it's how they've always been and they intend to stay

presotea and i went to war today. there's this little tea stand where i've been getting jasmine green tea, and today natalie and i took the bus together and we went to presotea before we parted ways and i ordered my tea, unzipped my purse and realized i had forgotten to take my wallet out of my tiny Lohas bag when i went to carrefour the other day, so i had no money. thank goodness natalie was with me so she bought it for me.
then tonight i went back on my way back from school to get another tea because now i had money because they pay us in cash every day after we teach. anyway earlier i had bought these weird 'beef noodles' and i thought i had 20 dollars in change, so i ordered a $20 tea but when i went to take the money out of my pocket, i only had $15 (the $10 and $5 are both silver and i hadn't paid that much attention to the change i got back from the beef noodles, obviously), so i had to pay for a $20 tea with a $1000 bill. the girl was laughing at me.

i gave a test today in my first class and it went pretty well. the kids are all excited because the class after next, we get to go to mc donalds. next class we're practicing how to order something off the menu. my coteacher, jasmine, and i get to pretend to be the cashiers and have them order from us. apparently you get cool points if you buy all of the kids ice cream at the end. i think they cost 15 cents each so i think i can handle it :P i'm excited. i really like that group of kids. they're kind of hyper but they're good. memorable names in there: boldwin, kitty, eason (which was probably supposed to be ethan?), andd i guess that's it in there. one kid named jeff. nothing like the jeff i know and love though :P

my other monday class continues to be adorable. i really like my coteacher in there, carol. she calls them 'babies' all the time and its fun. she picks up whenever i'm lagging and she's fun and loud and i like her a lot. today before class i was talking to a bunch of the coteachers. my favorite group is there. christine, carol, elaine, jasmine, and chelsey who's new. i gave her my email address tonight. i hope we end up being friends.

we got another new person in the dorm today, justin. he seems nice. it's hard to tell about anyone so soon. he seems pretty quiet. he taught in south korea before coming to taiwan and he taught in southern taiwan for the last 2 months but he wanted to be closer to taipei. he's from chicago.
there's also a new nametag on another door that says 'Noe' which we don't know how to pronounce/can't figure out what gender the person will be. i guess we'll find out soon enough though.