we've got the vision, now let's have some fun

these pictures all have really weird lighting. i need to spend some time with my camera manual to try to figure out when to use 'white fluorescent' and 'warm/cool fluorescent' and blahblahhh. they're all random things around the dorm for lack of anything better tonight.
gram and spanky sent me this comic about the year of the ox.

i was in a lovely mood and then i went outside to put my stuff from the washer into the dryer and i got all smoke-ifyed on the balcony where all of the smokers congregate and now my newly washed hair smells faintly like smoke =\
this is called the 'yellow book' but we also have a red book just like it that's a level behind it. i accidentally left mine on a desk last week and one of my kids put my book in their bag so i didn't have my book all week and i felt like i lost some of my powers. it has all of the vocab words underlined and the QA's in it, so without it, i was a little lost. i got it back tonight though, whew.
toilet paper list. we were completely out earlier this week and we almost reached emergency status.
why do 'no picture' signs make you want to take pictures? this is the door to the urinal in the community bath. no girls allowed. apparently they have lots of targets painted in the bottom of urinals in asia because people have problems aiming. the guys claim that this isn't a common practice in north america.
lesley's moldy coffee press. there's lots of mold in our kitchen so i choose not to cook. oh! hmm this will be easier in conversation format.
justin's dad (who's in town visiting along with justin's brother, and he's one of the founders of 'veg michigan'.. he's the former fruitiarian who only eats stuff that naturally dies) was sitting in the living room with josh, another vegetarian, and katie, also a vegetarian.
justin's dad: how long have you been a vegetarian, josh?
josh: well my mom's a home ec. teacher, so she cooks meat, but she taught us about loving animals from a young age
josh: have you tried [some brand of tofu]?
justin's dad: yeah it's delicious
katie: i love vegetables (or something)
::megan cooking bacon in the kitchen for her [delicious] BLT::
josh: ..are you cooking bacon?
justin's dad: oh, sorry
megan: MEEEEEEEEAT! .. ok, i didn't say it, but i was thinking it. i actually said something along the lines of 'i'm from texas and it's illegal to be a vegetarian'.
this is a liter of soy sauce.
jerry has a problem with my camera. alex has the same one and he calls us 'ansel'. he thinks it's silly because it's so big that you don't want to take it anywhere.. even though it (usually) takes lovely pictures.

time to get my stuff out of the dryer (hooray for clean sheets) and mingle before early bed. happy friday the 13th.

no-ayyyyy

well almost everyone in the dorm came out for noe's goodbye bowling party and we had a really good time. it really seems like yesterday that i was homesick and wishing for some more texas in my life when noe showed up at the dorm with his texas mug, cup, whataburger hat, and all kinds of other paraphenralia.
i'm bummed that i didn't bring my camera tonight because this is the only picture i have of both of us.
noe and i had a great time together though and i'm really going to miss him around here. who will bring me apple pies from mc donalds?! and who will i kill an hour with between classes every friday? and who will pretend ninja fight and fantasize about mexican food with me? at least the internet makes staying in touch really, really easy.
i guess that's the problem with this kind of job though. people are always coming and going. oh! did i tell you japanese restaurant is closed UNTIL APRIL?!?! bobo said the sign on their door says that they went to japan for some professional development training. i went to another japanese place today for dinner in an attempt to find a suitable temporary replacement, but it was disgusting and they looked at me like i was an alien. although the woman did tell me i was beautiful on the way out. but even that didn't make up for how awful the mushrooms tempura were.
i'm the keeper of the bumper sticker now. the only texan left. maybe i need to start throwing gratutious 'ya'lls' into my vocabulary.

aaand happy birthday, matt. 19 woooo!

i hear in my heart, all of these words

i woke up at 10:11 to be out the door at 10:15 to go to chinese this morning. thank goodness today wasn't an ugly day. yesterday i woke up and must have changed outfits 5 times in the morning and then i changed twice throughout the rest of the day. it was just one of those days when you don't feel like anything looks good. but today jerry and i made it to bobo right on time.

we're learning directions now.. quick lesson?
qian mian (chee-en mee-yen)- front ... qian tian is the day before yesterday
hou mian (ho mee yen)- back ... hou tian is the day after tomorrow
pang bian- side, beside
xia mian (sheeah mee yen)- under, below ... xia lou is downstairs
shang mian- over, above ... shang lou is upstairs
wai mian (why mee yen)- outside
.. now i can't remember inside.. li mian!
my friend william in austin and i are valentines this year and i bought him a bunch of taiwanese stuff and mailed it today. i picked out some bulk candy at carrefour but there was no one there to weigh it.. so i went to the bread section because it was close by and had a heck of a time trying to tell the lady what i wanted. finally, a taiwanese woman with a white husband walked by and she translated for us. 10 minutes later i bumped into the husband in the produce section and he said he'd been in taiwan for 3 years and he doesn't know any chinese. i told him he should learn, it's easier than he would imagine.

wednesday i don't have class until 7 so i made valentines for all of my coteachers out of a cut up bag from the bookstore because it was a pretty shade of green inside and really bright construction paper.
and i'm excited because i bought new crayola markers for my calendar. sharpies are usually fine but they were bleeding through the paper on this year's calendar, so january was in ballpoint pen.. boringg. it's also hard to write with on a vertical surface.
february is much better.
so tonight when i showed up at mr. kuo's it was just he and mrs. chan and he apologized to me for mr. wang and mr. whatever's beyond-drunkenness yesterday. i told him it wasn't his fault and not to worry about it.
then we had a hilarious discussion about baseball vs football and which is more interesting and why. he remembered to use yin wei and suo yi, the new sentence construction i learned, so i made some sentences for mrs. chan. yin wei wo shi huan bai fan, suo yi wo chi bai fan. which is 'because i like white rice, so i eat white rice' and she laughed. i always tell them i'm very smart (really because it's funny and i just think chong ming is fun to say) and tonight mr. kuo wanted to know what it was in english. so now he knows 'smart'.
i have a theory that september (my month) is usually the ugliest on in the calendar, but i think this particular september is really pretty. the calendar is kind of cool, it's printed on recycled paper with soy ink and they give you all of these little energy saving tips in those boxes. half price books.

let in the brilliant light of morning

i have no pictures of my own today so i've interspersed pictures from some of the blogs i love as i think they capture the essence of each and why they keep me clicking day after day.

well it was a disappointing day at mr. kuo's restaurant today. mr. wang and mr. whatever were soooo drunk that they were more or less comatose with their heads on their folded arms on the table. i guess i've known for a while that they were alcoholics, but it's never gotten to that point before. it's sad that anyone chooses to waste their life like that when there are so many ways you could better serve yourself and other people.
[this is from if it's hip, it's here. today's post is about an artist, federico uribe, who makes art out of found objects, pencils and shoelaces and shoes, like this swan he made for Puma, completely out of shoes].

today lesley told us that she's leaving taiwan in the first week of march. she decided she's been here long enough and it's time to do something new. i'm bummed that all of my favorite people have moved out or will be leaving within a month. i was just starting to get to know and really enjoy lesley's company. (i know i spelled her name 'leslie' a few days ago but it's confirmed leslEY).
[david lebovitz is an american baker living in paris. he's a professional blogger and he can get a little full of himself, but he really loves baking and his recipes look good.]

classes were good today. i taught my first class how to use a dictionary. much more complicated than you would think. the whole concept of the first word, last word, alphabetical order thing was lost on them. they don't have the alphabet drilled into them in order. i had them find 10 different words and i think the majority of them fully understood it by the end, but we were touch and go for a while.
[design crisis is written by a few women from austin and it's well-written and has lots of interesting pictures and design ideas.i like that they update often. that ceiling was done by an austin design group using paint and lots and lots of tape!]

in my second class we did the QA 'what do people do on valentine's day?' their answers were 'buy/make chocolate, buy flowers, make valentines, go to a romantic restaurant, eat conversation hearts, and my coteacher's addition: sit at home and cry'.
[salt and chocolate is written by a woman who lives in california and it's about her craft and food projects. she has young kids and she does lots of creative activities with them. how easy does that cookie cutter stenciled pillow look? but who thinks of stuff like that?]

lesley and i are planning a trip to the philippines or thailand before she leaves at the end of february and i'm getting excited! it's around $200 to fly round trip to either place. should be fun.

p.s. check out the picture my mom sent of ripley sleeping on my pillow. she's slept with her head on a pillow since she was a puppy.

better than anything else that i've found

there's a war going on this week and i regret that no blood has been spilled yet. megan vs the mosquitoes. i've been waking up with little red randomly placed bumps and i thought it was a spider in my bed or something for a long time, but this week i've spotted a mosquito in my room.
the bites are tiny and red and only some of them art itchy. it's odd.

so far my only defenses have been my fan.. which i was hoping would make it impossible for them to fly around me?.. and my blankets up to my chin. i thought i was winning the war with that one until i woke up with several itchy red dots on my neck, face and forehead.
tonight i brought out the vitamin B1 i brought with me just for this problem. it's official function is to help your body break down glucose, but one of my coworkers at the publishing company swore by it as a natural mosquito repellent. we'll see how it goes.
these are the books i'm reading now. i used to be a one-book girl, and i thought i was taking on some ADD tendencies for a bit, but i realized the method to my madness yesterday. at home, i used to read for half an hour before bed to calm down and get sleepy.

but here i've been reading before class, on the bus, during the day and mostly at the coffee shop. those places are all so distracting that i don't want to waste my really good books on them, so i've been reading fluffy travel books in public and saving my favorites for my quiet, before bed time.
i just started Outliers by malcom gladwell (the same man who wrote The Tipping Point and Blink) and it's really interesting. the first chapter is how we think of success as being about being lucky and naturally talented, but that science can explain a lot more than we realize. apparently it's good to be the oldest you can be for anything with a cutoff date.

he talks about how pro hockey players are overwhelmingly born in january-march because they were slightly ahead as kids since they were bigger so they got picked for the better teams and got more practice and it snowballs from there. same with gifted and talented kids. it's an interesting book.

nothing of note today except that noe moved out of the dorm today. he had quit at our school, gotten hired/rented an apartment in taipei, decided against it and started applying around taoyuan, but the other day he decided he just wanted to go home. he was getting frustrated feeling like it was too repetitive and the hours are kind of wacky. i'm going to miss him though, he was my dose of texas in taiwan. he left me with 4 cans of enchilada sauce though! fiesta this weekend.

she's so heavy

here are the pictures from today. leila told me that she and josh were meeting bobo and fam for lunch at latini's, so i joined them. here's leila and joyce and jaime and i.
we played in the park for a bit afterwards and it was so funny to see all of the kids at the playground stop and look at us. jon, see below, was chasing the girls and all of the kids were just watching him run around. then this evening we went to the annual staff banqueteveryone in the dorm before we made our way there this evening. from left to right it's jerry, me, jon (new guy), carly (newest girl with purple hair) and katie is on the bottom, stephan is in green beside carly, he's her boyfriend, then chris and danielle on the far right.
some of my coteachers at da chu. dora, emily and augusta.
the vegetarian table
tomatoes are considered fruit in asia.
serena, who we haven't seen in aaages since she moved out of the dorm, and leilashriiiiimp.
martyn & i.
my coteacher carol and i. she's the one who occasionally makes little kids cry. she has a booming voice.
emily's tulle skirt. it's soo taiwanese and so is she.
lobster salad covered in sweet mayo stuff. blech.
other food at the banquet: sliced cow stomach, squid stuff with benito flakes, seafood soup but the soup is kind of like jelly, the veggie table had fried durian and it tastes just like it smells (disguuuusting like rotting fruit and onions), anddd fruit and red bean paste things for dessert.
jerry with his homemade haircut. i tried to fix it tonight but it didn't work. it just looks all choppy.
all of our food was on a giant turntable which was a problem for the beer drinkers, as it always seemed to be on the wrong side of the table.
alex.

it was a really fun night. i haven't seen any of my coteachers with a few drinks in them before. we also got to see all of the the people who have moved out of the dorm so it was good to catch up.
alex, martyn and i headed to the lantern festival afterward and it was super crowded. i can't count how many people i held awkward eye contact with tonight as they saw us coming. glad to be home in my comfy jammies and out of heels.

but first be a person who needs people

7:15 came early this morning. i had the hardest time falling asleep and then i woke up at 6:45 because i was so paranoid about sleeping through my alarm (as i've been doing for the last several weeks with no early classes).
for as out of tune as i feel with my body at times, my internal clock is spot on. when i was studying abroad in england, my alarm clock didn't work because it plugged into the wall and the different electrical current made the clock work overtime. did you know the time on alarm clocks is regulated by the electrical current? anyway i magically woke up on time in spite of the 8 hour time change.

my first class felt like i was pulling teeth. the pace was off and i kept having to look back at my lesson plan and there was lots of boring down time. but my all-girls-and-ian class was great and flew by. those girls are just sooo cuuuute. we have a new girl, vivi. now i have vivi and vivian in there. at one point i said 'vivi and ian' and vivian jumped up.
i got dry erase marker on my new hoodie :( i tried water, dish soap, nail polish remover (which works for sharpie on hard surfaces), went to carrefour and bought some vanish! or fantastic! or something like that on martyn's recommendation, and finally leslie's tide to go pen.
nothing really worked. it's better but certainly not gone. i'm going to take it to the dry cleaners tomorrow and see if they have anything. the internet says murphy's oil soap but heck if i know how to ask for it/where to find it/if they have it in taiwan.

between my babies and my class from hell, i hung out for an hour and a half with the kuo's. we ate a giant pear and it rekindled my love of fresh fruit. i showed off my 'because... so...' new sentence construction we learned this week.
mr. kuo called mr. wang to tell him that i was hanging out over there, so when i got out of class there was a note on my scooter tucked inside my helmet. i went over and we all hung out and chatted for a bit. they tried to get me to drink with them but i said no thanks to that one.

oh and tonight i made the vegetable soup mix from stonewall that gram and spanky sent. it was pretty good, it tastes a lot like the corn chowder base actually. i think tomorrow i might add chicken when i have it for lunch. thanks guys :)