arms wide open

(warning, this is a pretty long entry).

11 things I think you should know about my weekend
11. saturday i subbed 3 classes and made $100US! that's $1800NT. 5 hours.
the first class was okayyy. the kids were trying to see how far they could push me. but the second class was amazing. it was a WOW class and they were like 16 year olds and that age usually isn't very talkative, but these kids were awesome. i wish it was my regular class. we played spoons and we chatted for a while about the US and taiwan. they told me what food are good and where to go in taipei over the weekend and i told them about a bunch of random things.
10. saturday night a few of us went to this Spanish tapas bar and i ordered garlic bread, calamari and stuffed mushrooms. the calamari came and it was these GIANT rings of squid. it was probably half an inch thick and the rings were the size of bracelets. it was gross. the stuffed mushrooms were fine until i was eating one and smelled the stink of taiwan. after that i couldn't eat anymore.
9. after class i met up with keith and jerry at another school that's in downtown taoyuan and keith and i shared a cab home. he lost his cell phone on friday and lost his scooter key on saturday. we're still waiting for the third thing, they say bad things come in sets of 3. we bonded on the way home. he told me his recent life history and i told him mine.
8. i slept without majjy on skype friday and saturday night. before that, we had just stayed connected all night so if i woke up i could talk to her while she was online. big steps!
7. jerry and i went to taipei today. martyn gave me directions on how to get to the bus and in walking to the bus stop, i found out that jerry and alex live within walking distance. it's probably a 20 minute walk. i thought they were much farther
6. when we first got to taipei, we kind of wandered. eventually i spotted taipei 101 (the tallest building in the world and you take the fastest elevator in the world to get up to it) and we just walked until we got to it. the view was amaaaazing. you could see the whole city and the mountains around the edge
5. we also saw the wind damper. apparently it weighs like 660 tons. it's as big as.. hmm. it's probably like 15 feet across? i'm not sure. the coolest thing about it was that it's painted with glittery gold paint so it literally sparkles all majestically
4. while we stopped to get ice cream in taipei 101, i noticed 2 american-looking men sitting beside us so i said hi and asked where they were from. one was a professor at some big university in florida and one was a photographer. they had been living in thailand for the last month and they were just in taiwan for a little bit. jerry and i told them all about the perils and joys of being an english teacher in taoyuan. it was a nice little chat. it makes me feel connected to home to talk to anyone from the US so i try to chat with whoever i bump into. andd i just believe that they're there for a reason. the celestine prophecy has been in my mind a lot lately.
3. jerry really wanted to see this movie Wall-E by pixar so we found a movie theater and bought tickets. i was thrilled that my citibank card worked. jerry hasn't been able to withdraw any money from ATMs or use any of his cards here. anyway we bought tickets and found what we thought was the theater but when we tried to go in, the guy said we had the wrong one, so he walked us to the right one which was across a bridge and in another building alltogether. it was bizarre. but when we sat down in what we thought was the movie, it turned out we were sitting in a Chinese viewing of Kung Fu Panda. when we went out to ask, they showed us that our tickets were for JULY. the movie isn't being released here until then. so we saw sex in the city instead. i felt bad for jerry though because he was really excited about it.
2. as jerry and i were trying to find our way back out of the MRT (metro rail train?) and back to the bus station, this girl basically bumped into me and started chatting. she was from south africa, we told her we were living in taoyuan and she said 'me too!' it was AMAZING. so we all walked to the bus station together. her name is A.. now i can't think of it. it started with an A. and she's been living here for 4 years doing missionary work. she lives like a 20min walk away from me so we got her contact info.
1.5. i bought a SIM card for my cell phone but i tried too many times to guess the code and now my phone from home is permanently frozen. i'm supposed to take it to a cingular store. i think i'm just going to buy a cheap taiwanese phone company phone so i can use it.
1. tonight alan, natalie and i went to TGIFridays because they've been wanting to check it out and i've been craving jack daniel's sauce. we all got jack daniel's burgers and they were DELICIOUS. (i guess i'm in a caps-for-effect kind of mood tonight, huh?) i also had a shirley temple. it was the best meal of taiwan. and i love alan and natalie.
time to dry my hair and read in bed