.
two hours later, i had a card and two matching bracelets- one for her and one for me. it's funny how you would do anything for the kids you really have a connection with. the string kept unwinding and it didn't want to go through the teeny little beads, but i was happy to forge ahead because i knew lisa would really like it.

it was really cute, she came up to me at the beginning of class to recite a lesson but she kind of lingered like she was wondering if i had anything for her.. so i pretended like i was showing her something in her book and slipped her the presents and she quietly went back to her desk to check them out and flashed me a big grin.
twbf and i had lunch today and we decided to go bowling tomorrow night. tried to get him to agree to swim in the ocean if i win. i think i pushed a little too far for someone who just learned to swim in a pool.
i'm sad to report that upon leaving, there was a hand shake. can you imagine? i was so turned around that i didn't know how to react. we laughed though. whooo knows.
alex guppy and i went to dinner and dessert tonight. i feel likewe haven't chatted in such a long time. we had the perfect stack of hot brownies with vanilla ice cream and pecans at TGIFridays. he taught me a couple of things about my/our nikon that i'm anxious to try out tomorrow.
allen gave me a bunch of pictures on a CD today. this is one of our only ones "inside" the museum. ..can you tell i'm kind of on a yellow and bright blue kick?

this is at the buddhist temple last weekend. i don't think it's possible to flip a video on its side. i tried everything.

wishful thinking

highlights from today, and pictures from yesterday.
class #1.
common grammar mistakes
-she is like tall and thin and pretty, we have fun together, i like her.
-we are going to swimming tomorrow.
-'sank' you instead of 'thank' you, which has resulted in 'thhhhhhank' you. teddy and lin and i have a battle going on and every time they say it right, we high five.
class #2.
-these 2 boys, jerry and scott (who are 10), call me 'pretty megan' when they want me to do something for them and when we say goodbye at the end of the day. i think jerry may or may not have winked at me today.
-we have a new kid, ethan, who is a wild child. he just got up and started headbanging to an air guitar in the middle of my lesson tonight
-we played marker bowling and it was carol and i against each other at the end and i got a strike! my kids thought i was the cooooolest.
a white bird of paradise, who knew?

the subject line of twbf's emails are getting more and more serious.
MK i miss you so much..
I really like you,your cute and sweet smile to attract me ...^^
we have fourrr dates this week planned. goodness gracious.

helped steven

remember steven? he won the contest! he gets to go to the conference.
thank you for watching his video