there are no guarantees in life

i've gone blog crazy the last few days and i decided i'm in need of..

1. pictures
i linked off of jesse's blog to the design-crisis blog all about interior design and other random, sort of design related things.
the writers write like they talk and add lots and lots of pictures. love it and the pictures. (the above photo is from an entry on garland of all kinds).

2. links
the best thing about a blog is that you have the whole internet at your disposal.
speaking of links, here are some i've added recently to my list on the side that you should check out if you find yourself with extra time.
design crisis, mentioned above
tastespotting, delicious recipes with beautiful photos updated by bazillions of people all the time (thanks katherine)
details of the mundane, jesse linked to it on her blog and it's well written and entertaining. i can't stop reading.
if it's hip, it's here, i was hooked when i saw this entry on painted money (though, to tell you the truth, i'm not crazy about the rest of it. we'll see how it goes)3. taiwanese stuff
the whole point of my blog is.. well there are a few points. i want to remember what i did here. i want the people i care about (and random people's moms, i suppose) to know what i'm up to and what it's like to live and teach english in asia. when i went home, i realized how few pictures i have of things i see every day and what it's actually like to live here.
things like beef noodles. it's a taiwanese specialty (and it never looks like it does in that picture. those are heavily styled.)
so i'll try to add more of those things. we'll see how it goes.

i was so happy to see my 'baby' class tonight. they aren't really babies at all, but they're pretty young. when i got there, they formed this glob around me and insisted that i sing liang zhi lao hou which i guess i sang last time i saw them. so we all sang it together. it felt like taiwanese sound of music.

they had changed to a bigger kid book while i was gone, so they were proud to show me what they could do now.
paul was adorable as always. he sits next to me and he says 'are you crazy?' 'nooooo!' and i'll joke with him about things and he just says 'teacherr!' in this pleading tone with a giant grin on his face. he might be my favorite of all. what is it about kids who are physically smaller than the other ones? they always seem much cuter. paul is the little tiny one.

we got a cold snap overnight and it was so cold in my room this morning that every time i stuck my toes on the frozen tile, i just got back in bed and ended up sleeping until 1! when i looked at my watch, i thought maybe i had accidentally added a few hours to the time when i was trying to turn the alarm off.

i bought some white rabbit fur ear muffs and they are sooo warmmm. i felt bad that they were real fur, but i was repeating 'thank you bunnies' in my head the whole way home.

i also bought this coat because i followed becca's love it, leave it, if you're still thinking about it in 2 weeks, buy it rule. sort of. in taiwan, it's 2 hours because you never know if you'll see the same street vendor in the same place twice.
it's tan. i'm not sure how easy that is to tell in this picture. it looks sort of pinky.
it reminded me a lot of a coat i saw on Bill Cunningham's On the Street about when it got cold in New York City one weekend. he does the coolest audio slideshows for the NYT. his voice reminds me of Santa.