so much cooler online

so i remembered that i have radio on itunes and i've been listening to country music all day and it's been lovely. i didn't realize how much i missed listening to the radio until today. i closed my eyes this afternoon and when i opened them i had forgotten i was in taiwan.

well, apparently my chinese name is ridiculous. all of my kids have laughed their heads off when they've seen it. i think it's the equivalent of them having names like tiger and mabel, it just doesn't make sense. it means 'plum flower root' which i guess doesn't really work. anyway theyve gotten a big kick out of it and i'm used to not quite fitting in here, so i don't mind.
my class was in shambles tonight. they were just all hyper and being crazy and fun. there are TWENTY FOUR of them which is the max number of students that can be in a class before they split it up. we had a really fun night tonight. we played lots of games and they were making fun of my artistic skills (they called my grasshopper a dragonfly, my dragon a monster, but were impressed with my taiwan). our QA was about directions and where certain cities in taiwan are located, and they started asking about europe and the US so i drew a giant map and they saw how small taiwan was compared to texas and they thought that was crazy. i think they also fully realized how far away i live. i told them i came all the way over here to teach them english and they just looked at me like 'ohmygoodness.'

made DELICIOUS pasta salad today:

before i forget! best name in taiwan: Hymen. he's one of beth's new kids and she was trying to explain what it was to the coteacher and the coteacher was like 'oh blahblahablah (in chinese)!?' and this other chinese-only-speaking-girl was like 'balahbalablah(chinese) ?!!?' but they didn't change it.

keith time.