a pretty flower in a vase

the weather today was so beautiful it just makes you feel like nothing could be wrong. jerry and i learned a bunch of new words in chinese that i actually care about. our new book is reaaaally cool. it has lots of cool illustrations.
little lesson?
yenjing with high pitch for both words - eyes
yenjing with forceful 'jing' - glasses
yin xing yenjing - contacts (yin xing is invisible)
yenying - eye shadow
jiemao - eye lash
jiemaogao- mascara (gao means tall)
zhentou - pillow
beizi - comforter.. another set of tones with the same words means 'cup'

so i'm excited. our new book is all vocab so we should be on fire with our chinese pretty soon.
yuum whole duck. i haven't tried that yet but i want to.

yahoo we just got a new girl in the dorm right now. her name is tess and she's blonde! that's all i have right now. steve is touring her around. we all have a little contest to see who will be the first to meet the new people. i've only been first to meet one person although now i can't remember who it was.. martyn just peeked in my dorm to whisper that we got a new girl :P
i brought my new book to mr. kuo and we did some words. he was pretty funny tonight. i think he was happy to help me pronounce stuff correctly. when it got close to class time, mrs. chan came up to me and said 'hello!' and pointed at the clock. part of me is learning chinese just so i can have more in depth conversations with her. it kills me that i chat up a storm with her husband and i don't know her at all. she just makes me tons and tons of food.

so good day. i just feel really optimistic and good today like everything will work out. i spent a looong time looking at blogs tonight full of creative people my age who are making interesting things and doing fun things. i think we have a lot going for us since we grew up with the internet. it can be such a good resource.

have you heard of Coraline? maybe i'm the only one who hasn't. it was made by the same people who did nightmare before christmas and it looks awesome. hard to believe it's all stop motion + animation. so many tiny little components.