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.