you'll be wed in a dilly dilly dress

i've listened to the following artists/CDs at least 10 times each in the last 2 weeks.
oren lavie/the opposite side of the sea
andrew bird/armchair apochrypha
eisley/room noises
kate havnevik/melankton
loveeee them.

almost as much as i love my jr high class. they may be 13/14/15 but they seem just like my friends. the teacher moved their chairs around so they wouldn't be as apt to talk.. that didn't reaaaally work. the worst part is that i used to have their names down based on location and now i have to start over again! this week i picked up willie, amy, robbie, jim and amy. i keep forgetting my favorite girl's name. she sits right up front now though, so it won't be too long.

they asked interesting things over the break. amy 2 wanted to know if they think hair color 'is more important' in america. and they wanted to know how i order the tea i bring to class.. do i point? do i look at the english menu? no. chinese! [wo xiang yao yi zhong bei bing de lu cha. yi dian dian tang]. my favorite girl observed that i always get green tea.

today was a review day so we did some little plays and then the second half was a pub quiz with facts we've learned the last 2 weeks. it was hard but lots of fun. i love that they all say hi and goodbye to me and they say 'megan' a lot which is so much better than 'teacher, teacher!'. i feel like i was just their age, it's weird that i'm 10 years older.

tonight we had a demo in my second class so i didn't get to hang out with the kuos but i did go say hi and they had food on the table waiting for me, so i took it to go and ate it quickly before my second class. they take good care of me, i'm really lucky to have them in my circle here.

the demo went so well. a few things went wrong (like asking them to spell umbrella. duh! they can't even spell 'dogs') but the whole thing showed how much fun we have in class and i was wearing my power teacher shoes so i felt like i was representing myself well.

then when we got out, it was raining cats and dogs but luckily i remembered to bring a change of shoes so i wouldn't ruin my pretty shoes/wouldn't have to wear them for all 4 hours that night and i had my rain pants. when you're properly equipped, it's actually kind of fun to drive in the rain. crazy trying to keep your balance while you wipe your visor with your left and and steer/accelerate with your right hand.

stopped at the thai place to pick up panang curry on the way home and i was drenched because it's at the halfway point. last time they charged me $150 and this time it was $130, so we're making progress.

2 things to think about:
free rice added categories to their website. now you can do the traditional vocab or math, periodic table, a bunch of foreign languages (unfortunately no zhongwen), and my favorite, countries on a map. good practice for the pub quiz. i'm at 2,730 grains today. lots of free time..

Let us assume you met a rudimentary magician. Let us assume he can do five simple tricks--he can pull a rabbit out of his hat, he can make a coin disappear, he can turn the ace of spades into the Joker card, and two others in a similar vein. These are his only tricks and he can't learn any more; he can only do these five. HOWEVER, it turns out he's doing these five tricks with real magic. It's not an illusion; he can actually conjure the bunny out of the ether and he can move the coin through space. He's legitimately magical, but extremely limited in scope and influence. Would this person be more impressive than Albert Einstein?