typhoonin'

I took some random pictures yesterday. The first one is of the park where i catch the bus, aptly named 'olympic park'. it's right across from 'corner guy' who's a guy who has a little restaurant on the corner. i didn't take a picture of his restaurant, but i will some time. i've only been there once so it isn't that important to me, but he's big with the teachers here. mainly josh.

the next picture is the side of the school where i live. all of the schools have the lit up green sign, but ours is the only building with a giant emblem on it. i think because ours is the biggest one. we have 5 floors. i live on the 4th, but you can't see my room in that picture.

yesterday i hardly did a thing. i woke up late, went to latini's with dena, steve, jerry, noe and justin. it was delicious as usual. i had cheese pizza, which i've never ordered there, and it was fantastic. the crust was good, the sauce was good, it had real cheese on it. you really learn to appreciate good food here because there's so little of it. for example, beth and i went to lunch today at this place called Hawana (an attempt at Havana) and ordered vanilla lattes and "ham sandwich on rye" which was really a mystery meat sandwich with hot corn and tomato that was in a sweet orange mayonnaise, on a white roll with more orange sauce all over the top of it. you were supposed to eat it with your hands though. so basically it was a big corn-ham-and-orange sauce mess.

anyway yesterday beth and i walked in to the spa on the way out of latini's since it's right next door pretty much and they talked me into getting a treatment because it was on special this week. first i showered, then i got scrubbed with salt, then i showered, then i was covered in mud, wrapped in a giant sheet of plastic, covered in towels and left to marinate for half an hour. then i showered and was slathered with lotion. it was delightful. it was funny because the girl who did my treatment didn't speak english so she had nicky write down notes for her on a little piece of paper, and she tried to read off it for a while and then she finally gave up and just started handing me the cards and having me read the instructions myself; 'please take quick shower'.

the whole experience was very good. margaret painted my nails again. i asked what happened with her husband since last time we talked, i told her that american/canadian men cook and clean and she should tell her husband. so she said she told him and he didn't say anything for a day and then the next day, she got up and he had picked up his clothes a little bit. she was pleased. i love margaret. she says 'cool, cool' a lot and she listens very intently and she likes to compare america and taiwan. she's always saying 'in taiwan..'
as i was leaving, i asked them if they knew of any yoga studios so they called one of their clients who just started going to a place down the street and they looked up all sorts of things online for me and we found a studio that's very close. they also looked up a bunch of websites about what to do in taipei. i mentioned hot springs and museums and they showed me a lot of interesting places i could go. so that was nice. i spent 3 hours there total.

then i came home and dena wanted sushi in the worst way, so we trudged all around the block but couldn't find anything. we ended up going to carrefour and then we took my roof blanket and went to the park to lie in the grass for a while. we watched the clouds zip by and it sprinkled a little, and then an hour later it was sprinkling and then all of the sudden it just started POURING down rain.


those are pictures of the park. it's surrounded on all sides by major roads that have lots of places to eat. watami, tapenyaki, fridays, the aboriginal place and latini's are all on the outer edges of the park.

todayy i havent done much either. beth and i went to that Hawana place and we went to carrefour to buy water because we're supposed to get a major typhoon tonight and tomorrow. they think school will be cancelled. i've never seen so many people in carrefour. there must have been thousands. it was crazy. people were buying tons of water and fruit and random things. candy. but it had a sense of impending typhoon doom.