"hey baby, let's study english!" and other tales from the crypt

你好，blogworld，對不起! i've been so busy lately and so much has happened since the last time i wrote...

march 19 came and went, and i have made the decision to go back to america in july. i won't go into the particulars of the decision, mostly because if i start to think about it too much i'm afraid that my brain might actually explode. while it certainly wasn't an easy decision, it was the one i felt i had to make. but at any rate, i have loads to do before july and lots of places to see :) big sigh...

anyway...on a happier note: taiwan is still as awesome and bizarre as ever. through a bizarre turn of events i ended up wandering around taipei at 5:30am on saturday, and it was beautiful. i watched the sun come up over taipei 101 and saw the city come alive. i sat in a cafe and drank coffee and watched people go to work, catch the train, eat their breakfast...as bizarre as it was to be stuck in the city in the wee small hours of the morning, it was kind of nice. one of the most enjoyable times i've had in taipei.

a few days ago, i was having a class discussion with grade 3. we were talking about toys, i can't remember the exact topic. next thing i know, this child is standing up screaming "HEY BABY, LET'S STUDY ENG-A-LISH!!!" after i stopped laughing long enough to tell him to sit down and stop shouting, he explained to me that he is the proud new owner of a toy car. not just any toy car, but a toy car that, when prompted, can whiz past someone shouting "HEY BABY, LET'S STUDY ENG-A-LISH!" in a mechanical toy car voice. well, wouldn't that make you want to study english?! tell me it wouldn't.

yesterday i was in 7-11, in the back of the store where the tea is, next to the breakroom. about halfway through my search for tea, i saw george (the 7-11 dog) push the door open with his nose, walk out of the breakroom, through the store, and back outside (and no one even batted an eyelash).

at press time, i have 22 mosquito bites.

i'm going to miss taiwan.

a good day at the mailboxes

happy st. patrick's day!!

this morning i woke up in such a horrible mood for no apparent reason. i didn't want to go to work at allllll, so i decided to go on a walk to the 7-11 that's farther away from my house. when i came back, the mail was being put up, and i saw that i had a package. of course i immediately went nuts and tore it open right there in the lobby. my friend mary's mom had sent me something!!!! (thanks mary and diana!!!) a package full of so much american foooooooooood! oh my goodness. i almost cried i was so happy...especially when i caught sight of the bean dip and taco shells!!! i also had a card from my friend julia in australia...excellent day at the mailboxes ;) i do love getting mail more than just about anything!!! always puts me in a better mood.

taiwan was ridiculosly cold today. the kind of wet cold that is also in the wind. you can't escape this kind of cold, and i don't understand where its coming from or why its here because IT IS MARCH. bah. hope spring/summer comes back soon and stays! i'm so sick of this wet winter! boooooooooo~ but 加油! we are in the single digit countdown until the start of the holiday...only 9 more days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) and it can't come soon enough...teaching is such a hard job, and i am so burnt out. i don't know how teachers do it here without summer/christmas/spring break to rest.

also, i am the proud big sister of future nurse emily toms! congrats on getting into nursing school, you are going to be an awesome nurse! love you and MISS YOU xxx

welcome to asia, jorge!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsFFmjYdVVE
my new favorite song, which just happens to be the theme song of my new favorite tv show, ps man. (and this band is coming to festival i'm going to in only 2 weeks and 6 days....:)

today the weather was soooooo nasty. not hot, but still wet, and just hot enough to be so muggy that i hated to be outside. it was overcast and humid...and everything everywhere is growing mold and there is so much condensation on the tile floors that it looks like everything has been mopped 25 times...this weather is so so so bizarre. the humidity in taiwan is no joke.

today a kid on the street saw me walking, shouted WAI GUO REN!!!!! (foreigner)as loudly as she could, and ran back to tell all her friends to look at me. i smiled and waved at them, and they all just stared at me...

i really do love making lists more than the average person probably does.

1. taiwan's weather is very bizarre. yesterday it was raining so hard that i couldn't see in front of me, and today it's so sunny that i can't open my eyes enough to see in front of me.

2. i'm spending this sunny sunday planning my holiday (that is coming up in less than 2 WEEKS!!!!!!!!!!), and planning holidays is the best way i know how to spend any day.

3. i hate and despise all forms of housewivery. however, i might reform: it took me about 45 seconds to push my door open last night when i came home because there's so much junk on my floor.

4. i just finished an EXCELLENT book, the book thief. i have decided that it is my second favourite book ever. everyone should go pick up a copy! especially if you're into wwii stories. it was excellent on all counts.

5. seeing movies (especially american movies) in taiwan is very strange...not only because it is about 1 degree in any given cinema, or because you have assigned seats, or because everything is subtitled, no. the strangest thing about seeing american films in taiwan is after they are over, walking back out into the public expecting to be in america and...not. i watched alice in wonderland last night and got a huge shock when i came out of the cinema and wasn't in america.

6. and, as we were walking to go back to the train station, i had one of those moments where i look up, see huge buildings towering over me, flashing lights everywhere, every sign in chinese, and am listening to everyone speak and nothing is english...in these moments, even after having lived here for over 8 months, i kind of stop and think to myself, "whoa...i'm in taiwan."

7. i can't believe march is half over. ahhhh

8. a few nights ago, i dreamt of tootsie rolls. i dreamed that they were all over the streets of taiwan, and i was running around to collect them so i could eat them before everyone else got to them. i was severely craving a tootsie roll after waking up from this dream.

9. i was reading through an old journal i kept while i was student teaching and ran across something i'd written that is now very funny to me: "i just wish i knew where i was going to be next year and what i was going to be doing. wouldn't it be cool if i could go to asia?" hahahaha~

10. i love spring in north carolina and hate i'm missing it.

i have the sweetest students ever.

it never ceases to amaze me, really. one girl brought in candy for everyone, sweetly offering a "give you" and a smile while she went around the room handing it out to the other students and me. if i drop something on the floor (which is often), they will race to see who can pick it up first. for no reason at all, sometimes they will greet me with "teacher, you are beautiful!" even the ones who are so naughty and give me such a hard time are just so cute that i can't get angry. of course the most popular mode of transport in taiwan is the motorcycle. kids will ride their parents' to school and i love seeing them hop off and run inside, yelling my name and pulling off their helmets and shoes and giving me a huge hug. there are days...like today, for example...when i have to spend 30 minutes trying to teach just one word: today's was "floor." i must have stood at this one kid's desk for 28 of those 30 minutes just repeating it over and over: "FLOOR," i'd say. "f-weruosalknclewaroierllllllllll" was always the reply. he just couldn't get it. even through this frustration, they are just too cute and too sweet and trying to hard to really get frustrated. yesterday, i somehow got on the topic of van gogh with my advanced class. they sat on the floor with me, silent and still, and listened to me tell about van gogh's life and work. they were completely fascinated with him, and the story. "why was he such a sad man?" they asked. "i don't know," i replied. "everyone needs to have friends," one kid said. i miss teaching high school very much, but the minds of children are really amazing and inspiring, and they teach me so much.

the cultural differences i encounter everyday are also interesting. today the kids were writing on the board (why is it that kids are obsessed with writing on the whiteboards?!) and one kid was trying to write my name. she had used a red marker, and all the other kids immediately started shouting at her in chinese and trying to erase it quickly. she looked at me, and i could see tears welling up in her eyes as she choked out an apology to me. "teacher...red...(sniff sniff) i'm sorry..." i wasn't sure what was going on, so i asked tammy, one of the taiwanese teachers, what was the problem. she said that in chinese culture, writing someone name in red is not acceptable, because it means bad luck (i think its because emporers used to sign the names of people to be executed in red or something like that). she said that kids are really apt to believe this, and that's probably why everyone was so spooked. i just laughed and told the child that it was ok to write my name in red, because america people don't have any such legend, and she looked nothing if not very, very relieved.

today was about the coldest day i have ever felt in taiwan. BEHHHHH, where is summer.
ps one of my taiwanese friends said she had a dream that i was speaking perfect chinese. i can only hope that this dream was, in fact, a prophecy...

a short meditation on names, and why you should never translate them phonetically.

today i was marking notebooks and asked one of my students to tell me the meaning of her chinese name in english. after a long time of trying to explain it, i finally understood that it means "soft feathers." its a really nice name, i like the meaning, the characters are pretty. but i realised that, as i was complimenting her name, she was giggling. "whats so funny?" i asked. "your chinese name teacher, hahaha, is very funny." my name was just translated phonetically to get my chinese name. toms (which goes first in chinese) was translated into "tang" 湯 which means "soup." while this sounds funny in english, it is a pretty common surname in taiwan, so it isn't the funny part. my given name though, katie: "kai di" 凱蒂 means "trimphant brainstem." since this was just translated by finding characters with the closest sounds, my chinese name literally means "soup, triumphant brainstem." excellent. the student went on to explain to me that even though i have a strange name, its ok, because i am "america people" and everyone will know i'm a foreigner. as if i needed my name to prove to the people on this island that i'm foreign, haha.

today...ah, just another monday. it's rainy today and randomly cold again. hope spring comes back soon...

here are some photos from what i've been up to lately: saturday night's lantern festival near taipei 101, right in the heart of the city! people had made many traditional lanterns in honor of the new year. courtesy of my friend kristen and her snazzy new camera, because i am always forgetting mine...

i love taiwan. the awesome weather we've been having lately is only adding to this fact ;)

last last weekend, i went about 4 hours south to kaohsiung to visit my friends david and jeremy. we had such a good time, and the weather was great! even "HOT" at some points, thank goodness. i'm so ready to get rid of this stupid humid winter. i went to a temple and learned how to do the "bai bai," which was really cool. good weekend :) on the train home, i had my first experience of speaking chinese to someone who isn't taiwanese, so we were both speaking our second languages to each other. he is from thailand, and i'm sure he can speak english, but he started speaking to me in chinese, so i replied in chinese, and it was very strange to speak to someone in a language that neither of us grew up speaking.

this weekend, i went to taipei with mary and kristen. saturday night, mary and i went to a mexican/american fusion restaurant. besides the fact that i paid out the nose for quesadillas and coke, and that it was so taiwanised, it was about the best food i've ever eaten. haha. so far in taiwan i have eaten at tgifridays and macaroni grill, and now i can add this random mexican place to the list of western food i've eaten. then, we met up with kristen and went to the lantern festival near taipei 101 (which by the way, i am obsessed with). taipei is such a cool city, full of so many interesting things... however, i had the fright of my life when i was trying to leave because i almost missed the train. i don't know what i was thinking, thinking that the trains were 24-hours or something. when i went to order my ticket (it was pretty late by this time, maybe midnight) back to my city, the lady in the counter told me there were no more tickets. i was exhausted from walking around all day and couldn't even think of a reply in english, much less chinese. so finally i conjured up a grammar-less plea to her...and ended up on a train with about 2034802348 other people just heading to the city closest to mine. bahhhh. but, i did make it home! despite almost having a melt down, right there in taipei train station.......

also, thursday morning we had a huge earthquake, but i'm ok. i live about 4 hours north of the epicenter, but it still shook me almost out of my bed. can't imagine what they felt in kao hsiung.

thinking/learning/trying to speak chinese makes me so tired and exhausted...that's why this post is so random and has no logical trajectory...sorry. sometimes even my dreams don't have any words or no one is talking because i think my poor subconcious is on strike, because it is so confused.

FUYU BOUGHT TICKETS TO TAIWAN!!!!!!!!!!!
BOB DYLAN IS COMING TO TAIWAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!
JENNIFER WILL BE HERE IN LESS THAN 3 WEEKS!!!!!!!!!!!
FAN YI CHEN'S CONCERT=APRIL 4!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SUMMER IS COMING!!!!!!!!!
I'M GOING TO SOUTH KOREA, SINGAPORE, AND JAPAN!!!!!!!!!!


ps- i am so happy to see all the i-house reunions that are happenning lately! it makes me so so so happy :)

it's march (what.)