here and there

Things I like here:

• paying for everything at 7/11. so easy. so nice. except it gets a little tricky when you can't speak chinese. i kind of just hand them a bunch of money and hope they're honest.
• going out to eat and spending $3 to get 15 vegetable dumplings and a bowl of noodles. it did help that we had our friends girlfriend speaks chinese. or ordering 5 items at the thai place, plus rice, plus a tiny dessert and paying $15
  
• not having people honk at other people all the time. most relaxed drivers ever over here. amazing how it looks "crazy" and "out of control" when you're not driving in it, but once you get out there, the cars/scooters are like ants... they just go with the flow
  
• going and buying housing stuff to put in our place that makes allison happy. (we're still working on having her not automatically pick up the first split pea colored thing she sees!)
• water bills that are $5. granted, you're not getting the cleanest/freshest water. but it is still nice.
• catching and releasing cockroaches. long story short. allison "kill it!" me "no, just move the whole bed to the side and i'll throw a box over it." done.
  
• getting multiple boxes of sandpaper-y kleenex when you fill up at the gas station that i never use
  
• spending $60 per month on gas instead of $360 when we were at home. amazing
  
• working at the same school as allison
  
• staring at other westerners because it is so rare to see them
  
• going out to eat. a lot. too cheap to pass up.
• buying electronics for cheap. they're made here, they better be cheap. (except apple. damn you apple)
  
• dear espn360, thank you for letting me watch the ucks lose to boise state. and then accepting their victory with pride and without any... oh wait. nevermind.
• skyping with people back home. especially video skype.
  
• hanging out with some of the other teachers here. they're pretty nice.
  
• light switches on the outside of a room. i mean, whose idea was it to put a light switch inside of a dark room? makes much more sense. and all the light switches have little green dots on them if they're off... so if it is dark, you can actually see where you need to be going to turn it on. genius.
• reading other people's blogs about living abroad: columbia, taiwan, used to live in taiwan, and kazakhstan are the ones i check out the most often... just because i know them. or have been looking at them the longest. if you're out there, leave us a comment so we can read about you too.
  
• paying way too much for good beer. seriously. just import some micro brew in bulk and charge less
  
  

what i'm looking forward to in portland:

• taco cart on se 84th and woodstock, vita, herbivore, sweet pea, food fight!, taco bell fire sauce, mexican food
  
• sidewalks
• humidity under 80%
• hub, deschutes, rogue
  
• watching football with my dad
  
• talking about wedding details with my brother (joke)
• playing wii with sister and her bf
  
• making food with mom
• being cold
• kicking tk's ass in anything
  
• buying allison a new computer
• flying from portland to taiwan and knowing what to expect

i probably missed a lot, but realized it'd been a few days since we posted, so wanted to get this out. hope all is well.

all over the place (like my cab driver)

whew, don't go see orphan if you're looking for a relaxing movie. i spent half of it with one eye closed and the other eye covered up. every time i looked over, allison was covering her face and wrapping her blanket up over her head. i went in thinking the movie was A) rated PG and B) going to be terrible, so i was pleasantly surprised at the end.

finally found a little park to run at near our apartment, but the humidity followed me over there, so it is just as hot. someone at school told us it cools down quite a bit by november, so we'll be looking forward to that. we've been eating out quite a bit and have had some really good food lately. we just got back from "indian food street" over near sogo with a teacher friend.

driving has been lots of fun too. our car is small enough it feels like we're in a little go cart sometimes and we can weave in and out of traffic pretty well when things get dicey. also, u-turns are crazy here. you can just pull into the scooter lane, wait for some open space, and then flip one and no one cares. every once in a while i'll catch myself getting ready to make a triple right or turn left into a parking lot, but then i'll remember anything goes and we're going the opposite direction in no time. allison has been doing great driving and when i'm in the passanger seat, it is only just a little scarier than watching orphan.

speaking of driving, after the movie on saturday, i went out with a few people from school, and took part in the scariest cab ride ever. and yes, i know it probably is tame compared to some other cab rides, but it was insane. he was cutting off other cabs, going twice the speed limit, running reds, and half the time i felt like he was trying to clip the car he was cutting off. (mid post ps. allison is telling me about her multiple mosquito bites right now. also, she sneezed 8 times this morning and 6 this afternoon. she is going for a record. crazy.) we ended up getting there alright, but, seriously. it was like the car chase in the movie the rock.

last thing... got the time capsule (hard drive/wireless router) mom sent and allison loves her 3g. 3gs is supposed to come out in days (or weeks, who knows), so i'm excited. got paid today... heading to ikea on saturday and a night market friday so i can get some crazy chinese/english shirts. hope all is well wherever you are. if you have questions, just ask!

ps someone smuggle in some ddp or diet pepsi for allison. she is dying over here! i found rogue dead guy (12 oz bottles), so i got that going for me, which is nice.

oh, and our friend had her baby!

a-musings

random thoughts and observations from the first few days

-when you wake up on an overnight flight to someone speaking to you in chinese, asking you what you want to drink, you feel like they’re messing with you… until you come to your senses and realize they’re not
-allison looks so cute standing in the middle of a hundred foreigners at sfo
-when it gets really humid, your sandals stick to your feet when you walk
-after walking out of customs at the airport in taipei, we (well, i) almost turned around and walked back on the plane when i didn’t see someone with our name on a poster. fortunately, allison slapped some sense into me and said we should just keep looking and not give up so soon. sunny showed up a minute later
-all the new teachers here have amazing stories about other countries they’ve taught at. we don’t, but we will
-i miss my mom and dad, but will see them in december!
-allison is doing amazing and seems to be adapting even better than i am
-chinese characters look nothing like english (duh), but it is fun pretending like some of them look similar at the grocery store, until you realize that you’re telling someone that the character for soy milk looks like the same character for motor oil. wrong.
-greeting someone with “ni hao” (hello) in chinese, isn’t always the best thing to do because they assume you know a little chinese, which we don’t. but that doesn’t stop me from doing it!
-having a $100 dollar taiwanese bill in your hands isn’t as fun when it only equals $3 in the US
-sweating non stop all day + not being able to read anything at the grocery store = weight loss
-one of the teachers here was an extra in chasing amy. oops, asked him about 75 too many questions about the movie once i found that out.
-we’re excited for our moms to send us comfort packages, but we’re not going to ask them to. (and yes, we know they read this blog)
-i could see allison’s “i’m a little overwhelmed” feeling go away after she bought some cheerios, cleaning supplies, and matching cute bowls, plates, and glass (it’ll go away even more once we get that fridge)
-we have two extra rooms and are hoping for visitors (anytime!)
-our school is actually in the jungle.
-taiwanese scooter drivers have balls of steel. no, titanium
-the fact they have a costco here wasn’t comforting. it was kind of sad.
-i need to learn to speak chinese, and how
-our doorbell sounds like a bird chirping
-i can’t wait to see peter again
-you can’t flush any paper down the toilet. see-ick.
-allison is quickly learning the importance of looking both ways
-allison just said “jermeiah is quickly learning that scooters go really fast and needs to tell her to run, not walk” when 20 of them are barreling down on us”
-starbucks and mcdonalds have internet, but it isn’t free. learned that the hard way after walking ten minutes to starbucks and another ten minutes to mcdonalds. was still fun though.
-it is fun having three people try to help you at mcdonalds just because you’re american
-not having a fridge isn’t half bad when you eat out a lot. and by eat out, i don’t mean fast food, i mean, rice, fresh veggies, and amazing tofu for every meal
-they have guinness and it is the dark export stuff
-charades is even more fun when it is cross cultural
-it was nice talking to my mom, dad, brother, and sister on the phone. actually, it was very nice
-is it college football season yet?
-we love it when people comment on our blog because it lets us know you’re out there
-i didn’t need to bring ten pairs of a pants
-i love having allison here with me, even if she is sitting next to me practicing her chinese lessons and confusing the hell out of me

bye. have a great day!