Saturday, February 28, 2009

if you only had been lyrical, but you're logical

danielle took this picture of my new hair cut for me. it looks longer in this picture than it actually is. anyway i've just accepted it. it'll grow back and it's much easier to dry now.
today was wonderful once i remembered that we don't have class tomorrow for 2/28 memorial day. friday usually takes on some of the doom of saturday, but today was great. i gave a test in my first class. 1 kid made 100, 2 kids were in the 60s. they couldn't read, couldn't recite, couldn't ask me a QA. class #2 was awesome as usual.

mosquito down!! yesterday i thought i smushed one, but when i went to pick him up off the wall, he just puffed back up and flew away. since then, i've learned my lesson with making sure they're fully dead.

so i'm trying again to get into the power of now. it just seems kind of dated to me, and my mom taught me all of those lessons when i was little, so his narration about 'if you think that sounds impossible..' or 'if you're a really unhappy person..' or 'if you don't believe me yet..' is a little annoying. but it made me realize something important. i read somewhere a long time ago that if you make a list of what you're looking for in a partner, you'll subconsciously find it.
my list used to be.. loves me unconditionally, has a good relationship with their family, doesn't engage in any illegal recreational activities, has a generally positive outlook on life.
new hair picture #2.
that list was alright, but i think my new list is 1 item: is totally happy with themselves, as they are, right now.
that way, they won't be looking for me to 'complete' any part of them, and they'll be happy so they won't have a need to pick on me or themselves or others, and you know, the list goes on and on.
i guess all i can do right now is try to make myself totally happy with myself as i am now and then i think i'll draw people like that toward me. i'm not sure if anyone ever gets there 100%, but i think i can honestly say i'm genuinely pretty happy with myself and the world around me.

lesley is making granola and it smells so good. i think i'm going to sneak some out of the oven.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

in her dreams, she's a swan

i put some random pictures of our trip to matsu in here for something to look at. i didn't realize how few pictures i posted when we actually went in october.
so i posted that video the other day of the cool stop motion video and i downloaded the guy's cd today. it is awesome. his name is Oren Lavie and all of his songs are breathy and mellow with dreamy lyrics, literally. perfect for night time.
(dawn and leila at the top of a reaaally windy mountain).
classes today were about as all over the place as they could have been. my jr high is really wonderful. i love them. i brought them pictures of europe today and we used the overhead projector for the first time and it was a reaaally big hit. as exciting as my drawings and stories were, i think they prefer pictures. i learned their names all over again today and i think i've got them all down. i had forgotten all but 4. but now that i know i have them until june, i decided it was time to get back on the horse.
(lucky money you can burn at the temples).
i stopped for tea at a tea place out by that school on the way there, and the girl remembered what i ordered last week and i remembered that it was $15, not $50, and she laughed. last week she said what i thought was 'fifty' (in english) but she meant 'fifteen'. i think we'll be friends before too long.
class #2 i was bulldozed by my coteacher with questionable pronunciation. she always takes over. i kind of gave up on her though. if she really needs to be in control all the time, it's ok. it's just annoying sometimes because she'll have them rush through everything and then make them put their books away before i'm ready and then i have 5-10 minutes of awkward free time that i wasn't planning on. i can deal with that, but her crazy pronunciation gets to me. she had them all pronounce 'suddenly' as 'sun-dily' ... i told them if they said that to someone, they wouldn't know what they were saying. and she says 'tast' for 'taste' and 'uz' for 'as'.
class #3 i inherited from a teacher who left and the kids don't know anything. one kid is constantly screaming the answers out before anyone else has a chance and he's always screaming the coteacher's name like she's his mom. she's having them memorize their lessons but they don't even know how to read yet. i think i can get them into shape, but she keeps having me change things that are really inconsequential. who cares if i draw or they draw during a game?
i think it was just a long day. 6 hours of teaching is a lot. time to read! one more chapter of three cups of tea.

have i been too denying of you?

dawn is back from thailand! and she bought me a present! is it still a present if you beg for something for days and days before someone goes somewhere..? it seems like every traveler in asia has a pair of these awesome thai fisherman's pants, and now i do too!
they apparently only come in one size and i could fit 4 of me in them. but they feel like big open airy jammies and it's wonderful. i still need to figure out how to tie them so it doesn't feel all caddywhompus. i did it once today but i've had trouble recreating it. you have to fold the extra fabric in and then tie them at the top.. it's confusing.
today was largely uneventful except that i subbed a class (that may or may not have been at a different school than usual) and it was awesome. the kids were really smart and fun, they didn't speak any chinese and even had a hard time making themselves speak it when i asked for the translations. i also got to see jaime and joyce! joyce was cute as could be with pig tails and her teeny tiny little yellow flip flops that are the size of my pinkie.
(see how you fold over the extra fabric and then tie it at the top? it feels weird if you cross it tooo much, but it seems to be a delicate balance. after you tie it, you fold down the extra fabric on top to cover the tie, see below.)
the only other thing about today was a glimmer of sunshine in my otherwise annoying wednesday class. my coteacher left the room for10 minutes to talk to a student so it was just me and the class, so some of the girls wrote the chinese on the board and i wrote the words i knew (you, i and 'de'). we were talking about their favorite brand of tennis shoes.during the break, a couple of girls asked me if i listened to the carpenters. i don't know why, but i think they're kind of popular in taiwan right now. my kids have brought them up a few times. random. jane asked me if i could sing 'top of the world'.
we got a new guy in the dorm today. i didn't have any idea we were supposed to get someone new and then i heard a new voice upstairs when i was ironing downstairs at the bottom of the stairwell. his name is john, he's from vancouver, and he lived in south korea for 4 years and now he's here. he was reaaally chipper for having just gotten off the plane this morning. he seems to have an interest in watching movies. he mentioned movies a lot today. so far, so good.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

stop motion must see

i wonder how long this took.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

what protects our hearts

turtle club's second successful meeting was today. every tuesday from 1-1:15. this week we doubled our numbers. things are looking up for the turtles of tung an park. it looks like someone has been feeding them food scraps.. but we have actual turtle food.
josh, our founding father. he uses patchouli soap. once i figured out that all i have to do is stand up wind of him, everything between us has been fine.
i went to chinese with jerry this morning. he's been going by himself on tuesdays to learn vocab words out of this cool book with tons of drawings of everyday things in it. today we learned computer lingo and things around a bathroom. although when i tried them out on mr. kuo this evening, he only understood half the things i said..
i hung out at the coffee shop for an hour or so this afternoon and read a book my friend marisa gave me that i took with me on my first plane ride to taiwan and i haaated it because i was in tears the whole time and feeling awful. but i tried it again and now i'm really enjoying it. it's about a man who travels along the coast of the mediterranean. my tuesday classes were really impressed with the colorful stickers. i was looking forward to giving them to the kids all class long. it's been really really fun to see their reactions. tonight you could see the chain reactions where i'd give them to one kid and they'd show everyone around them and they discussed how i did something special for them. it made me feel like i was being less of pretend teacher megan and more of my actual self.
tonight jerry and i had a come to jesus conversation. i was really trying my best to maintain some grace in letting him know that i only want to be friends, but i guess there isn't an easy way to combine force and grace. i knowwww, yesterday i said i thought there might be some sparkle. i think the flattery of him being interested made me confused. i think that's what you get when you try to use your head to overpower what your heart already knows. how much more cliche can i get? should i throw in an anne geddes picture? i don't do feelings well.
i tell myself i'll just know when i find the right person, that it'll just feel right and i won't have to think about it at all or question it. that better be right because i'm reaaaallly not good at overthinking. jon and i looking tropical with our azaleas. are those azaleas? i think so.

while the whole wide world is fast asleep

"Those three things-- autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward-- are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether our work fulfills us. ... Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.
... They learned the same lesson that Alex Williams would learn nearly a century later-- a lesson crucial to those who wanted to tackle the upper reaches of a profession like law or medicine: if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires."
Malcom Gladwell, Outliers

Monday, February 23, 2009

beautiful things spring from these rows

random pictures for an otherwise pictureless day.
brother jeff and i rockin' out on his guitars. we called everyone we could think of so they could listen to me play the beginning of smoke on the water. it must have been more than 20 people.

when i went down to the basement to get my scooter to go to chinese this morning, who was there waiting for me? jerry. funny how things work out. when i first got back from tx and he was living in the dorm, i had to guilt him into giving me a ride. i guess it's no secret that he has a little crush on me. i didn't even mention the love poem to you. there's the card, 3 poems and the cd.
this is my living room in my old apartment. i miss curling up on that chair.

it's always been interesting to me how guys court girls differently based on the girl. jerry isn't really a good example because he's a writer, so the poems are sweet but not out of character. but nearly everyone i've dated has made construction paper cards and done the cutest, most personalized things for my own personality. it's been really sweet.
anyway i guess jerry is wearing me down because i'm thinking twice about the sparkle. how many times can someone tell you you look pretty that day before it starts to get to you? and he's just genuinely a nice, creative, good person.
christmas cookie decorating party 2007. that was a fun time. our kitchen counters were filled to capacity with cookies, it had to overflow to the living room.

so it's been really humid outside and my naturally wavy hair was just feeling gross and too long, so i got a hair cut today. only one woman at this teeny little beauty salon spoke english, so she translated to the woman who was cutting my hair and then left us to pantomime. the woman did a pretty good job but it just ended up a lot shorter than i had envisioned. she kept cutting off half an inch and then layering and then thinning with this razor and then cutting again. i think i lost something like 3 inches total and now it falls around my collar bones.
an approximation.. this was june 08 but it's close. that was an unusually good hair day. oh texas, how i miss your lack of humidity.

it was kind of funny though because they kept passing me around. one woman cut my hair, one woman washed it, then one woman dried it a little, #1 dried it a little more, #2 dried it a lot more and then #3 came over and fluffed it up and gave me miss america bangs. what is it about hair dressers feeling the need to tease the heck out of your hair?
bec and i at the lake in our sun hats circa 2006 or 7.

class was crazy tonight. we learned.. khaki, gold, silver, teal, periwinkle, maroon, baby blue, neon orange/green/yellow/pink, dark, light and brights.. in my first class. they were just going insane the whole time. they were also learning words for rooms in a house, which i learned in chinese today, so we did megan speaks chinese, they speak english. they were reaaaally excited to hear my chinese since i've never used it with them.

in my second class, we played a fun game with flashlights since the lesson was about things in the night sky and i wanted a reason to turn the lights off. they were screaming so loud at one point that someone came to make sure we were ok.
this book was on some food blog and i just think it's funny that it's called Megan Hearts Baking and the girl looks like me. you'd be surprised how many fictional Megan's have brown hair. look how multicultural my friends are.

time to read!

we were all basically alone



if you don't listen to this song at least 3 more times the same day you listen to it, i want to know why.
MK

mistaken for closeness

today was my ideal day. the only way it could have been better was if jerry was still living in the dorm so he could come search for and destroy the mosquito that's somewhere in my room right now so i can sleep in peace.

woke up late and did laundry which included my sheets and jammies! jerry and i spent some last-minute quality time together while he packed up his room and i asked him chinese flash card words. then bobo and her family came over to help him move his stuff and we got to see his new apartment. it's super fancy and beautiful but i don't think i could rationalize paying $15,000NT (arounddd $475) every month when i'm currently paying $1200.
then bobo's family, jerry and i headed to the big park to play for a while. we exhausted our teacher games: what time is it mr wolf, red light green light, simon says, freeze tag, human knot. then it turned into megan does cartwheels on command while jamie and joyce learn how to do them. i haven't done one in forever and it was a lot of fun. even bobo's husband was doing them by the end of it.
the funniest part of the park experience was that jerry and i were the only foreigners so kids would just form little groups around the perimeter of the grass area we were in and watch us play with the girls.
i always wonder what people are thinking when they see jamie and joyce running with us as we all scream a mix of english and chinese, or holding our hand walking or being carried. i love that joyce is still at the age where she wants to be picked up and cuddled all the time. she sat in my lap for most of dinner and it was lovely.

speaking of dinner.. she was sitting beside me at one point and she asked something in chinese and bobo and jack just started giggling their heads off and bobo told me joyce asked "how come your boobs are so small but you're still so pretty?". ! gotta love inquisitive 6 year olds. i told her that the size of your boobs isn't what makes you pretty.
after i said goodbye to them after dinner, i came home to the dorm and the vegetarians (and chris) were cooking an indian feast upstairs. i hadn't eaten much at dinner because it was all traditional taiwanese stuff, so i pitched in and joined indian night.
we made naan, lentil dahl, chick pea stuff, curry with veggies and potato-and-caulliflower something or other. all pretty delicious. it took maybe an hour to create. and cheap! the same price as tapenyaki, cheaper than latini's, about as much as a cup of coffee at the coffee shop.
there was only one casualty:
we forgot to take out the last naan while the chai was simmering on the stove.
time for bed after a mosquito hunt.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

with musical names and musical sounds

i'm using too much brain power arguing with jerry about how intelligent people should use their intelligence to write this right now. i couldn't explain the outcome of that argument if i wanted to.

well today was really good on all accounts. is it 'in' or 'on' all accounts? waitttt, it's actually 'by' all accounts.. i think being an english teacher in a foreign country actually makes you worse at your native language. i've learned to only use words my kids have learned and phrases like 'bye bye your books' even though i guess i've held on to 'put away your books, please and take out your...'. i've caved with things like 'one time' which means 'someone already asked that, ask a different question' and .. there are millions of them, i just can't think of any right now. i'll work on that.

anyway my little kid classes went by super quickly without a hitch and we even had fun in my horrible, no good, very bad jr. high class. i had them unscramble sentences and write them with pieces of spaghetti and they actually got into it. that class is usually so challenging. i tried to play a game last week where they ask a question and then toss a marker and try to get it to catch on the lip of the white board.. but the kids would just throw all 4 markers at once or throw them at the middle of the board.
when it's a choice between having a small amount of fun or being totally lame and not participating, why do teenagers choose to be lame? groupthink is so powerful. when i was their age, i just humored the teacher because i was quiet and i'm a goodie two shoes, what can i say.

today i had 2 boys in there who just flat out said no to me when i asked them to do something. i felt completely helpless at that point, as i have no real punishment to dole out. i just held up the rest of class and stood there until they did what i had asked.

then tonight, a whole bunch of us went out to this bar down the street. carly, steph, chris, danille, jerry, jon, josh, katie, mike and steve and i went. so much fun. i was the first one to walk through the door and the entire club stopped talking and looked over at us as we paraded in. we played dice games, sang along with the bad renditions of english songs, and mingled with a group of reeaaaally drunk taiwanese people. we had a great time. now it's 5am, i've argued with jerry for 2 hours (and won, i'd say), and it's time for bed.

Friday, February 20, 2009

oh you are my star

they told us months and months ago that they were coming out with new stickers for the 30th anniversary of the school. i'm not sure if these are them? but they aren't very much fun. so when i was sitting around today with too much time on my hands, i decided to spiff them up with my new markers. my kids went insane for them. those markers really are magic.
synchronicity of the day: i told jerry the story of the chicken picatta today at lunch because my 'toast bread' at latini's has capers on it. [story--i threw a dinner party for my parents and neighbors when i had an apartment, and i made chicken picatta. i used up half a jar of leftover capers i had in the fridge.. but my dad wasn't satisfyed with the 30 capers that were in the dish, as his favorite restaurant must use at least 35. so since then, i've been consistently harassed about the 'caper shortage' in texas.]
anyway JG and i were watching grey's anatomy tonight and what did they mention?! chicken picatta. totally out of nowhere.
i forgot to put in my contacts today so i called and had jon bring my glasses to school. my kids have never seen me wear them and their reactions were pretty funny. they had also never seen jon and they asked me 100,000 times if he was my boyfriend. that's the only class i speak chinese with and only before class, but it gives us a special bond. i understood everything they said today!
outliers lesson of the day: a study followed a group of kids who had the highest IQs in gradeschool throughout their lives found that the difference between the kids who performed well after college and who didn't was socioeconomic status. it concluded that kids from wealthier backgrounds had more support from their parents, who took an active interest in their gifts and talents and tried to promote them. apparently the poor families had an attitude that their kids would naturally find their niche, but didn't do anything to foster their natural talents.. even though those kids were just as smart.

it also talks about how wealthier families groom their kids to interact as equals with adults and learn to use their resources. one example was a mom telling her kid, on the way to the doctor's office, that he could ask the doctor whatever questions he wanted when they got there.. making the kid feel empowered in the doctor's office.

they contrast that with an example of a guy who had a really high IQ but who never learned how to interact effectively with adults, so when he wasn't making it to school on time because he had car trouble and wanted to have his class moved to a later time slot, he got really defensive with the school counselor and didn't end up getting the time switched because of his lack of social skills. his inability to deal with authority figures held him back from a lot of opportunities.
i'm not explaining it as well as the book does but it's something to think about.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

you cut me out in little stars

yay valentine's mail! as happy as i am to receive new email, there's nothing like physically opening an envelope and reading a handwritten card. my mom's generation hardly sends mail. i wonder what will happen to letters. i guess there will always be the becca and megans of the world.
becca sent me a valentine that she sewed a heart onto. it's hard to see in that picture. she's one of my best friends from high school and she's super fantastic about making cards for every occasion. she sent some old papers her mom found in a cabinet at their house with scores from our domino-playing days.. that must have been 4 years ago.
one mosquito down! apparently they're attracted to moisture, fragrances and heat which are all working against me at night since i'm a night showerer. taiwanese mosquitoes don't make any noise at all though and it doesn't hurt when they bite you, so you just wake up with tons of bites without any warning.
the other night i thought i felt something weird on my cheek and i went to scratch it and there was a mosquito on my face and it just flew away after i manhandled it.
thank you mutti and gram&spanky! i'll send a real thank you note soon.

went to my outside class at the jr high today for the first time since the beginning of august. i love them. the kids at my favorite table had little cracker things and i couldn't stop eating them, i had to make them put them away. that class is 2 hours of inside jokes and questions about when i'm going to get married. it's so much fun.
tonight i made pork tenderloin with chipotle raspberry sauce from texas and corncakes with green chiles for dinner and it was soooo yummy. i added too many green chiles and my corncakes didn't really form very well, but whatever. they were delicious.

at home i used to add the kernels from 1 ear of corn that had been microwaved in plastic wrap for 3 minutes, whatever cheese i had on hand, and 1/2 a can of diced green chiles to cornbread mix and it was the bestttt snack. you can toast it or put raspberry jam on it or use it as stuffing. at that point it doesn't really work as corncakes, you have to make actual cornbread.

synchronicity of the week: bozeman, montana. it's where greg mortensen, the author of three cups of tea is from. it was also mentioned in outliers. it popped up in one more place but i can't remember right now.. surely not my book about france. maybe a blog. oh! a new york times article about 20somethings with no health insurance. one guy was in bozeman.
Of course, there are those who do feel invincible, like Eric Williams, who is 24, unemployed and currently in the middle of a six-week snowboarding adventure in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Utah, British Columbia and California. Mr. Williams said by cellphone near Bozeman, Mont., that he looked into buying health insurance before he left, but abandoned the idea after being unable to find anything for less than $400 a month. Instead, he is just trying to be careful, though not always with success.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

here's a song for you, lovely

..did anyone see the comment the mederma rep left on my blog yesterday? kind of creepy/cool.

mr. kuo asked if i would wear shoes if he bought them for me. i've been wearing the ones mom sent for my birthday a lot because they're silver and match everything. he said they aren't winter shoes because they have so many holes. i said meiguanxi. (no problem). i think i might stick with silver shoes from now on. i dare you to find an outfit they don't look lovely with. maybe brown. all i wear is navy and brights.

today my little girls ran up to me when i walked in the door and my teenager jerks just turned up their noses. they had a big test today though and they actually did really well. their reading is pretty good. they aren't too hot on past tense verbs when they're speaking though.

i'm doing too many things to write this right now. we'll catch up tomorrow.

but no one will do

a couple of things today.
1. jerry taught joyce a variation of paper scissor stone called paper scissor stone claw. claw beats everything. joyce caught on really quickly and it was hilarious. i tried it in my class tonight and my kids loved it. we paper scissor stone clawed all through the break and they came up to me after class and even while i was getting on my scooter to leave, we were still doing it.

2. our lesson last week involved a scale that takes pennies, so i showed them some real pennies. they were all really interested and one of my favorite kids, kevin 1, asked if he could have one. i told him only if he could spell penny. he couldn't consistently do it last week, but he came to find me before class today and spelled it before even saying hello. so i gave him one. then a bunch of girls around him were asking for one and he explained our system to them- first you have to come up with a task, then you come back and do it next week. next week, amy has to spell 'texas' and kevin has to spell 'california'. his english is really good, he asked me a bunch of questions about my scooter tonight.

3. lesley got into grad school in paris for the fall so i told her i'd move to paris if she could find me a job. she said a woman she nannied for before lives in paris now, so we'll see about that. i did some research online a few weeks ago and it makes it seem like it's basically impossible for expats to work in europe unless they're an au pair. i'm really trying hard not to go to grad school just because i don't know what else i'd rather do. for now, i'd rather hang on to my flexible life for as long as i can before i settle in to another 40 hour work week.

4. mederma (skin care for scars) really works. it may be $20 for a little tiny tube of it, but it's amazing stuff. if only i had the sticktoitiveness to apply it 3 times daily for 3 months like it told me to. even with sporadic applications, my scooter scar is fading really nicely.

5. correction: louxia is downstairs. loushang is upstairs.

Monday, February 16, 2009

being alone, it can be quite romantic

i've been dying for new music lately. i've worn out the songs i used to like and now i've even overplayed 60 years of disney music. i hadn't mentioned my music crisis to jerry, but what does he pop in my room with today but a mixed CD for me? magic jerry.

we watched ratatouille in my first class tonight and my coteacher tried to get me to turn on the chinese subtitles for them. it seems counterintuitive to me. she made dessert for the kids.. it was giant jelly pearls with a red bean in the middle, spooned into a cup and then covered with milk. i ate as many of the pearls as i could muster, but i couldn't do the milk. the kids had all brought their own cups and chopsticks though like she asked. it was pretty cute.

quiet day. it got chilly and misty. if you remember that we're on an island and it's just coastal weather, it makes the mist kind of nice.

crisis averted

so somehow i downloaded a virus onto my computer called 'xp police antivirus', ironically. it was causing my antivirus thing to pop up every 20 seconds and was annoying the living daylights out of me and kept taking me to this page that wanted me to pay $40 for antiviral software.. so i started searching on forums and found out that it was a virus, but when i went to try to fix it, i kept hitting all of these snags. it wouldn't let me open my task manager (which would have let me end the program) with key commands, or in my 'run..' thing.. so in the last hour i learned a whole lot about my registries and manually located and disabled the code that wasn't letting me get to my task manager and killed the virus.
it's funny because i've been reading digital fortress which is all about computer viruses and i was literally just thinking today about how long it had been since i had had anything wrong with my computer. i'm glad that i'm just barely computer savvy enough to have navigated the fix.
i bought groceries this week for the first time in months and had a deliciousss tomato, cucumber and cream cheese sandwich for brunch. god bless cream cheese. and i spent a good chunk of the afternoon in the coffee shop reading. it was a pretty slow sunday. jerry and i went to debbie's for dinner and i killed 3 mosquitoes in my room. that sums up the day. time for bed.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

build me up, buttercup

i'm usually happy it's valentines day because it means i don't have to decide what to wear that day. something pink or red, done (hot pink today). i haven't been single on valentine's in a loooong time, but it was a really really sweet day all around.
daisy.. uh oh, now i can't remember if it was daisy or dora. i think daisy.. bought me chocolate! i showed them to mr. kuo and he said 'for me?' and i said okayyyy, so we ate half of them at lunch. i had passionfruit, zao zhi and chocolate for lunch. i brought augusta her valentine when she was teaching my class on her day, and she gave me this wand thing with a chocolate on top and my whole class started chanting 'LESBIAN, LESBIAN'. we just sneered at them. junior high really is another planet.
lesley's mom sent her these pixie stick valentines which we tag teamed. i wrote the names and she assembled them.
last night jerry presented me with my valentine. it's a poster with all kinds of little inside jokes. above is a chinese book full of 'de' which is a word with a million uses in chinese. and a lunch box from japanese place.
the sweetest note i've ever received from anyone i wasn't dating. boys really have their moments. dena and i had a long discussion tonight about how much more we value anything that obviously took some thought vs expensive, thoughtless presents. alex took us to see a bazillion temples in tainan and kaohsiung.
classes were cute today. i gave all of my little kids these cute conversation heart stickers. i played so many rounds of thumbs wars. one girl, sandy, has teeny tiny little thumbs and it's hard for me to play with her. i always get sandy and sammy mixed up. sandy has glasses but she looks just like sammy and their names are so similar.
this is danbing and a $2000NT bill. the danbing is my favorite thing.
so alex got back from cambodia tonight. he was hilarious. you could hear him in the living room or his room or the bath room as he rediscovered civilization. 'hot water! clothes! milk! subber! human interaction!' he came back with really amazing pictures and some pretty funny stories. apparently he was sick as a dog for a couple of days. it didn't sound pleasant at all. lesson: don't eat questionable shellfish in foreign countries.
tonight i was brainstorming what i could do for jerry as a reply to the poster, and lesley suggested a scavenger hunt. it was a stroke of genius. i sent him to the twister box, a pizza box, some pizza throw up outside, and the coffee shop. i think he liked it.

tonight everyone watched some bad ben stiller movie, and a show about a military boot camp for naughty chinese children, and something about shou lin temple. lesley made a cake but we only had this deep glass dish so it turned out more like cake loaf. tasted yummy though. i lost count of how many pixie sticks i've eaten. time for bed.