...for one thing only: The uninhibited right to build up that tummy pudge!! To stick my belly out proudly! To eat whatever, whenever!!
D'oh, so here's the crux of the matter. This is why I'm blue:
I'm food-homesick. You wouldn't think it since I'm in Taiwan, but honestly, I rarely get to pig out on my favorite stuff. Heh. When I'm home, I eat whatever my uncle and aunt feed me (which is great, don't get me wrong) or wherever they choose to go out and eat. And usually when I'm out, I'm in a hurry. I strolled about last night, eating whatever the heck I saw... it was pretty great.
But I love hotpot, and I'm not getting enough of it here. The weather got cold today, so I think I'm craving comfort food. My tummy wants a cuddle. :( I think I'll have to go do something about this craving tomorrow.
So here's my official list of Things I Want to Eat When I Get Back to Texas:
* Chipotle steak burrito bowl with rice, no beans, double meat, pico de gallo, lots of corn, brown-medium salsa, a sprinkle of cheese, lettuce, and a treat of guacamole. Okay, I should not have typed that.
* Church's fried chicken
* Actually, I just miss cooking at Century, heh. There are a bunch of recipes I want to try and can't make over here. Le sigh.
In order to not make it sound like I have a chronic case of green-grass-fence-disorder (which is quite possible), I shall make a list of Things I Still Need to Eat in Taiwan:
* Hot pot. Every possible chance.
* Fried mushrooms. Again. The lightly battered ones.
* Teppanyaki
* Cup noodles from 7-11, just 'cuz I love Asian ramen!
* Hakka rice ball soup (again, also)
* Stinky tofu (again)
* Fried chicken steak with basil (again)
* Wonton (again)
* Meatball soup
* All sorts of noodles
* Dumplings (again)
* Winter melon with pork rib soup
* Brown rice (again)
* Stir-fried veggies (more variety and more quantity)
* Sesame red bean balls (again, although this is really more of a dim sum thing)
Ooooooh, mention of dim sum makes me think of Hong Kong, which is yet to come!! AWESOME. I'm happy about life again. ^_^
Things to Eat in Hong Kong:
* Dim sum (naturally)
I don't know much about Cantonese cuisine... you guys have to help me out here.
...If I LOOK pregnant when I come back from Asia, well, I'm probably just "back from Asia." Don't make assumptions. ;p Feel free to help me expand any of these lists. ^_^
Friday, November 28, 2008
I'm going to write a song...
...about all the boys I have ever terrorized with the childish request, "Tell me a story!" I'll... probably throw in something about how I also say, "Pay attention to me!" Mmmyeah.
You have no idea how excited I am about this. No idea.
I'm actually really hungry at the moment. I found an awesome place that makes "Chinese breakfast burritos" this morning - it's right outside the place where I watch the adorable babies - so I'm looking forward to that tomorrow. I'm helping with a fundraiser for the organization tomorrow. I know, me, volunteering. It's a wonder to all.
I just got home from Mimi's concert. Apart from her performance, it was surprisingly fobby (well, maybe not surprising if you consider that I had no idea what to really expect). It was in the basement lounge of a coffee shop and it was packed with super fobby girls (and a coupla hapless boyfriends and/or gay boys here and there). Once I heard the name of her friend's group, it kinda made sense... It's something like "Twinkle." (Named after two golden Labradors) They were quite cute as dogs go, I have to say. Mimi's rap was pretty fobbilicious ^_^ and I was definitely excited to hear L-O-V-E and Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You from her. I'm a sucker for oldies, and Eyes Off of You reminds me of Chicago, because I spammed it this summer while there. The song really doesn't have much to do with big cities, but I associate it with such. :P All in all, it was definitely a new experience (and a new acquaintance!) and pictures/video will be forthcoming. Hehehe *rubs hands in anticipation* :D
My aunt undertook to give me dating advice this afternoon. Um, it was pretty hilarious. Let's just say that it's not what I expected to hear from her. She took me fabric-shopping, as aforementioned, and then I followed her to a wholesale store where she and her friend shopped their hearts out for... lingerie and household items. My aunt is a much more dedicated shopper than I am. ^_^ This is saying a lot. ...I'm still really excited about that fabric. :P
I'm kind of blue, for some reason. I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's 'cuz I've been so go-go-go for the last few days, and I'm pretty tired out. I've been resorting to hour-long naps before dinner. :\ I have also have to come a bit more face-to-face with an unpleasant truth... and then that last episode of House was a lil stressful. (Don't laugh! It's a big deal!) Oh, well. I think part of it is also that I feel like my brain's not really getting much exercise these days, and I miss learning something new. (Ho ho ho) Guitar/drums/dancing/Spanish-or-French-or-Japanese have all been on my mind. Yeah, I know I've been talking about this for a long time. But it's starting to really frustrate me... at the very least, I should keep up with my reading.
Tomorrow is another busy day, so I should go to bed.
You have no idea how excited I am about this. No idea.
I'm actually really hungry at the moment. I found an awesome place that makes "Chinese breakfast burritos" this morning - it's right outside the place where I watch the adorable babies - so I'm looking forward to that tomorrow. I'm helping with a fundraiser for the organization tomorrow. I know, me, volunteering. It's a wonder to all.
I just got home from Mimi's concert. Apart from her performance, it was surprisingly fobby (well, maybe not surprising if you consider that I had no idea what to really expect). It was in the basement lounge of a coffee shop and it was packed with super fobby girls (and a coupla hapless boyfriends and/or gay boys here and there). Once I heard the name of her friend's group, it kinda made sense... It's something like "Twinkle." (Named after two golden Labradors) They were quite cute as dogs go, I have to say. Mimi's rap was pretty fobbilicious ^_^ and I was definitely excited to hear L-O-V-E and Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You from her. I'm a sucker for oldies, and Eyes Off of You reminds me of Chicago, because I spammed it this summer while there. The song really doesn't have much to do with big cities, but I associate it with such. :P All in all, it was definitely a new experience (and a new acquaintance!) and pictures/video will be forthcoming. Hehehe *rubs hands in anticipation* :D
My aunt undertook to give me dating advice this afternoon. Um, it was pretty hilarious. Let's just say that it's not what I expected to hear from her. She took me fabric-shopping, as aforementioned, and then I followed her to a wholesale store where she and her friend shopped their hearts out for... lingerie and household items. My aunt is a much more dedicated shopper than I am. ^_^ This is saying a lot. ...I'm still really excited about that fabric. :P
I'm kind of blue, for some reason. I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's 'cuz I've been so go-go-go for the last few days, and I'm pretty tired out. I've been resorting to hour-long naps before dinner. :\ I have also have to come a bit more face-to-face with an unpleasant truth... and then that last episode of House was a lil stressful. (Don't laugh! It's a big deal!) Oh, well. I think part of it is also that I feel like my brain's not really getting much exercise these days, and I miss learning something new. (Ho ho ho) Guitar/drums/dancing/Spanish-or-French-or-Japanese have all been on my mind. Yeah, I know I've been talking about this for a long time. But it's starting to really frustrate me... at the very least, I should keep up with my reading.
Tomorrow is another busy day, so I should go to bed.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Of mites and men (and wonton too)
The last few days have seen me spending lots and lots of time around small humans. The rest of the time was spent unwinding in the company of grown-up ones.
Yesterday was a really long day for me. I had to get up early for the OMF prayer meeting. It's a good 30-minute walk away, which usually wakes me up. Except I got there early yesterday and ended up wanting doze the whole time. It was good, however. I really enjoy it, for some reason. It's nice to sing hymns out of a text-only songbook with people who know what they're doing. The prayer time is cool, because I actually have an idea of what each person does and how they do it. And... well, I mean, it's prayer, so I guess that is cool too. XD I was never good at group prayers, but I'm "getting better," if there's such a phraseology. By this, I mean that I am learning to enjoy it and getting better at saying what I want to say, and not feeling like everyone's mentally grading/critiquing me while I talk. (You know people do that... don't lie) I'm trying to avoid saying "Lord" and "just" over-much. You also know people do that all the time in public prayers... it drives me insane. ^_^ Unfortunately, half the time I don't know what ELSE to say. They're like the "um" and "ah" of religious talk.
After the prayer meeting, I dashed off to the main station area to buy metallic tape and origami paper for our Thanksgiving story and craft. I had a bowl of wanton for lunch... current addiction. They're small wafers of dough squares with a dab of pork in the middle, then boiled in water for a few minutes and topped with green onions or sesame oil or fried onion crumbles. All yummy. ^_^ Not a big meal, but flavorful. I'm distracted... gettting back to the topic, ahem.
I was in charge of telling the Thanksgiving story, and was honestly kind of worried about it. I haven't really thought back to that chunk of American history in a while XD and was even more iffy about saying it correctly in Chinese. You'll be proud to know that I prepped by writing out a basic outline the night before! I looked up various teaching units on Thanksgiving online, and was reminded once again why I detest teaching. Eww, teaching preparations. Unit studies. Coloring. Crafts. Glitter crafts. Anyways.
The kids had an especially naughty day yesterday, I think. A bunch of them showed up late. But after all the kids trickled in at some point, I looked around and realized that they were all there! This is a rarity (and actually, something I had yet to experience before yesterday) since they all like running off after school and buying snacks instead of showing up on time at 1:30 like they should. Needless to say, the story kind of went over badly. I taped a rectangle on the floor for them to stand in together to pretend they were "on the Mayflower." OK, so some people decided to be sharks and other people said they would rather die than get on the ship. XD Great times. I'm very glad for CI experience... bad kids and negative responses to story time really don't faze me. The craft time was also tiring. We stuck tree branches in floral foam and decorated them with paper things. I did not know that origami was such a useful teaching tool... I had timed competitions with the kids over making paper cranes and puffy stars, taught them how to make frogs and flowers, and then had a blast of nostalgia when one of the little boys made ninja stars. Nice!
Toward the end of the afternoon, we had a power struggle with our smallest/naughtiest boy. He has huge, gorgeous eyes, olive skin, and the most defiant little personality ever. He also smells awful, poor thing, kinda like he goes to sleep in dirty clothes and air-dries his sweat on him. ^_^ Anyway, he usually runs in and out, screams, etc. He knocked over a bunch of chairs and I told him he couldn't go home until he did. (I'm not cruel; it was a perfectly reasonable thing to request) Well, he self-imposed "time out" and stood there for a good 25 minutes without moving while we finished our teachers' discussion of the day and planned for the next sessions. One of the other small third-graders, Bing-Chuan, was surprisingly good yesterday afternoon. I think he had so much fun making the craft (for once) that he didn't want to go home, and instead hung around with us for a while. Poor thing, he said he didn't want to go home because there wasn't anyone there to play with him. :| Anyway, he got really curious about why the other little boy was standing there. Once I told him that he needed to pick up the chair before he was allowed to go home, he got kinda quiet for a bit. Then I was really surprised to see him go over and talk to the kid and encourage him to pick up the seat. (This was after a few minutes of making faces at him, lol) Awww, cute. It kinda made my day... which was good, 'cuz it was really draining up until that point. :|
It took me a long time to get home, and then my uncle took me out for dinner as soon as we got back. We went to a buffet-style place to meet up with my aunt. ...Now I'm hungry. I went home, took a quick nap, and then met up with Cindy to go to Brown Sugar (swanky bar) and then Room 18 (club). I've never been out in Taiwan before, but I keep hearing about it, so I was really excited. I wish Austin had prettier places like Brown Sugar. Well, I guess it does, but we never go to them. ;p It was salsa night at Brown Sugar, so I've decided I need dance lessons if I keep traveling like this. It's quite embarrassing to always be like, "I'm terrible at dancing... no, I'm not being self-deprecating, just honest." Lol. Room 18 was a blast and I had a great time.
Cindy and I had some good bonding time... very nice!
This morning saw me fighting to pry open my eyelids! I went to go see my babies for the afternoon. Halfway through feeding 'em, I got called away to help some of the workers translate something for this Finnish couple who came over to help. Um, okay, Europeans are so gorgeous in a very down-to-earth kind of way. :\ The girl had butt-length braided brown hair and the most stunning aqua eyes ever in a tanned face. I wanted to stare. :D Anyways, I did a lot in three hours: Change a round of diapers (including a poopy - it's been a while, yugh), sang Happy Birthday to the one-month-old while burping her (producing some impressive farts... yeek!), feed a coupla toddlers, cuddle some, try to soothe some who bawled when I quit holding them :\, taught one to play peek-a-boo, high-fived with another, and talked a lot of nonsense. I also mopped down the play area twice, did a load of laundry, folded another load, and realized that I'm still really, really glad I'm not a mother yet. There's so little glory in it. ;P You mothers deserve a lot of praise. And by a lot, I mean I can totally understand how Hail Marys came about.
Now I'm back at Mr. Brown. I finished BV in record time. Uploaded pics from last night. Kicking myself a little bit for neither bringing out money nor the things I meant to mail, because I'm RIGHT NEXT to the places I need to go to run errands. Am "celebrating" Thanksgiving alone in a very low-key manner. Mostly, I miss roast birds.
Yesterday was a really long day for me. I had to get up early for the OMF prayer meeting. It's a good 30-minute walk away, which usually wakes me up. Except I got there early yesterday and ended up wanting doze the whole time. It was good, however. I really enjoy it, for some reason. It's nice to sing hymns out of a text-only songbook with people who know what they're doing. The prayer time is cool, because I actually have an idea of what each person does and how they do it. And... well, I mean, it's prayer, so I guess that is cool too. XD I was never good at group prayers, but I'm "getting better," if there's such a phraseology. By this, I mean that I am learning to enjoy it and getting better at saying what I want to say, and not feeling like everyone's mentally grading/critiquing me while I talk. (You know people do that... don't lie) I'm trying to avoid saying "Lord" and "just" over-much. You also know people do that all the time in public prayers... it drives me insane. ^_^ Unfortunately, half the time I don't know what ELSE to say. They're like the "um" and "ah" of religious talk.
After the prayer meeting, I dashed off to the main station area to buy metallic tape and origami paper for our Thanksgiving story and craft. I had a bowl of wanton for lunch... current addiction. They're small wafers of dough squares with a dab of pork in the middle, then boiled in water for a few minutes and topped with green onions or sesame oil or fried onion crumbles. All yummy. ^_^ Not a big meal, but flavorful. I'm distracted... gettting back to the topic, ahem.
I was in charge of telling the Thanksgiving story, and was honestly kind of worried about it. I haven't really thought back to that chunk of American history in a while XD and was even more iffy about saying it correctly in Chinese. You'll be proud to know that I prepped by writing out a basic outline the night before! I looked up various teaching units on Thanksgiving online, and was reminded once again why I detest teaching. Eww, teaching preparations. Unit studies. Coloring. Crafts. Glitter crafts. Anyways.
The kids had an especially naughty day yesterday, I think. A bunch of them showed up late. But after all the kids trickled in at some point, I looked around and realized that they were all there! This is a rarity (and actually, something I had yet to experience before yesterday) since they all like running off after school and buying snacks instead of showing up on time at 1:30 like they should. Needless to say, the story kind of went over badly. I taped a rectangle on the floor for them to stand in together to pretend they were "on the Mayflower." OK, so some people decided to be sharks and other people said they would rather die than get on the ship. XD Great times. I'm very glad for CI experience... bad kids and negative responses to story time really don't faze me. The craft time was also tiring. We stuck tree branches in floral foam and decorated them with paper things. I did not know that origami was such a useful teaching tool... I had timed competitions with the kids over making paper cranes and puffy stars, taught them how to make frogs and flowers, and then had a blast of nostalgia when one of the little boys made ninja stars. Nice!
Toward the end of the afternoon, we had a power struggle with our smallest/naughtiest boy. He has huge, gorgeous eyes, olive skin, and the most defiant little personality ever. He also smells awful, poor thing, kinda like he goes to sleep in dirty clothes and air-dries his sweat on him. ^_^ Anyway, he usually runs in and out, screams, etc. He knocked over a bunch of chairs and I told him he couldn't go home until he did. (I'm not cruel; it was a perfectly reasonable thing to request) Well, he self-imposed "time out" and stood there for a good 25 minutes without moving while we finished our teachers' discussion of the day and planned for the next sessions. One of the other small third-graders, Bing-Chuan, was surprisingly good yesterday afternoon. I think he had so much fun making the craft (for once) that he didn't want to go home, and instead hung around with us for a while. Poor thing, he said he didn't want to go home because there wasn't anyone there to play with him. :| Anyway, he got really curious about why the other little boy was standing there. Once I told him that he needed to pick up the chair before he was allowed to go home, he got kinda quiet for a bit. Then I was really surprised to see him go over and talk to the kid and encourage him to pick up the seat. (This was after a few minutes of making faces at him, lol) Awww, cute. It kinda made my day... which was good, 'cuz it was really draining up until that point. :|
It took me a long time to get home, and then my uncle took me out for dinner as soon as we got back. We went to a buffet-style place to meet up with my aunt. ...Now I'm hungry. I went home, took a quick nap, and then met up with Cindy to go to Brown Sugar (swanky bar) and then Room 18 (club). I've never been out in Taiwan before, but I keep hearing about it, so I was really excited. I wish Austin had prettier places like Brown Sugar. Well, I guess it does, but we never go to them. ;p It was salsa night at Brown Sugar, so I've decided I need dance lessons if I keep traveling like this. It's quite embarrassing to always be like, "I'm terrible at dancing... no, I'm not being self-deprecating, just honest." Lol. Room 18 was a blast and I had a great time.
Cindy and I had some good bonding time... very nice!
This morning saw me fighting to pry open my eyelids! I went to go see my babies for the afternoon. Halfway through feeding 'em, I got called away to help some of the workers translate something for this Finnish couple who came over to help. Um, okay, Europeans are so gorgeous in a very down-to-earth kind of way. :\ The girl had butt-length braided brown hair and the most stunning aqua eyes ever in a tanned face. I wanted to stare. :D Anyways, I did a lot in three hours: Change a round of diapers (including a poopy - it's been a while, yugh), sang Happy Birthday to the one-month-old while burping her (producing some impressive farts... yeek!), feed a coupla toddlers, cuddle some, try to soothe some who bawled when I quit holding them :\, taught one to play peek-a-boo, high-fived with another, and talked a lot of nonsense. I also mopped down the play area twice, did a load of laundry, folded another load, and realized that I'm still really, really glad I'm not a mother yet. There's so little glory in it. ;P You mothers deserve a lot of praise. And by a lot, I mean I can totally understand how Hail Marys came about.
Now I'm back at Mr. Brown. I finished BV in record time. Uploaded pics from last night. Kicking myself a little bit for neither bringing out money nor the things I meant to mail, because I'm RIGHT NEXT to the places I need to go to run errands. Am "celebrating" Thanksgiving alone in a very low-key manner. Mostly, I miss roast birds.
I like my life right now... thanks for being a part of that. :) I'm thankful for you. I have good friends. <3
Monday, November 24, 2008
Danshui, Taiwan
Cities with efficient public transportation make me go weak in the knees. Figuratively, not literally, because they actually make me physically strong in the knees.
I like this shot
Those signs show the directions and ETAs of incoming trains
Escalators and stairs going every which way! It gets crazy. I love it.
This is the MRT Red Line after it's emerged from being a "subway" line.
Cute neighbor checking out...
I think this is some sort of a sports stadium. Pardon the many dust spots you're going to see... lens is dirty, but I can't remove the filter on my own, and then I can't see on my broken screen to fix them in Lightroom. Haha.
Yeah, I did darken this picture a little bit, but the sky really was amazing that day.
Changing trains hastily because I realized I was going to Beitou, not Danshui. Heh, I was distracted. ;p
The back of Taipei apartment buildings... that's how we do our laundry, yep. I greatly prefer dryers and consider them a luxury. ^_^
Almost there! Signature red bridges...
People like to go biking around there
Musician. Playing the saw. This is right behind the MRT station... I'm a little sad I didn't actually get a picture of that. Heh. I'm stupid.
Reminds me of Toy Story... but Danshui has a bunch of tiny stores filled with these, and other arcade-type booth machines.
This is for Timbo.
This is for anyone who is entertained by a plushie version of a popular drink which is not USUALLY called "happy fungus." Hahahaha. (It's a yogurt culture drink which is pretty delicious and comes in tiny bottles. You can find it at your local supermarket in the Asian frozen food aisle)
Great spot for city families to enjoy some fresh air on weekends!
I love Taiwan. One word: FOOD.
Food. Here we have stinky tofu, various seafood dishes, and drinks for sale.
While sitting along the harbor, I got distracted from journaling (as aforementioned) and narcissism ensued. Hey, I take so many pictures of other people... I figured I deserved to be in a few. ^_^
I'm very bad at self-portraits without a tripod.
Yes, people give me more weird looks here than they do in Austin. :\
See the dust spots? ^_^ It actually was a lot brighter than this, but this was the only way I could think of to capture the sun.
Awesome cloud cover
Haha, cute date?
Small passerby looks askance at me
I love the contrast of the happy sightseers and the small sulky shopkeeper's son nibbling his snack. Hahaha.
There's a phrase in Chinese to describe crowds: People mountains, people oceans. Now you see why.
This is actually a reasonably common sight in a lot of Taipei's more crowded/popular areas. Black heads everywhere. It's so "Where's Waldo?" ^_^ Only harder.
Lovely sunset
Not quite that dark yet either, but I liked the red.
Cindy came!
So we documented the occasion in the traditional tourist manner.
She brought a friend, Ivan. And made him style her bag. I think he rocks it well.
Apparently you can go pleasure boating using the same pass you use for buses and MRTs in Taiwan! Nice.
Snails! Non-spicy, a little spicy, medium spicy, and very spicy.
Cindy samples a snail.
I just stick with candied balls. :P
I do love stinky tofu, though!
And play with my food yet. :| I'm so mature. ^_^
Ivan's driver's licenses are the best thing ever. ^_^ Do you appreciate my crude Lightroom clone-stamping?
Of course, I sticker picture it up everywhere I go (mostly because my mom disapproves of them). I'm rather fond of the Joker reference.
And I really couldn't let such awesome food go by without being documented. You see a happy woman there on the right.
And here is a cool panoramic shot of the harbor... click to enlarge.
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