we're ok, but morakot did wreak havoc on taiwan

this was in southern taiwan, in taitung. no one was hurt. crazy

20 eyes, high fives, and two white people (and morakot?)

went out to dinner at a thai place about 2 minutes from us last night. (will post a map of where we are as soon as i figure out where we are). when we walked in, all four of the early 20s wait stuff stopped in their tracks and waited for us to do something. we froze too because we didn't know what to do, and then i smiled and held of two fingers (hoping i wasn't actually flipping them off). they seated us and we had a great meal - spicy green beans, sauteed vegetables, rice, taiwense beer (600 ml!), and some icy mango-y, coconut milky dessert stuff that was great. however, that wasn't all that happened... i definitely picked the wrong seat during the meal because allison was able to eat while making eye contact with all four people on the wait staff and the other six people eating about 73% of the time. i kept asking her if they were still looking and she said "yes" through her cute little smile. of course, i kept turning around to check, and was greeted with smiles. we both decided i definitely need to switch spots with allison next time. we were also able to have four different waiters/waitresses throughout the dinner. i'm guessing they all wanted a chance to say they waited on white people, so we had a different person seat us, take our order, serve our food, and then bring us the bill. it got better when i got up and asked where the bathroom was. after the girl told me where to go and i went in, allison saw her turn to someone with a big smile and say, "restroom!" and give them a big high five. wish i could have seen it! anyways, we ate, paid, i forgot and tried to tip, they didn't want it, and we left. loved it! hopefully they know we'll be going there at least 7 nights a week.

oh, one more thing... typhoooooooooooooon! mr. (or mrs? or ms? help me out megan) morakot is hopefully going to be visiting us tomorrow!!! we probably won't get the big stuff, but we will probably get quite a bit of rain. if we do get hit with it, allison and i will be sure to let you know how it goes. (and no, i won't make any wizard of oz jokes about not being in kansas anymore) if you don't know, we're about in the middle of taiwan on the west side - here is a satellite image of it:

ps i mentioned megan earlier in this blog post. she is THE blonde in taiwan (accept no imitations) and has been over here for almost a year. actually, i don't know how long she has been here exactly, but i'm too lazy to look right now. check her blog out!

pps allison tried to get us kicked out of a sega arcade/video gambling place today. will post video later, but she used our camera to take a video of me losing three dollars and was told to put her camera away. it was a crazy virtual black jack game. i probably would have won if i hadn't gotten flustered.