wow, "my resolution is to blog more blah blah blah" clearly i am so good at it. not.
anyway, so much to catch up on!
i waved goodbye to 22 by getting sick and puking my guts out for about 24 solid hours (yes i know you were all dying to know that, but i thought i'd share anyway :) i don't know what happened, but i was deadly sick! i even tried to go to work but ended up puking all over everyone and having to go home early. excellent (not). anyway, the next day was my birthday so i went home and tried to sleep and get better so i could still carry on with my plans, because the last place on earth i wanted to spend my 23rd birthday was in taiwan alone in my apartment puking my guts out.
sunday (my birthday), i headed to danshui with my friends! we hung out and walked around, enjoying the town and all that was in it. for dinner, we went to jay chou's favourite restaurant, and i even ordered his favourite meal ;) we went down the main strip for a little shopping after dinner. i saw a really pretty scarf that i wanted to buy, and the saleslady saw us shopping. she came over and started speaking chinese a mile a minute, i think she was trying to explain to me that it was actually a tablecloth instead of a scarf. anyway, next thing i know, she has me by the arm and is pulling me into the shop to show me something. my friends were still outside laughing at me! she took the tablecloth/scarf and started wrapping it around my head, and tied it around my neck so tightly that i almost puked on her, because i was still feeling a little queasy. the whole time she kept saying, "so preeeetty" in english. i just smiled sheepishly and paid for the tablecloth/scarf and left the shop with it still on my head. so there i was, walking through danshui with a tablecloth tied to my head on my 23rd birthday. i'm sure it was a sight to see, but as soon as we were far enough away from the shop, i took the tablecloth off my head and we laughed until we cried. after that, we went to ikari cafe and ate cheesecake, and sang happy birthday in chinese, reminisicing about our days in university, and where we were headed next in our lives. none of us knew, haha.
last week, i was having a conversation with one of my classes. i asked them a question: "what do you want to be when you grow up?" we went around the circle and everyone answered, and then i got to one student, z. she is very quiet and timid, and doesn't often say much. anyway, i said, "z, what do you want to be when you grow up?" and her answer reminded me why i'm here: "i want to be an english teacher, because i want to be like teacher katie." how sweet she is!
getting so sick and being so alone when being so sick, and missing the holidays, and all the cold rain lately have come together with a vengence and made me a bit homesick. also, having hit the half year mark also made me sad for some reason. but, seeing my kids everyday, even on days when i want to jump out the window because i swear they are incapable of sitting down and being quiet for more than a nanosecond, always somehow stops my doubt. even on days when i am trying to speak chinese and accidentally call someone a pig, someone else always comes along and tells me that i am very kind to try to use chinese. there is always something to put things in perspective, and that's one of the reasons i love taiwan.
currently in jhubei city, EVERY SINGLE SIDEWALK has been bulldozed into oblivion and its impossible to walk anywhere without getting a gazillion microscopic rocks in your shoes (so annoying). i have also stepped in wet cement twice, and it has been raining lately, so all the rocks and dirt and cement have made a HUGE MESS and i hate walking outside. blehhh. good news is, our new sidewalks have little carvings of roses in the bricks but actually who cares, i will be scraping cement off my favourite purple birks from now til kingdom come.
rachel will be here to visit in chinese new year, which is less than 4 wks away! and then jennifer will be here to visit in the end of march/beginning of april which is just over 2 months away! YAY YAY YAY YAY and it will also be spring soon, i'm so ready to get rid of this "winter..."
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