ding hao and all of that

is there anything better in life than hot brownies with vanilla ice cream? i don't think so. thank you, willbo for the brownie mix. i think i was the belle of the dorm tonight.

typhoon day #2. imagine it raining pretty hard for 48 hours, only stopping for maybe 3 hours altogether randomly throughout the 2 days. no sun, no blue sky. i can see how people in england and seattle get permanently gloomy.

but it was a pretty good day, all in all. around 2 i went to the spa to chat with nicky for a while. she gave me a pineapple and cranberry pastry thing for the moon festival, and i had a cup of tea and we chatted for a while about taiwan vs china. she said when you live somewhere where you're in constant danger from typhoons and earthquakes and the threat of war, you just get used to it and it isn't a big deal anymore. she also said lots of taiwanese people have two passports so they can evacuate to canada or the US if necessary.

after that, i went to latini's for lunch. i had mashed potatoes. they're baked with bacon folded in and then topped with cheese and broiled. so good on a rainy day. and i had a latte. i didn't used to be a coffee person because i thought it would be lame to rely on a substance for my mental wellbeing (one day at the office, we ran out of coffee, and we basically had to shut down because people couldn't function), but it's comforting to drink something hot from a mug when it's gross outside. and tea just doesn't have the same kind of depth to it. maybe it's my imagination.

anyway danny's son was there, also named danny, and his wife, linda, who i had never met. turns out that linda is studying to be a certified chinese teacher, so she was helpful today when i had a question about pronunciation. and since we were the only ones in there, danny sat with me for a while and asked about texas and my family and why i'm in taiwan, how long i'm going to stay. i think it was a big step for us.

came home, watched The Interpreter which was pretty good, made brownies that will sent me for my birthday, and i had tomatoes with salt, pepper, sugar and balsamic vinager for a snack. so tasty and it reminds me of fajtown. anddd i just got done chatting with gram and spanky on skype and keith and becca on gmail, so i'm pretty well set. this morning i talked to mom and dad. it's really not hard to stay connected since we have the internet. i love technology.
time for some Alice and then bed!

dream a little dream

today was pretty gray. it rained literally all day long so we were all stuck in the dorm. a bunch of people got into cleaning mode and cleaned the living room. serena and i hauled up one of the long couches from downstairs so now we can lie down which is nice. i spent a good deal of time sprawled on the couch.
someone put the shelf that had been in keith's room back together and we put all of the books and random stuff on it, so everything looks much cleaner.
dena talked me into bringing up "my" big lamp that i had in my room. it really belongs to the dorm, so i guess it's fair that i don't have it to myself anymore, though my tiny light is pretty weak by itself.
emil posted this sign the other day and i was pretty excited. so far, everyone's been washing their dishes after they use them which is a big improvement from the pile of dishes that were there pre-sign.

we watched Chocolat which was good for a rainy day and then steve and i ventured out around 6 for dinner to this tapenyaki place down the street. i needed to get out of the dorm after being couped up for 8 hours. we got pretty well soaked though. there's a lot of wind and the ground is like a giant puddle. most of the planters weren't draining so trees and bushes were sitting in 3 inches of water.

josh bought a turtle. it's on the coffee table right now but i think it'll eventually end up in his room.

anddd we all played scattegories. i won with 50 points, i think the next best was 43. it's one of my favorite games.
but that's about it for today. a bunch of us are thinking about going to get massages tomorrow. i know i can't spend another day stuck inside all day. one is enough. it's weird that houston/texas is getting hit by a hurricane at the same time. it feels like the whole world is under water.

oh! and i got to chat with keith on gmail. best part of the day by far. this is us on my birthday.

all my lovin'

the guy at starbucks started speaking to me in english today and i told him i wanted to order in chinese, so i did (yi bei re chiang tsao latte), and he said i was very good and then asked if i wanted him to speak to me in mandarin or english from now on. we're going to try mandarin and see how it goes.

that isn't houston, its taiwan. we've been getting crazy amounts of rain today. i went to my first class but my second class was canceled. i wore my yellow jellies (which i highly recommend, and they're on sale) especially for the rain, but they got full of water and kept slipping off my feet. i was trying to walk down the sidewalk and i kept losing my shoes which was making me giggle up a storm. i took a taxi home because i literally couldn't walk to the bus stop, my shoes just wouldn't stay on, it was all very cinderella.

serena and i went to carrefour for dinner and found a thai place we didn't know existed. we had green curry coconut chicken and it was deliciousss! i'm excited about that place. it's pretty cheap and the decorations are nice and it feels like you aren't in taiwan for a minute.

after that, we walked in the torrential downpour to bobo's down the street. we got to play with jamie and joyce for an hour or so before they had to go to sleep and then we watched Scorpion king II which was about as awful as you would imagine. but it was nice to be at a movie night, regardless of the movie.
nowww i am headed to bed after a little reading.

so much to see and do

emily gave me a pomelo for moon festival :) apparently it's a chinese grapefruit and they're being sold by the box around here lately. they're associated with moon festival.
mine wasn't very tasty. it was like a grapefruit that was old and dried out. but they're not supposed to be juicy. dawn said they usually taste better than the one i had though. who knows.
josh, the newest new guy, has been very helpful in pointing out interesting things we hadn't discovered yet about taoyuan. he was eating these weird nuts that come in a shell that looks like devil's horns. and he knows a baked potato guy downtown. and lots of other neat little tips and tricks.

so when i walked in to my junior high class this morning, they all started clapping. it was embarrassing but cool at the same time. it was fun to write in chalk on a real chalk board. i felt like an actual teacher.
they know a lot more english than i had expected. apparently i'm teaching the highest possible level of english in a high school. they told me they all go to english cram schools after school. their conversational english was really good. they asked me if i had a boyfriend and how old i was. probably should have lied about the latter. they were pretty shocked to hear how young i am.

i had some time to kill before class so i found somewhere to sit downtown and do my lesson plans and i ended up chatting in broken mandarin with a parking garage security guard for a while. he wasn't as forgiving as a lot of my taiwanese friends are, but we made it work.

it was a hard day though emotionally. everything literally looks different to me now without keith. i kept thinking i saw his scooter or i'd want to text him and then it would hit me over and over again that he isn't here and it was really a tough day. lots of spontaneous bouts of tears. it doesn't help that my hormones are all out of whack and i didn't get any sleep last night.

it's time to read and head to bed. i can barely keep my eyes open.

don't go in the summertime

wellll, it's 5am. i just put keith in a taxi to go to the airport an hour ago. i was ok, got in bed, closed my eyes and then i don't know what happened but i just had some kind of panic attack or something. i felt all dizzy and weird and like i needed to go home immedddiately. in my head, i know it'll be fine, but my whole body is just feeling weird and alone and freaked out. it's going to be an adjustment.

aside from thatttt, today was good. another new guy, the newest guy, josh, got here. he's really cool. he was here before and did a bunch of stuff and came back, so he isnt new to school. he has dread locks, a goattee and is really nice and laid back. he went bowling with us tonight and was a good addition to the group. steve gave me some tips and now i think i'm on the path to being an expert.

i'm going to try to sleep again. i skyped jeffy and calmed down a bit and i'm exhausted. sleep will do me good.

share a moonlight made for two

took some pictures around the dorm tonight since almost everyone was milling around.
emil being a total ham as always
emil and dawn, the newest girl
emil and me without makeup which is always a little frightening

george strait adds so much to my life. he's the next best thing to having my family, mexican food or my big fluffy bed with me here.

noe and the new guy, alex
serena and emil

today was low key. i felt miiiiserable in the morning because of my cold. my head hurts, i'm stuffy, i felt really hot and dizzy for the first part of the day. i went to latini's and had some lunch, did some chinese flashcards with danny.
class was ok. the one where the kids have only been learning for 2 months is kind of challenging. they just don't know very much and it isn't their fault, but it's hard for all of us.
my class after that is so much fun. i know all of them very well and they tease me all the time and we have a great time.
me and serena
steve and justin
the whiteboard. it's our lifeline

so i read most of the instructions for my camera and i found some cool features liike bringing out the red, green, or blue in any photo. check out this picture of my purse..
and then in this one i made the red brighter
cooool, huh?

finally, thank you aunt carol for the cortizone cream. i have a million mosquito bites from something and i would have died without it.
and thank you gram and spanky for the decaf salada.. and the hundred boxes of chicken noodle soup. all of the above has been getting me through my illness.

stuffy

well, the camera is awesome. the gorge is awesome.
the first night, we got into hualien at around 11pm and stayed in a hostel with a freezing cold air conditioner and a heavy, wanna-be down comforter.
the next morning, after kind of a hassle, we finally were able to rent 2 scooters and start into taroko park. the ride there was amazing. i'm not sure what 'lien' means but 'hua' is flower and the whole town smelled like asian jasmine and citrus trees in bloom. it was so good. and the drive up the mountain was beautiful and got cooler and cooler as you went up.

we checked into the hostel and then headed to the Shackadon trail, which was closed (though we found a secret passageway and got in anyway) and so we walked for probably half a mile or so and ended at a swimming hole that gill really likes.
the water you could see from the road was all gray from the marble bits, but the water at the swimming hole was beautiful blue.

i was messing with my camera and everything went blue for a couple of shots.
after shackadon, we went to this area called swallow canyon or swallow something-or-other. my only stipulation for the day was that i wanted to do easy trails and take pictures of beautiful things. but somehow we ended up hiking up the most difficult trail in taroko. it was 1.5km of nearly vertical climbing on rocks and boulders for an hour or more.

there were all kinds of signs saying 'for experienced, well-equipped climbers only. turn around!
i thought my body was going to give out. we hadn't eaten lunch, we had no water, and i was using every shred of manners and positivity i had in my being. i was obviously still complaining a lot. anyway, we made it to this suspension bridge and then turned around and went back down.


saw this weird plant. any thoughts, majtown?
look gram, mail comes by carrier pigeon to the hostel.
before they took me back to the train station this morning, we walked 'the tunnel of nine turns' which used to be a road, but the traffic was so bad that they had to make a new road, so they turned the old one into a scenic pathway.

and then 2.5 hours later, i was back in taoyuan and on my way to school.
i have a cold and all of the kids are sick so it was a long day.
we got a new guy in the dorm, alex. he's from michigan and seems nice and normal. i haven't gotten to talk to him too much yet.
time for bed. i need some serious rest.

additional pictures here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2522818&l=dbae6&id=7900530