could it happen in a movie?

i forgot to tell you the best part about yesterday!
you know how i stayed up until 5am the other day to watch the episode of bizarre foods taiwan that didn't end up coming on? i was sitting watching tv yesterday afternoon and it magically came on! i was so thrilled. bizarre foods is this show where a former chef/foodie, andrew zimmern, travels around the world and eats the weirdest crap he can find in various countries. in taiwan, he ate stinky tofu, BLACK CHICKENNN! (which i had my first week here), and durien, among other things. he spit out the tofu and the durien. and he eats all kinds of things. bugs. organs of all kinds. keith was watching it with me and he was nearly in tears laughing. though it doesn't take a lot to make him giggle like a school girl. keith is probably my favorite person here but he is definitely weird. he does a lot of yoga, grew up on some canadian island, is studying to take the MCAT, and has the most mischievous smile of anyone i've ever met.

so todayy i woke up because it was raining hard outside my window, pinging my air conditioning unit, because we had a TYPHOON for crying out loud. it was hovering over the bottom of the island pretty much all day long, dumping lots of water on us. apparently they cancel school if it gets really bad, but it wasn't that bad today. it was good rain though. usually it just kind of sprinkles for 20 minutes on and off all day, but today we got hard rain that you could hear and see and it lasted for 5 hours or so. i curled up on the couch upstairs under the quilt gram made me and read my book for most of the morning, listening to the rain. it was lovely.

before i got on the second bus to go to school, i went in to starbucks in the fancy mall and got a vanilla latte and a panini. the panini was groooosss. it was dark meat chicken with radioactively yellow cheese on a microwaved, sesame bun. with mustard. but the latte was perfect. i don't drink coffee at home but on a rainy day there's something comforting about it. i started reading the power of now last night and so today i was trying to focus on the moment. it's much harder than it seems like it would be. there's always something to look forward to.

at school we practiced our demo's in both classes. in my first one, gene had written out the whole thing which was fantastic since i have no idea what i'm doing. the kids really like him. they have the boy bond. that class is all boys and 4 girls. i want to get them on video singing 'do re mi'. picture 20 taiwanese kids singing a song from the sound of music, pronouncing all of the M's as N's and not really knowing what they're saying. it is so funny. he even taught them the 'do mi mi, mi so so, re fa fa, la ti ti' part.

this girl and her brother always come up to me when they see me outside of class and i feel bad because i can't remember her name. it's sally, but i always think it's ruby. i have a ruby, sally, annie, candy or cindy in every class and i don't know why but all of those names mesh together in my head. her brother's name is fred. he's in my monday night class. he's adorable but he doesn't know much english at all.

anyway so tonight between classes, alex and i went to get mango smoothies that were pretty good and i bought some hair clips. here's the thing with the fashion here. it's trashy and cheap and ugly, but i've seen so much of it that at this point i actually am starting to like it. bright colors, glittery or bedazzled things, really tacky stripper high heels, headbands and suspenders are all very popular here. and the weirdest hair baubles and clips you can find. today i bought a polka dotted heart, a big yellow bow, and a weird pink barrette with flowers on it.
one of my coteachers had a buzz lightyear hair thingy one day, an american flag patterned ball the next day, and what was the last one.. oh, stitch from lilo and stitch yesterday. in her hair.

after class, alex took me to his apartment and we met up with jerry and the 3 of us went to this aborigine-themed restaurant. i ordered lamb that was pretty good. and we had tofu that they couldn't stop raving about. it was alright. not my favorite at all. tofu is like.. egg custard in a square. i dont know why people like it. it doesn't taste like anything and it feels like jelly in my mouth. anyway we drank 6, 1-liter taiwan beer's between us and had lots of hilarious conversations. they have a policy that they only want to do things that could be made into a movie. boys!

so it was a good day. tomorrow i'm on a mission to buy the weirdest stuff i can find to send home to jeff and matt and i want to take some pictures of stuff so you can see what it's like here.