i hear in my heart, all of these words

i woke up at 10:11 to be out the door at 10:15 to go to chinese this morning. thank goodness today wasn't an ugly day. yesterday i woke up and must have changed outfits 5 times in the morning and then i changed twice throughout the rest of the day. it was just one of those days when you don't feel like anything looks good. but today jerry and i made it to bobo right on time.

we're learning directions now.. quick lesson?
qian mian (chee-en mee-yen)- front ... qian tian is the day before yesterday
hou mian (ho mee yen)- back ... hou tian is the day after tomorrow
pang bian- side, beside
xia mian (sheeah mee yen)- under, below ... xia lou is downstairs
shang mian- over, above ... shang lou is upstairs
wai mian (why mee yen)- outside
.. now i can't remember inside.. li mian!
my friend william in austin and i are valentines this year and i bought him a bunch of taiwanese stuff and mailed it today. i picked out some bulk candy at carrefour but there was no one there to weigh it.. so i went to the bread section because it was close by and had a heck of a time trying to tell the lady what i wanted. finally, a taiwanese woman with a white husband walked by and she translated for us. 10 minutes later i bumped into the husband in the produce section and he said he'd been in taiwan for 3 years and he doesn't know any chinese. i told him he should learn, it's easier than he would imagine.

wednesday i don't have class until 7 so i made valentines for all of my coteachers out of a cut up bag from the bookstore because it was a pretty shade of green inside and really bright construction paper.
and i'm excited because i bought new crayola markers for my calendar. sharpies are usually fine but they were bleeding through the paper on this year's calendar, so january was in ballpoint pen.. boringg. it's also hard to write with on a vertical surface.
february is much better.
so tonight when i showed up at mr. kuo's it was just he and mrs. chan and he apologized to me for mr. wang and mr. whatever's beyond-drunkenness yesterday. i told him it wasn't his fault and not to worry about it.
then we had a hilarious discussion about baseball vs football and which is more interesting and why. he remembered to use yin wei and suo yi, the new sentence construction i learned, so i made some sentences for mrs. chan. yin wei wo shi huan bai fan, suo yi wo chi bai fan. which is 'because i like white rice, so i eat white rice' and she laughed. i always tell them i'm very smart (really because it's funny and i just think chong ming is fun to say) and tonight mr. kuo wanted to know what it was in english. so now he knows 'smart'.
i have a theory that september (my month) is usually the ugliest on in the calendar, but i think this particular september is really pretty. the calendar is kind of cool, it's printed on recycled paper with soy ink and they give you all of these little energy saving tips in those boxes. half price books.