if you love the ground beneath you

the dorm is falling apart because we all have this sore throat, cold, chills combo in varying stages. i finished the antibiotics i got from the hospital last saturday and i don't feel any better at all, so today i went to the doctor bobo goes to. the receptionist was very grouchy and spoke very fast chinese, but the doctor was ok.

his english was an interesting mix of doctor speak and then completely unintelligible mumbling that went back and forth in english and chinese.
megan: here's the medicine i got from min sheng hospital. i took all of the antibiotics but they didn't do anything
doctor: your ears are not infected. throat ... something something something .. bacterial ... something something in chinese .. viral .. something
me: oh, so maybe i just have to wait for it to clear up on its own?
him: something something ... medicine

anyway $140NT ($4 US) later, i have 4 new pills to take
so now i'm on.. augmentin which is just amoxycillin, ponstan which is an anti-inflammatory and two mystery drugs that are listed as "scanal" which i can't find online anywhere and "aluzaine" is yellow with *standard* on it (stars included) and apparently manufactured in taiwan. anyway whatever they are, they've been working like a charm and i'm pain free for the first time in a week!
also in the category of communication confusion.. i used to go to this little mom & pop tea shop in guei shan, but it's been closed for 2 weeks so chris and i suspect that it's gone. now i've been buying tea from the coffee shop for lack of a better option. i tried to explain it to the coffee shop ladies today in chinese.
me: my favorite tea shop disappeared
them: what disappeared?
me: a tea shop.. you know? coffee shop is 'cafe dian' but i mean 'cha dian'.. tea shop
them: we don't understand

so i get back to school and ask my coteacher, carol, how you say tea shop and if it isn't just 'coffee shop' with 'tea' instead of 'coffee'. she told me that what i was saying (cha dian) really meant 'a place where old men go to have sex with young girls'.
ooohmygod can you even imagine?! i wonder what the coffee shop women thought i was trying to say. who would have thought that 'tea shop' in chinese is really 'bubble tea black tea shop.'
so overall it was a confusing, multilingual day but everything turned out fine.

if you speak english and chinese you can appreciate meiwentees.com. they donate 100% of their proceeds to the jet li one foundation which is for disaster relief in china.
this shirt says mei you which means 'don't have' but it's pronounced 'mayo'. cleverrr.