give it to someone special

it is so hot in taiwan. uncomfortably hot. it's like when you have a sunburn and you feel heat radiating from your skin. only one more month though!

i'm just floating on a cloud now. a month seems like such a short time, so i'm just enjoying the everyday things. this afternoon i went over to bobo's for chinese and then stayed to play with the girls. jaime was singing 'last christmas' and joyce would sing, but all she knew was 'last christmas, i gave you my heart.. blah blah blah dah dah .. SPECIAL'. she sung it at the top of her lungs in the car with her own madeup words at least 6 times on the way to pick up lunch. and she was extra lovey dovey and wanted to be picked up every 2 seconds and taiwanese people on the street were giving us the funniest looks.

i was thrilled to see my babies tonight and they're two of my favorites so they were equally excited to see me. they wanted to know all about thailand and some of them got hair cuts that they wanted to show me, and we just got back into our groove. it was nice. my little boys let me hug them without even really pretending to run away and scott just came and leaned against me while we were reading without me even doing anything. working with kids really is so much fun on the good days.

tea lady, stamp man, grandpa (i haven't mentioned it in months and months, but there's this little corner store right across from the school and we call it grandma's because this old woman is always behind the counter, but in the morning, it's her husband with parkinsons who continually hits himself with a long rod) and the cleaning lady all said long time no see to me today, so it was sweet that they noticed that i was gone and came back.

tonight as i was walking back from dinner and ice cream with tess and katie, i saw alex inside the coffee shop, so i went to say hi to him.
alex: welcome back, did you have fun on your vacation?
me: yeah, i had a lot of fun
fanny: how strange that the foreigners are speaking chinese to each other

do it faster, make it better

today jerry and i went swimming with jaime and joyce in the afternoon. that was an awesome way to spend a sunday afternoon. we went to steve and josh and mike's pool which is in the basement but there's a window near the ceiling so it just feels really cozy and cool like you're swimming in a cave or something.
[all of these pictures are from yesterday when amanda, mr. kuo's daughter, gave me a box of cheesecake bars. she was eating one earlier this week and i asked if she would get me some and i'd pay her back. they are the light of my life right now. so delicious.]
anyway the pool experience was joyce screaming 'MEGANNNN, COME HERE' or 'MEGANN, MY BALL!' or 'MEGAN, YOU SEE!' i love her. she is so much fun. she has those little arms floaties and she can only kind of swim so most of the time she just latches on to you and points to where she wants to go.
oh! the best part of the day/my life was today when i was in the bathroom of the pool after having showered and this woman walks in and i told her that the shower on the far end didn't have working hot water but that i was finished with this shower so she could use it. she asked about the bathing suits on the rack and i said they were my friends but that it was ok, they'd get them when she was done.
all in chinese! and she understood me and i understood her and i knew how to say every word and it was like we were just talking like normal people. it was awesome.
once i got home i did two loads of laundry and miraculously had 8 10NT pieces to stick in the drier. my belt broke :( the metal clasp must have been knocking around too much in the drier and it just broke in half.
then this evening i spent an hour at the coffee shop reading and sipping on an iced caramel hot chocolate that was to dieee for. it might be my new favorite thing there. although really, i love everything they have. and the dog spent some time at my feet because i used jeff's scratch-under-the-collar technique to make a lasting friendship.
i'll leave you with mom's [ok, fannie farmer's] crepe recipe. i'm going to make them later this week. i like to fill them with butter and whipped cream. yuuumm! or applesauce. or strawberries.

p.s. i'm continually adding and subtracting from the blog list at the side so if you ever see one you like, you should bookmark it because it may or may not always be there. i just added designer's brew which will complete the circle. it seems that all of my favorite design bloggers are friends so they're always commenting on each other's stuff. it looks really goooddd, i'm excited to check it out tomorrow.
other recent additions are tongue in cheek (which may or may not be sticking around) written by a woman who lives in paris and posts random things, and homesick texan written by a woman in new york city.. it has recipes and little stories. she doesn't update often enough for my taste, but it's good when it's updated.

the start of something new

i'm proud to say i've never been hung over before.. until this morning. man. i felt pretty awful. i didn't get to bed until late last night and then i woke up and just felt dizzy and awful for the first 6 hours or so of my day.
in the afternoon i headed to latini's but it was so busy and loud in there that i ordered soup and a panini and had them bring it over to me at the coffee shop, where it was mellow and wonderful and dark. today i found out what the woman's name is who works there in the early afternoons; minami. that's going to be hard to remember. it's like miami with an n..?
i ordered tea with grapefruit, orange and honey in it. she doublechecked with me to make sure i wanted it iced. today was super rainy but not cold out. the taiwanese have a weird thing about only drinking hot things in the winter. i always get weird reactions when i asked for iced coffee or iced tea when it's cold out.
then this afternoon bobo's family went to visit jerry and we all walked over to josh, steve and mike's apartment down the street to play in their awesome ball pit. last time we went, we played for a good hour or so before we got busted. this time, the janitor was on us in about 10 minutes. apparently there's some issue with us being too heavy and he's afraid we'll crush all of the balls.

it was fun while it lasted though. there were two little boys in there with us, allen and jonathan. i was speaking to jonathan, who was probably 4 or 5, in chinese and he would just come up to me speaking tons and tons of chinese in his squeaky little voice and i couldn't understand 75% of it. i did know hao wan ma? 'isn't this fun?'

drove home in the pouring rain. i had left my helmet upside down so it was full of a couple inches of water. whoops! and i hadn't brought my rain pants since it didn't really feel like rain when i left.. so my jeans were soaking wet by the time i got home.

then this evening martyn, steve, mike, josh and i went to TGIF for martyn's last dinner. i'm going to miss martyn a lot. he's like our dad in a lot of ways. he's a good cook, he always has tips about how to drive safely on the scooter and conflict avoidance. he's always level headed and positive.
(that's jaime's classic confused face. she's very expressive.) and it's lesley's last night. she leaves tomorrow afternoon. i feel like we were just starting to become friends. but we'll have gchat and email. who's going to bake stuff with me now and be my puffy coat buddy and snark about people?
but we already have 2 new name tags. krissy, as i mentioned (and misspelled) last night, and then today someone found 'jeremy' next to jon's door. it's always changing around here! we'll see how it goes.

more pictures of today and last night can be found right here

not pretending

the biggest news today was the bone chilling cold air that came in overnight. yesterday was cold, but today is that crisp winter air that goes up your sleeves and stays in your hair long after you've gone inside.
..not like being inside helps here. it was THIRTEEN DEGREES IN MY ROOM TODAY. actually, it's in C so it's not as bad as it sounds.. it's 55 F. that's pretty cold for a bedroom though. right now i'm at a balmy 17.
this is where it felt like the water in the sink was coming from when i washed my face this evening:
i subbed 2 classes tonight and it was a school i had never been to called wu ling. they just built it so it's all tiled and mosaic-ed and pretty, but there are only a few classes so it feels reaaally cold and kind of bordering on creepily empty.
they have these awesome glass whiteboards. that was the highlight of the 4 hours i spent there. it's like writing on a freshly cleaned ice skating rink. it screwed up my depth of field though. more than once, i thought i would touch the board sooner than i did and found myself grasping for it.

i went to get my scooter keys out of my purse after class and they weren't there. panic set in as i realized i must have left them in my scooter. so i went out to look and was horrified to discover that it really wasn't where i left it. luckily, as i turned to go back in to the school and freak out, i saw it had just been moved a little closer to the school and they had put my keys in the little pocket in the front so they weren't as obvious. lesson learned though.

i left my heater on for 20 minutes or so tonight and it was so toasty. it warmed up my room a whole 2 degrees in that time and when i got out from under my blankets, it actually felt a little bit warm in here.
if you closed your eyes, you'd think you were sitting in front of a fire place.
p.s. went to drop off the napkins i bought for the coffee shop at crate and barrel tonight. they put a pretty paper napkin between the cup and saucer, so i thought these red and green ones with holiday-themed english words would be cute. fanny (from the coffee shop) wasn't there, so i went to say hi to nikki at the spa and dan and linda from latini's andd fanny were all there just chatting. i had the necklace i bought for linda in my bag just incase that happened. i think she liked it. she's not very fussy, but it was a pretty simple double-stranded "black pearl" necklace that my friend erin made. so yay for dropping off presents and giving back to people who have given me so much.

tsongyoubing

let's see. a couple of things.
-got up early this morning to go to yoga, but when i got there, no one was there. the door was locked and no one was home.. soo i decided to be semi-productive and hit the breakfast stand and go to the bank before my outside class. i'm $1200US richer which makes me feel good.
yumm danbing in the morning. it's like an unsweetened crepe with egg on one side and then they douse it with garlicy, syrupy soy sauce.

went to my outside class this afternoon and taught a lesson on money. i really enjoy those kids. they speak minimal chinese, are always polite, and say hello, goodbye and thank you without prompting.
after my regular class tonight i went to read for a bit at the coffee shop. i told bruce, the guy from the hospital, i'd be at the coffee shop from 9 to 10 but then i got a text from him around 930 asking where i was. i said at the coffee shop with the dog.. turns out he was at another coffee shop with a dog :P so he met up with me and we chatted for an hour or so. it was a breath of fresh air to talk to someone new and i feel better about staying here if i can make more friends.

it's easy being green

this evening as i was reading under the tuscan sun at peace coffee, next door to the spa and latini's, i was pretty inspired by the author giving advice to a woman about taking a leap and doing what you really want to do. she said something to the effect that no matter how many obstacles you have to deal with, in the end, the joy you get from living the way you really want to makes all of it worth it.

i've always cared about and been interested in environmental conservation and protection and i've spent the better part of today researching environmental grad programs. in one of the books i'm reading, a short history of nearly everything, bill bryson writes a lot about how different species are going extinct all the time and how the world is becoming less and less sustainable. the global community definitely seems interested in what it can do to reverse some of the effects humans have had on the planet. and so am i.

for now though, i'm thinking about how i can make the most of being in taiwan. this weekend i'm going to try to find a new scooter, next week i'm going to yoga down the street since i was too ill to go this week, and i'm going to hit the chinese harder from here on out. it's kind of exciting thinking about coming back because nowww i can bring back cool things from taiwan instead of leaving everything i don't have room for here.
bobo requested that i bring underwear with cartoons on it and multicolored hair bows for the girls when i come back. it's funny how they have every plastic hair thingy in the world here, but she wants grosgrain bows that are apparently only in america.

this is what dreams are made of

today was unreal. i taught my kindys this morning with almost no voice, but i made it through. the interesting part of the day was once i got home and attempted to make alex's mom's chocolate chip pumpkin cookies.
i made a trip to this baking store dena told me about on dayou road. i passed right by it the first time, called dena and got better directions, and found it. i missed it the first time because i had been picturing a little quaint store, when in reality, it was the size of the produce section of HEB. there were aisles and aisles of baking things and obscure ingredients. i bought molasses, brown sugar and ladyfingers, all for various projects.

then i went to carrefour to buy milk, ice cream, and butter. i figured that people around the dorm always have eggs, and i knew we had vanilla in the fridge. so i get home, i've creamed the butter and sugar, and i get an egg out of the fridge. but when i went to crack it, it was hard boiled. dena had boiled allll of her eggs for halloween games. aaand, my vanilla extract had been thrown out with the great fridge clean out of 2008. so i walked over to latini's to borrow an egg and vanilla. but i couldn't explain 'vanilla extract'. dan tried to give me a vanilla bean and vanilla syrup, but not extract. so i went to the coffee shop next door, but also had no luck. the woman from the coffee shop ended up walking with me to latini's, where after a few more minutes of pantomime, we finally figured it out.
then, i get back, mix in the egg and vanilla, steal some oatmeal from dena, add the flour (first i picked up the unlabeled bag of cornstarch, but noticed it was oddly bright white and put it down) and other dry stuff, but the can opener wasn't working so i couldn't get into the pumpkin. josh tried to stab it with this other can contraption, and jerry thought about stabbing it with a knife, but nothing worked. so i trekked back to the coffee shop, pumpkin in hand, and the coffee shop woman opened it for me.
at this point, i'm super sweaty from mixing everything in front of the preheating oven in a room without air conditioning, and from walking back and forth between the dorm and latini's twice.

anyway, the final news is that the cookies turned out very well and the dorm is raving about them. aside from the comedy show of making them, the cookies themselves have nothing wrong with them. they're super tasty and pretty healthy. i took a batch to latini's, the spa, and the coffee shop.
the boys went to some pub in nan kan tonight, but my throat is sore from screaming for 4 days and smoke would just bug it, so i stayed home and watched tv and chatted with everyone else for most of the night.
UT plays tech in the morning, 8 am my time! time for bed.