look what you're doin

Taiwanese people have given me so much faith in people as a global population. i can't believe how much people here have given me and taught me and done for me without even thinking about it. it's been amazing to me that all you have to do is approach people with a smile and maybe a little bit of broken chinese and they'll go out of their way to do whatever they can for you.
yumm japanese food. i stopped by after class tonight and the chef tried pretty hard to think up something i could eat since i don't care for raw fish. he told me it was very difficult. he gave me smoked salmon, cooked salmon, salad, fish roe, fried pork and miso soup. it was delicious.
they asked me if jerry was my boyfriend. HA!
these are all pictures i could take from where i'm sitting in my bed. i was too cold and lazy to take my camera with me to guei shan tonight. maybe friday.
someone noticed that we were going to get a new person because there was a nametag, 'jon', on one of the rooms downstairs. so hippie josh started giving me crap about whether or not i was going to be really excited if jon cut his hair regularly, shaved and showered daily. josh regularly calls me a cheerleader though to get me back for making fun of his dread locks.
anyway, i'm happy to be labeled a clean cut guy enthusiast.
(Three Cups of Tea is really great. it's about a mountain climber who ends up building a bunch fo schools for rural pakistani kids who were previously studying 3 days a week outside and writing in the dirt. it's circulating among the 20something readers right now on facebook and in blogland.)

anyway jon did show up tonight and danille came down to let me know. he's from oregon and looks like an all-american guy. i only chatted for 5 min to say hi, so we'll see. at the very least, he's adding to the americans' numbers. we were almost outnumbered by the canadians for a minute.
alex guppy in his literal long underwear. i don't think anyone deserves to see the front angle shot of that. especially not either of our moms.
speaking of moms.

dear steve's mom,
in the future, you need to at least give me a heads up if you're going to let steve know that i want to marry him.
megan

oh ruby blue

just got off skype with gram. she and spanky sent me a bunch of soup mixes and date nut bars and peanut brittle! can't wait. i have the best family. even if they never sent anything, we just love the heck out of each other.
well today was more fun than i had prepared for. i thought i was going to do some laundry, maybe cook something, hang out. i did end up doing a load of laundry in the morning and then i went to steve, josh and mike's apartment to play with jaime and joyce. they were originally going to go over with bobo to check out the apartment, but bobo's mom got in a car accident (i think she's ok) so just jack and the kids came.
anyway we ended up playing for 2 hours in this awesome ball pit that they have in their apartment building. it had a plastic jungle gym and the slide dumped you out into the ball pit. so jaime and steve manned the tower and we barraged them with balls and they attacked from the high ground. my arms were so sore by the end of it. it takes a lot of energy to throw a flimsy plastic ball hard enough to reach the tower.
(noe in his new[old] hat. martyn gave it to him. and his new scarf that we picked out in guei shan on friday.)
and we buried ourselves a million times. it was a whole lot of fun. it was interesting to see how everyone interacted with jaime and joyce. we basically turned into a bunch of 8 year olds. the fun eventually ended when the security guard busted us for throwing balls all over the place. stick in the mud.
tonight steve, josh, justin, noe, katie and i went bowling. i was super excited because they just passed a no smoking ban in taiwan, so you can't smoke in bowling alleys (or any enclosed space with more than 3 or more people) anymore. smelling like smoke for 3 days is enough to keep me away from the bowling alley, so i'm glad that's not an obstacle anymore.
the first game, i ended up with a 138 in second place after steve. steve is a good bowling buddy. he always scores high and he's good at motivating the team. i told noe on the walk home that i would totally marry steve if we had the sparkle. he's just a solid, good guy.
this evening alex guppy and i had a funny discussion about engagement rings. i was looking at a picture my friend hanh posted on facebook of her new engagement ring and he came down to get a worthers or something and we got talking about rings.
i don't know what's going on with my face in that picture... anyway alex thought 2 months salary was outrageous, and we checked out some engagement ring websites to price them. he said he didn't even want to buy his future fiance a ring at all.
my argument was that it's the only thing that a woman has for her entire liiife that she wears/looks at every single day and it's an investment. but who knows. you can't explain these things to guys. alex didn't even know that you wear the engagement ring after the wedding.
time for bed!

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.

there are no guarantees in life

i've gone blog crazy the last few days and i decided i'm in need of..

1. pictures
i linked off of jesse's blog to the design-crisis blog all about interior design and other random, sort of design related things.
the writers write like they talk and add lots and lots of pictures. love it and the pictures. (the above photo is from an entry on garland of all kinds).

2. links
the best thing about a blog is that you have the whole internet at your disposal.
speaking of links, here are some i've added recently to my list on the side that you should check out if you find yourself with extra time.
design crisis, mentioned above
tastespotting, delicious recipes with beautiful photos updated by bazillions of people all the time (thanks katherine)
details of the mundane, jesse linked to it on her blog and it's well written and entertaining. i can't stop reading.
if it's hip, it's here, i was hooked when i saw this entry on painted money (though, to tell you the truth, i'm not crazy about the rest of it. we'll see how it goes)3. taiwanese stuff
the whole point of my blog is.. well there are a few points. i want to remember what i did here. i want the people i care about (and random people's moms, i suppose) to know what i'm up to and what it's like to live and teach english in asia. when i went home, i realized how few pictures i have of things i see every day and what it's actually like to live here.
things like beef noodles. it's a taiwanese specialty (and it never looks like it does in that picture. those are heavily styled.)
so i'll try to add more of those things. we'll see how it goes.

i was so happy to see my 'baby' class tonight. they aren't really babies at all, but they're pretty young. when i got there, they formed this glob around me and insisted that i sing liang zhi lao hou which i guess i sang last time i saw them. so we all sang it together. it felt like taiwanese sound of music.

they had changed to a bigger kid book while i was gone, so they were proud to show me what they could do now.
paul was adorable as always. he sits next to me and he says 'are you crazy?' 'nooooo!' and i'll joke with him about things and he just says 'teacherr!' in this pleading tone with a giant grin on his face. he might be my favorite of all. what is it about kids who are physically smaller than the other ones? they always seem much cuter. paul is the little tiny one.

we got a cold snap overnight and it was so cold in my room this morning that every time i stuck my toes on the frozen tile, i just got back in bed and ended up sleeping until 1! when i looked at my watch, i thought maybe i had accidentally added a few hours to the time when i was trying to turn the alarm off.

i bought some white rabbit fur ear muffs and they are sooo warmmm. i felt bad that they were real fur, but i was repeating 'thank you bunnies' in my head the whole way home.

i also bought this coat because i followed becca's love it, leave it, if you're still thinking about it in 2 weeks, buy it rule. sort of. in taiwan, it's 2 hours because you never know if you'll see the same street vendor in the same place twice.
it's tan. i'm not sure how easy that is to tell in this picture. it looks sort of pinky.
it reminded me a lot of a coat i saw on Bill Cunningham's On the Street about when it got cold in New York City one weekend. he does the coolest audio slideshows for the NYT. his voice reminds me of Santa.

be mine, be mine

my nearly-2am-musings.

1. whyyy oh why?

2. the squat toilet in the bathroom latches from the inside like a normal public bathroom. the problem is that since youre squatting, you need to brace yourself against something.. frequently the door. but if you didn't secure the latch really well, the door flies open and you fly forward with it. it's one of the perils of living in taiwan i guess.

3. megan's life lesson of the day: if it doesn't matter to you and it does matter to someone else, let them win.
the other day i bought jerry a dan bing because i knew we were going to be late to chinese and i ordered it with cheese.. but when i gave it to him, he rejected it because it didn't have ham. it was a silly thing but it really kind of hurt my feelings.

when someone does something nice for someone, no matter how small, i think it's the recipients duty to just be appreciative and not offer any kind of criticism. how often do other people do anything for you anyway, just to be nice? making them feel defeated will only discourage them from thinking of you in the future.

maybe it hits home for be because my 'new years resolution' of sorts (even though i think resolutions are so tacky really) is to be more thoughtful. it doesn't really come naturally to me, so i need constant praise and certainly not refusal.
although i guess at some point there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.. like chicken noodle soup and parmesan goldfish ;)

oh, 4. josh's "best friend" katie arrived last night. she's staying in the dorm and (in spite of being a close friend of josh's) seems very very normal. she was a graphic designer before she came here, and i think we'll have a lot in common. i'm excited. and i do enjoy josh in small doses. we just have different standards of cleanliness.

build your world around her

once i woke up today, i didn't really stop moving until i got home. i like busy days a lot.
this morning jerry and i went to chinese but we just learned idioms and random words. we learned how to say 'his head is in the clouds' and 'take a hike' but i can't remember. i think take a hike is zou kai.
ohmygoodness and we had a hilarious discussion about wallets and circumcisions. wallet is .. now i can't remember which is which, which is what i was afraid of! well one is pi bao and one is bao pi. needless to say, i won't be throwing either of those words around.

it was my last time with my outside class today, unless i get them in the spring again. that class is funny because i feel like i'm their age, so it's weird for me to be the teacher. today i was waiting for class to start, blowing bubbles with bubble gum a kid gave me yesterday, and i looked up and a bunch of students were looking at me and commenting on how i was acting like a kid.

2 side notes there.
1. it's weird how even though i clearly remember being in their place and thinking about how lame some of the activities we did in jr. high were, as the teacher now, it's really hard to think of things that the students will really enjoy and will cover what i need to cover.
2. i was trying to teach jaime how to blow a bubble with bubble gum this weekend but she only had 1 piece so i couldn't show her, so bubbles have been on my mind. and yesterday, out of nowhere, a kid gave me a piece of bubble gum. which hasn't happened in 6 months. it was the cosmos.
when i asked my coteacher, emily, what she wanted from america, she said 'something emily-ish' ..so i ended up with this austin ring. i gave it to her and she didn't open it in front of me, according to taiwanese custom.. but then she asked me during class what Austin was. so now i'm a teeny bit bummed that i gave her something that meant so much to me that doesn't mean anything to her. i'll have to show her where i live on the ring map.

i had a new class tonight for the first time. theyre like 7 and 8 year olds. when i walked in, they all gave me the look of shock and horror that comes with getting a new teacher. then they all crowded around me to look at my eyes. i think terri has been their only other foreign teacher and she has brown eyes, so maybe i'm their first with lan se de yenjing.

they were pretty good. one girl can only whisper in english though i heard her yelling in chinese. and one kid who sits in the front, frank, kept evilly winking at me. he kept speaking to me in chinese but luckily i understood everything he said and could answer in english. it was magical.
and there's this tiny tiny kid named charlie. he is so cute. i'll get a picture at our demo in a few weeks.

just look at where we are

rain pantsss! they are so wonderful. they block the wind and rain because theyre basically windbreaker pants. i love them though. i still need something to protect my shoes. rain boots or these stupid rain booties, i'm not sure yet.
i found some pictures of a friend of a friend of a friend's wedding picture outfits on facebook and i thought it was worth posting because it's beyond anything i can describe. i wish i had the actual pictures. this is just her goofing off in the dressing room. but look at how over the top the styling is. none of them are her real wedding dress, either.
let's talk life lessons from taiwan that apply globally.
1. you aren't going to have the same opinions on everything as everyone else, which is fine. but your ideas arent the best and you shouldn't try to discount other people's ideas. living with more than 10 people reaaallly is a lesson in accepting viewpoints of all kinds. it can make you insane to listen to people until you just let go and let them believe what they will.
being here has been a lesson in biting my tongue, which is pretty hard for me to do. i fail more than i succeed at that, but i think i'm making progress. i guess we all believe what we believe for a reason.
time to mingle before bed.
oh i saw my kindy girls class tonight and every single one of them was wearing pink! i walk past their room when i go to my class, so i peeked in and they all screamed TEACHER MEGANN and ran up to me. they are so cute. and ian came up to me with his cheeks puffed out so i could squish them. i do love those babies.