jai hoooooooo

so after chinese and lunch this afternoon, i headed to nova, which is taoyuan's big box computer store. i pull out my AC adapter with the frayed cable and hand it to the computer dude who just looks at it and says 'oooh noooo'.

he says 4 minutes worth of chinese to me and i get the gyst that i need to go to some other store where they can fix it. computer guy #2 writes down something in chinese (tonight allen told me it says 'jing ho electronic material') and brings up yahoo maps, in chinese, on the computer. at that point, i know it's on minzu road and if i hit jung shan rd, i went too far.
i find minzu road (which is in the opposite direction as the guy pointed), and stop a couple blocks short of jung shan rd, outside of a bakery. since i've had such brilliant luck with people who own restaurants and other little shops, i decide to ask the girls at the bakery. they look at my little paper and just keep saying 'no address. police station there. ask police'.

i probably just would have walked into another store to try my luck but the girl actually walked me to the front door of the police station, so i had no choice, i just went inside. the taipei times just ran a big story about how the public is outraged that foreigners get off so easy because we can't speak chinese so we can't really get ticketed, and a big campaign has been launched to go after us.. so it felt weird to be in the police station.

luckily, it was like any other place i walk in and everyone kind of looked at me and pointed frantically to the one person who can speak 'a little' english. it was a police officer who couldn't have been over 25. the guy was super nice and he just took my paper and i could see the wheels turning. he pulled out his cell phone, put it away, went to the computer, went outside and looked up and down the street. in the end, he pulled out his car keys and told me to get in the police car!

he asked me where i was from, where i teach, etc as we drove about 3 blocks until he matched up a sign with what was written on my paper. the guy at the store thought we could probably fix it, but i needed to bring my entire computer.. so i went back to the bakery, bought the police officer a couple of little cheesecake tarts, (he accepted them after a little bit of protest), and went back to get my computer.

in the end, we found a new adapter that does work with my laptop. success! it was a crazy, roundabout adventure of a day.

alert

my power cord died soo unless i can find a dell power cord at nova tomorrow, i'll probably be gone until i can order one online.

mrs. chan made a bunch of rice dumplings for dragon boat festival. the story goes that a poet jumped in a river to protest an oppresive chinese government, and the people threw in rice dumplings to keep the fish from eating him.
she made two kinds, a plain glutinous rice one, and one with red bean.
red bean is really growing on me. it's not too sweet, not too bean-y.

new stamp! it's a little castle/house. the initials threw the kids for a loop. i think they understood the 3rd or 4th explanation.

i'm going to the philippines with josh and steve on thursday and coming back monday. knowing myself, i'll probably find an internet cafe to give you some updates.

don't forget how lucky you are, darling

these are pictures that allen and i took on sunday. he took me to ximending so we could eat a boat full of ice cream. when i saw how giant the boat was, i decided to go with the smaller bowl. we totally could have done the boat though.
i didn't know he had his camera until we had eaten most of it. it was 'milk ice' like shaved ice that's more like snow.. with mango, kiwi and strawberries. yuuuumm!
we went to the chiang kai shek memorial because we had a bunch of time. it was beautiful. they were having some kind of special ed olympics or something. it was unusually cool and windy on sunday.
that building (and the other one across from it that you can see in another picture) is the national theater and concert hall. the scale of those 4 buildings/gates is soo big.
well the 7 of you who have been here since the beginning will be glad to hear that i think i'm much more sad about leaving here than i am excited about going home. my friend patrick asked me what food i miss from home that i can't get here.. and really, i don't crave anything from home anymore. i'm just going to miss danbing, fresh tea and cong dra bing.
it makes me all teary to think about not ever seeing the kuos or my kids. i looooove my monday night kids. i love that it's enough for me to just look disappointed and it makes them stop doing whatever they're doing.

tonight in my second class i told carol i'm learning sea animals now so she told my kids to say an animal in english so i could say it in chinese. all through class, we'd be doing whatever and someone would shout 'lion!' or 'zebra!' and see if i knew it. they were totally impressed that i knew camel.
..did you ever wonder what 67,000NT looks like?! time to visit the bank.
my brother is 21 right noooowww since it's 12:31 in taiwan! happy birthday jeffy.
let's look at that money one more time.

too scared to open up

i'm way behind schedule because i watched the first episode of 'the fashion show' which is bravo's replacement for project runway since it moved to lifetime (lame). 我不喜歡. i don't like it.

chris took this picture of the 'good day/bad day' in the taipei times today.
it's a good day for killing ants and other vermin
it's a bad day for 'everything'
allen and i hung out in taipei today. pictures tomorrow. goodnight!

oh, you are my star

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

stole this from sara and james at you can't go wrong with a fork. it had the word 'texas' and 'party' on it which i think qualifies it for this blog. and it's awesome.

always something there to remind me

there was an actual rose in my rose milk tea this morning. if an ant hadn't found his way up to my lid, i never would have known.
i had the best time at the kuo's today. mrs. chan made me delicious beef, pepper and onion stir fry. i ate the wholeeee plate by myself. mr. kuo probably asked me a million times to drink wine with him since i was done with class. we settled on water. he said he wants to visit me in texas in december. that would be awesome/hilarious. i hope he does come.

i asked where mr. wang was today and mr. kuo just looked at me and said 'wang shien sheng zai ni de xin' which is 'mr. wang is in your heart.' we cracked up. really though, his daughter was taking the big test to get into senior high so he couldn't come today.
i think i'm making friends with the fruit market ladies. today the husband was also there and he asked if i can speak chinese.. they said a little. for some reason i was just feeling shy so i didn't say much to him. maybe another day.
this time the entire market was open and i had to walk past partially picked over pig heads. blech. i just tried to keep my eyes on the ground, ignore the hooves, and concentrate on delicious lychees.
justin bought all of this stuff to make tacos with and he told me i could use whatever, so i whipped up a batch of deeeelicious enchiladas. they were stuffed with beans, green pepper, onion and tomatoes. you couldn't even tell that it was mozzerella cheese (which i didn't know until after it came out of the oven) once it was covered with enchilada sauce.
we got 2 new people in the dorm today, martin and olenka. they were in korea and bailed. they're from canada. they seem nice. i think everyone who comes from korea really ends up loving taiwan. apparently you have to work a lot of hours there and they have some awful game where the kids poke your bum.

to watch and observe life

did you see the pilot of fox's new show, glee? hate that it's on fox, but i love that it's a show about a glee club so singing and dancing is built into the story line. don't stop believin' was basically the daily texan's theme song so i kind of have a soft spot for it..
i've had an awful time the last couple of weeks trying to fill up the whole hour and a half of my beginners classes on saturday mornings because they just moved to a new book and it's reaaaallly easy. so today after class i stopped by the stationery store to see what they had.
i found playdough, little puffy stars and flowers for them to count/do stuff with, and sticky balls because i always harass my coteachers for them/borrow them from the front desk, and it'd be nice to have a couple of my own.
twbf mentioned 'white princess and seven little men' today at lunch which cracked me up. he also mentioned how when he looks in my eyes he can see my heart. swoon. it makes me wish i was the kind of girl who swoons over stuff like that. he's catching on though. anyway we had a really nice lunch.
the combination of cheapy pencil sharpener + triangle shaped pencils (which wasn't obvious when they were inside the box.. all i saw was the ABC's) resulted in chewed up pencils and this blister..
i hope they love them. we'll see tomorrow.