ding ding ding went the bell

this is me and serena a minute ago. she's from chicago

i can't think because the trolley song is stuck in my head and it's overwhelming the voice in my head. let's seeee...
oh, went to taipei this morning to pick up my resident visa! now i have to apply for my ARC (alien resident card) that'll give me some more privileges. i can get a scooter and i can go to health clinics and get reaaally cheap prescriptions. keith came with me because we were both feeling kind of weird about me going alone and my intuition has been really strong here so if something seems weird, i just don't do it. anyway i was happy to have company. we took a taxi from the train station, went straight there, and went straight home. this really nice spanish? guy helped us find the bus station when we were lost. people just pop out of nowhere when you need help.

bought a cuteee top on the street. (see below). it makes me feel like a german milkmaid or something. i love it. it's crocheted on top but you cant really see it in the tiny picture. click on it if you want to see it better.it looks weird with my yellow skirt :P and serena found me some taiwan-tastic leggings. they're black with pink bottoms. (in the picture). i didnt wear that all day, by the way. i was just trying on my new shirt.

i don't really have a whole lot to say about today. my good class was good, my horrible class was horrible. oh! so in my good class, i have a mom who sits in the back. tonight at the end of the class, my coteacher told me that the mom said that she doesnt want me to wear tank tops like i wore today, andd i shouldn't whistle at night because its GHOST MONTH and you arent allowed to WHISTLE AT NIGHT. i called shenanigins on that. i understand cultural differences, but i mean.. i like to whistle. i didn't realize how much i did it until someone told me not to.

time to chat with jeffy and go to bed.

aicha

i just don't have much to say about today other than about how much of an angel keith was. he took me to school this afternoon as he always does on wednesday now "because it's on the way to yoga" even though he didn't go to yoga today, and it's not even close to being on the way. i think he just gets a kick out of my kids freaking out when they see us kiss in front of school.
and he let me borrow some of his eggs. i only meant to borrow 1 but the first one rolled off the counter without me noticing until it was too late, and i broke the yoke on the 2nd. the third one turned out perfect. i loveeee fried eggs and toast. they're more or less the same in every country.
and he picked me up from school tonight since he was 15 min away.
aaand when i got home, aunt carol's post card had been slipped under my door and he's the one who did that.
and he bought a nonstick frying pan for the kitchen because we neeeeded it to make eggs. we needed it for a lot of things.
he's my favorite guy in taiwan. and really in the world right now.

today briefly..
taught 4 hours of my own classes and then subbed a class. nothing of note there. odd names: belinda and a boy named Joy.
wednesday night dinner was at a foreigner-owned bar named Feebies. i had a pizza pocket anddd warm brownies with vanilla ice cream and homemade whipped cream and berries. i could have dieedddd it was soo good.
beth took me there and back on her scooter and i was laughing so hard the whole time. beth has a hard to describe sense of humor but she's really funny and dry. she's fun. her scooter is only 50ccs though and it did not want to carry both of us. we were like leaning forward trying to make it go.
i think that's all the news i have for today.

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.

send you yellow flowers when the sky is gray

meet stamp #2. the chinese says 'mei' for flower and 'gan' for roots. that was the most pleasant combination of the 8 possibilities. my kids cracked up when they saw it and they kept saying 'mei gan.. mei gan.. mei gan' anyway it's not like my old wooden one. it has the ink pad built in so all i have to do is press down. i love it.

today a few things of note happened.
1. a little girl passed me on the sidewalk in guei san and she tugged on her mom's shirt and said 'cinderella!' which is more or less one of my dreams come true.
2. i taught one of my classes how to order off a menu at mc donalds because we're taking a field trip there next week. it should be fun.
3. my little baby class was cuuuute as could be. we played all sorts of fun games and we discovered the difference between the taiwanese sounds that birds, cats, dogs and elephants make vs the american sounds. their bird says something like 'chu chu' and they thought it was ridiculous that ours say 'tweet tweet'.
4. on the bus home i was thinking it's weird that none of the other teachers have seen me on the bus while theyre on their scooters since i feel like i'm always on the bus, and tonight when i came home and walked into the kitchen/living room thing, serena said that she saw me on the bus tonight.
5. my friend tommy helped me find a way around our internet not working. it pays to have friends who know computers inside and out. he also said..
[12:55] dirty german kid: btw i just wanted to let you know that i
[12:55] dirty german kid: i'm very very proud of you
[12:55] dirty german kid: and that i think you're a very strong and awesome person
[12:55] merganfrog: oh for taiwan?
[12:56] dirty german kid: yeah not too many people around here are into the world
[12:56] dirty german kid: people think i'm weird because i like going other places and learning about new people and cultures
[12:56] merganfrog: its been a whole lot of fun

which i thought was nice. we've been online friends since i was like, 11, and we talk probably 3 times a year.

time for bed, i am so tired.

small small small small small smaaaalll

woke up laaate today which was fine because it's my do-nothing-sunday. eventually put on a dress and some shoes and went over to latini's. i always feel kind of silly there now because i go so often and i haven't really talked to the owner much. had a delicious panini and espresso ice cream and did half of my lesson plans for the week.

went to carrefour with serena. i'm done with carrefour on sundays. there are a million people there and it makes me all jittery and stressed for no reason. i don't like not being able to walk at my usual pace. but i did buy some yogurt and ice cream and lots of fruit so i'm excited. i hadn't been to the store in like 2 weeks so i was eating random food all the time which isn't good.

tonight keith and i went to kat and gill's for kat's birthday BBQ and this woman, Bobo, was there. she teaches chinese to a lot of foreign teachers and tonight she brought one of her daughters, Joyce, who's 3 and she is ADOOORABLE beyond words. at first, she didn't want to talk to me, but we made friends eventually and then literally for the next 4 hours she just ordered me around. we drew about 20 pictures, made snowflakes and butterflies and hearts out of paper, made a crown, put on lip gloss, ate ice cream. Bobo told her i was like a lifesize Barbie, and i did kind of feel like one. i was wearing a hot pink dress and she was just telling me what to do, it was fun. for a while, jerry and keith colored with us. keith was coloring and Joyce would make me copy him and he drew a hot air balloon and a dragon and i had to draw all of it. so fun. at the end of the night keith and i agreed that we would pay double for chinese lessons if bobo would promise we could play with joyce afterward.
that's josh and joyce

and now i'm home :) time to eat some pineapple and go to sleep.

there is so much more

last night i tried to upload a video of some of my kids singing a funny song in our demo because one of the mom's made me a CD of pictures and videos, but it uploaded for like a full 12 hours and never finished uploading so i gave up on it. i could probably email it if you're interested. blogger is just slow to upload.
anyway here are some pictures from my baby class demo:
before it started. ryan, the kid on the far left, and vanessa, the girl sitting next to him, are my two geniuses. they are so intelligent.
this is them reading a story

nothing interesting happened yesterday at all really.

today i woke up super super early and keith gave me a ride to school at 815 to make it to my 9am class. they're a 'kindy beginners' class so today was the first day they've ever had a foreign teacher. it was interesting. they get wild if they're not all engaged in something and i'm not really good at switching gears quickly yet so it was a trial by fire. but it was ok. the names are hilarious: Nelly (pronounced Neely), Osbert, Kiki, Nico, Benny, Lena (pronounced len-ah), Ivan, Phina (where did they get that from?!), Brian and Becky.
they're adorable and like 6 years old or younger and really sweet. so we'll see how that goes. everyone's told me that it's like anything else here where at first you don't know what the heck you're doing and then one day you just figure it out and then it's easy after that.

after that, i had a sub class at guei san that was a WOW class. they thought i was crazy but we had a lot of fun. their QA was 'what are some differences between taiwan and the US' and the second answer listed was 'the food is better in taiwan' and i said LIES! and we talked about all of the gross food here and how they have beans on their ice cream and they were in an uproar. they said pizza and hamburgers are disgusting! anyway we were laughing and having a lot of fun talking about that. it was a good class. i'm subbing for them next week and the week after that.

on my way home, i went to another stamp place to try to get a stamp with a built in ink pad because it takes a lot of time for me to stick it in the ink pad and then stamp the paper. so i found a woman who is going to make me a stamp with my name in english on top and my name in chinese on the bottom and i'm pretty excited. it's only $150 which is like.. $4.50 american.

on the bus on the way home, this old man started talking to me from across the aisle. he said i'm very beautiful like his daughter which i thought was nice. he's a retired doctor and he said that i will love taiwan and that it's a wonderful place. he was interesting.

and i found a fruit lady who has fresh fruit and she's cheaper than the other lady i was going to. yummm bell fruit and mango in the afternoon.

came home and napped. then jerry and i went to dinner and i'm about to organize scrabble. i don't want to go out tonight because everyone's going out tomorrow for katy's birthday.

the boy

serena took a picture of keith and i the other day so i thought i'd share. (that's my scooter helmet that's on my arm upside down!)
MEK