Ode to Megan II

I love Megan. Megan loves my blog. The following is a collection of pictures of her expressing her true feelings for Taiwan:

megan loves rice

"you're going to do what?!"


after she "assumed the position"


megan loves clinicals

sorority squattin'
"i could really use a beer right now"
this is not an unflattering picture of me, please direct your attention to the bottom left corner

Team Grab-a-Heiny: The Lost Post

So I've been home for a few days now and everyone I talk to asks me, "Gabi, what was your favorite part of the trip?" I pause, think about it, cackle a little bit, and tell them "when we went bike riding". Yes, this was mentioned in a previous post ( http://gnaumann.blogspot.com/2010/05/i-always-knew-never-learning-how-to.html) but I must confess, I did not give the entire story.

the epic tale of how team grab a heiny came to be

After a busy day of museum touring, pottery making, and shopping, we boarded our tour bus and I settled in for a nap until we got to our next destination--the fish market. I probably napped on and off but all of a sudden we just stopped. To our right was this little shack and outside various bikes of all shapes and sizes were lined up. My heart drops, my hands get clammy, and my heart rate spikes. It's one thing to tell everyone that I never learned how to ride a bike and laugh about it, but actually having to face the fact that I don't know how to ride a bike and everyone else does and possibly be left out of/screw up an activity is no bueno. As soon as I see the two-person bike, I grab Gina and make her promise to do it with me. She obliges (duh). Crisis averted. Sadly, Ali and Heidi grab the only two-seater, so Megan, Hannah, Gina, and I nab a four-seater. First thing we do is take off in the absolute wrong direction. After we get turned around, we pedal like the wind. Sadly no matter how hard we go, we inch forward at a snails pace. We found out later that we got a defective bike. uhhh sweet. We huff and puff our way up a hill with crazy drivers whizzing by us (or stopping to take pictures), through masses of people crossing the road (more pictures), and through a sand storm by the beach. We finally reach a flat spot and are instantly hit with the smell of decomposing sewage-hey stinky tofu. We weave our way between the stands besides the road, and Megan exclaims, "I could really use a beer right now". We all agree. Two minutes later we drive by this little restaurant and I tell our group that I bet they have beer. We stop dead in our tracks and debate about a-whether they have beer, and b-who should go look. Gina and I decide to go check and lo-and-behold they do! We buy a bottle of heineken, nab some little shot glass sized cups, and return to our bike. We decide that one beer isn't enough for this terror of a trip so we trot back down to buy another. Taiwan beer is cheaper so bought that and returned to our gimpy bike.

We ditch the cups and decide to pass the bottles around while we bike. BUI? The next hour or so was spend pedaling furiously, screaming beep beep to everyone in our way, and Ni Hao to all the asians that were probably thinking to themselves "sirry 'mericans ruv arcohor". We look at the clock and decide that since we're going so slow we should probably turn around and head back, so we do. There is the slight problem of rolling around on a four person bike with multiple HUGE beer bottles, so when we pass the restaurant we make Hannah go throw them out. Hannah was chosen for this project because she was the only one that objected to littering. While she's trying to throw out our bottles, the non-english speaking owner literally forces another bottle of beer on her. We were going to save it for later buuuuut we got thirsty. We pass a little girl on roller skates who falls down like 5 minutes later. Being the good athletic trainer that she is, Megan hopped erm..stumbled...off the bike, helped her get her skates back on, and got back on our bike. Later the little girl zoomed past us, further emphasizing how crappy our bike was. We got back to the bike place around the same time everyone else did, group hugged, and the rest is history...

There's No Place Like Home

I'm finally back on American Soil and it's fabulous. We stayed up most of the night before we had to leave (fell asleep at 3, woke up at 5). We ate tons of junk food, watched countless youtube videos, and even had a country music sing a long (wagon wheel, dixieland delight, and chicken fried were all included). When Megan woke me up in the morning, I popped out of bed feeling much like I would expect a kid on christmas morning would feel. We were greeted with a bunch of NTSU students, cameras, and bakery boxes. Hooray cake for breakfast for the last time! We got to the airport, said goodbye to everyone (including Gina who was going to China), went through security, and plopped down to wait for the flight to Tokyo. Here is team grab-a-heiny minus Gina looked quite pleased to be getting off the island.

The flights were pretty uneventful. Slept the 4 hour flight to Tokyo...got off and sat around...boarded the flight to Atlanta where I watched a lot of movies (aka the first 4 minutes of movies) and passed out for probably 10 of the 12 hours of the flight. We got in early, went through Atlanta's completely idiotic security, and jumped into my parents' arms! I did have a weird exchange with a passport control official, dubois, who I'm guessing had a strong hate for Taiwan.

me *big smile* hi, how are you
dubois grunt i knew it was bad news when he didn't smile back. What were you doing in Taiwan
mestudy abroad
dubois What did you learn? That taiwan is a dirt hole?
meummm not quite. we learned traditional chinese medicine
duboisoh, so like using pig's gallbladders and harvesting organs?
excuse me, what?
me more like accupuncture and massage techniques
dubois grunts and stamps passport

ohh dubois, what a stand up man.

Anyhow got home, ate some pretzels, gave my parents their presents, took a nap, ate homemade pizza, reveled in the fact that we can use forks and knives and not chopsticks, took a bath, and am just happy to be home.

I guess now that I'm home and no longer Taiwandering this will be the last blog....or will it?

Ode to Megan

Today was probably Megan's favorite day today. Why you ask? well for one thing, it's the last day; she's had a countdown going for the past week or so. Also, I think this is the most she's eaten in a single day since we've gotten here. After our practical, we went to lunch at a hibachi place. I thought Megan was going to fall over and die when she saw that filet mignion was on the menu. She got it, ate it all, and then had a huge bowl of ice cream. The last time I saw her smile so much was when I saw her downtown on her birthday. I had the kobe beef and shrimp which was amazing...and a huge bowl of ice cream. This made me happy because I woke up this morning and wanted ice cream (the diet starts when I get home, shut up).

We took our group picture and then went to clinical where Megan let me tape her ankle like 37 times so I wouldn't feel like an athletic training failure, and then we dipped out and got ready for dinner.

The NTSU students took us out to a korean BBQ place which was good, it was kind of like a hot pot, but with an island sticking out of it to cook the meat. After biting into half cooked chicken I decided to just eat raw broccoli....and more ice cream.

Since today is our last day, we've decided to to stay up all night so we can sleep on the plane(obviously my bottle of ambien is not going to help me). In order to stay up all night as well as get rid of our last taiwanese money, we stopped by the 7-11 and loaded up on chips, candy, and soda. I've decided that if I'm going to lose weight when I get home, I might as well load up on crap now.
Soooo here we are: one bag of chips, one pack of m&ms, and one coke zero down. We've already showered and watched about 10 SNL skits. What to do now...play cards? bah this sucks. I think I'm going to make Megan do Origin Point therapy on me.

Ban Dan

So as everyone knows, I did not go out last night. Gina however had a great time experiencing Taiwan night life. She woke me up last night when she came back so in return, she is guest blogging about her fabulous night:

So... since Gabi is forcing (liteally- she threatened our friendship if i didnt blog) me to guest blog, i will give you a quick synopsis of the taiwanese night clubs. 1) it was called deep passion.. interesting name 2) it was very dark inside, some black lighting going on, lounge type seating, pretty snazzyish 3) it was super cheap.. it was ladies night so girls got in free but for the "boys" and i say boys because most of the girl NTSU students that we were with were charged a cover charge because they refused to dress up (remember our game of boygirl? yep). The cover charge was 100NT which is about 3 USD and included an unlimited amount of drinks for the night. 4) Overall, it was really fun getting to hang out with the NTSU students... we introduced them to tequila.. which became their drink of choice for the night! 5) Finally... Asians can't dance.. including this one.


needless to say, Gina was hilarious this morning when I woke her up for our practical. The room literally reeked of alcohol and she was sleeping at the wrong side of the bed. AND for your viewing pleasure, the following are some pictures of this cute throughout the day:

after we threw candy wrappers in her mouth

crashed out on the bus

sleeping at the lunch table--her father would be so disappointed

i love you gina!!!! best roommate EVER

The reason I'm going on a juice fast..

http://eatdrinkskinny.blogspot.com/2010/06/reason-why-ive-gained-50-pounds-ok-not.html

so long, farewell

we had the farewell party tonight and parts of it were actually really fun and kind of touching! When had a buffet style dinner with beef, chicken, rice, and a few dumplings which I wasn't crazy about, and then a bunch of desserts and fruits. They must have know I had a major sweet tooth today! While we were eating, they presented us with certificates of completion for the program, our teachers made some speeches, and we played some goofy games. It was then time for our tai chi dance. Surprisingly I didn't drop the fan or really mess up (neither did Megan! yay!) but Hannah had a premature fan opening which made team awesome laugh hysterically for the rest of the dance.
Then came the "talent show". One group did charades which was kind of funny...one group did camp songs-dumb...and then team awesome + candice taught everyone "traditional american dances" such as YMCA, the chicken dance, and the macarena. We were clearly the best. The crowd loved us. We then watched a slide show which was basically the Gabi and Gina show since all the pictures were taken from our cameras and then our buddies presented us with gifts and we all had to make mini speeches. we all pretty much said the same thing: "we love ya'll..come visit athens...i had so much fun....yayyyy taiwan". A lot of people were crying, believe it or not I was not one of them, but I was touched by the sentiments just the same.
Yes, I'm ready to leave, but I really did have a great time. Everyone is so nice and gracious-something that we definitely don't see in the states, I've learned so much, and I've made amazing friends (team grab-a-heiny forever!!)
I just finished up packing most of my stuff and Megan and I are going over stuff for our practical tomorrow. All is quiet in Pu Yuan since everyone else has gone out to a night club with some of the students. I'll give everyone a second to recover from the shock that I did not participate in the shenanigans of tonight. I'm just tired and ready for bed. One more full day tomorrow and then I'm homeward bound :)

"just stick me"

So I completely slept through my alarm today and definitely didn't have enough time to study--oops! After eating breakfast (an omelet like egg wrapped in a "pancake") we walked over to Chang Gung University where we had a lesson on massage and acupuncture.
We learned the accupoints for all kinds of symptoms and our professor encouraged us to share the point for sexual performance with our parents and grandparents. VOMIT. Anyhow we practiced finding accupoints for a while and then our professor demonstrated acupuncture on us. Now after our last three lesson on chi, I find the whole concept pretty hokey, but I am a firm believer in acupuncture. He did a point in my wrist that corresponded to my shin and a point in my leg corresponding to my shoulder.


When he put the needle into the accupoint I literally felt a whole zing go down my hand and foot (respectively) AND the pain went away! After that, we went to lunch and had way too much food as usual, came back and took our exam, and then played games with the NTSU students.
Currently we're getting ready for the farewell party, tai chi performance (gag me), talent show (even better) and then the students are taking us to a club I think. This has the making for a very interesting night...

almost done!

so i'm nearing the end and the last days are going to be pretty unblogworthy, yesterday included. Last night was our last tai chi lesson which was as amazing as ever, and today we have our final exam, a softball game (cross your fingers for rain), and a farewell party. I was supposed to get up an hour ago to study, but never heard my alarm...Oops!

the bathroom problem

Sad day today-we had to leave kenting and one of the prettiest hotels i've ever been to in my life. Like I said before, I thought they were just playing a sick joke on us when we pulled up to the Fullon resort. After exploring the indoor pool and showering we got our rooms. My jaw dropped when we opened the door: two HUGE fluffy beds, a great view, a fabulous shower, and no icky bugs. We all got drink vouchers so we had a pre-dinner toast "gan bei" and headed to a thai restaurant for dinner.

Our waiter looked very feminine and later I put two and two together that that he probably had a secdond job when the restaurant closed its curtains and put on "live shows"!
We walked around a bit and then all met up for some group bonding (refer to the previous post) and then went shopping again. While walking back to the resort we stumbled upon a random bar on the side of the road that would give you free drinks if you could ride a tiny tricyle in a circle three times-nobody could do it. Rachel did try though.


After the best night sleep I've had in like 2.5 weeks, we woke up for breakfast. Hooray buffet! There were a lot of traditional chinese foods, but the most exciting things were the waffles, cereals, and fresh fruit.
Megan, Hannah, Gina, and I headed down to the workout room where we experimented with new workout equipment (except for Megan who stuck to the treadmill). After our very strenuous workout, we went back and napped until checkout.

We had taiwanese food for lunch today and it was really tasty. There were some green mountain vegetables, fried fish in a sweet and sour sauce, a squid dish, some soups, fried squid balls, and a couple of other dishes. I was still full from breakfast so I only had a few bites of each, but it was so good!
We visited the National Sport Training Center where they train athletes for the olympics and Asian games. It was interesting to me because my main goal is to be an AT for a national team, but overall it was pretty boring. After that we went to Lotus Lake where there were two towers-one is a tiger and one was a dragon. We also went to a beautiful buddhist temple across the street and bought some fresh fruit from a street vendor.



On the bullet train back I studied a little bit on a coke and special k bar induced energy blast and then took the rest of the i to reflect on what I like to call "the bathroom problem".

Taiwan is not conducive to pooping. This has been the topic of many a conversation because NONE OF US CAN POOP!! it doesn't matter if we eat a lot or a little, poop just doesn't happen. And even if by some stroke of luck we did have to go, there's the issue of "squatties". Yes, our bedrooms have normal toilets, but the classroom buildings, restrooms, etc.. have some glorified holes in the ground. Think of a toilet bowl embedded into a platform and you get squatties. It's hard enough to go #1 in that thing let alone #2!! I just don't get it. Needless to say, I need out of this country!!

Not Toppers

hokay so. just got back from a night in "downtown" kenting. bars are pretty much non existent, however fun fact: ordinary dinner restaurants, including the amazing thai place we ate at tonight, turn into strip clubs once the sun goes down. curiosity got the best of us and we paid our cover charge at went 'sploring. First of all...out of the three "girls", one was a man. There was one actual male stripper with a batman mask and hot shorts on. cute...second of all, they select members of the audience to participate in the show....third of all, americans are apparently a hot commodity here. They take picture of us candidly, ask us to pose with them for pictures, and pull us up from our seats to participate in aforementioned "live show". ALSO it is common place to take babies and small children into these venues. um excuse me? baby's first transvestite experience is probably frowned upon in the states. NOT toppers.

On a completely separate note, our hotel is freaking insane. Our rooms have two of the biggest beds I've ever seen...the rooms our huge...our view in overlooking the ocean. Be jealous.



Beach day tomorrow-send me sunny vibes!!!

don't pee in the wetsuit!

woke up bright and early to be out the door at six thirty. We once again had a bakery box for breakfast which consissted of a cheese and mayo sandwich (pass), 3 cream puffs (had one and pawned the rest of to heidi), a swiss roll (one bite and then trash) and a piece of strawberry cake that I ate the strawberry off of. At the train station I decided I was better suited with a breakfast of iced coffee (starbucks!), a special K bar, and a banana. Yes starbucks is still overpriced and no they don't accept giftcards-it was worth a shot though. Despite a grande coffee's worth of caffeine in my body, I fell asleep almost instanly on the bullet train and stayed that way for the ramined of the 2 hour trip. So long intentions of studying, see you about a day before the final exam. It was pouring when we got off the bullet train and after a frenzied run to our tour bus (which does not have freaky gypsy curtains and tassels) and much debate, we headed to kenting because apparently the weather there was not as bad.
Lunch today was at this huge open restaurant. There were a few different meat dishes where I employed the 3 bite rule and my personal favorite-sweet potato leave in which i employed the 3 bowl rule. Ok just kidding, I had like one bowl...Megan was happy that there was chicken and Hannah figured out a way to blend in with the adventerous diners
While we were eating, the skys opened and it started to monsoon. After a sprint to the bus we were conmpletely soaked. Thank god for dry fit.
The monsoon reduced to a drizzle and we decided to "stay the course" and go ahead with our water activities. WE suited up in wet suits and water booties, piled into a creepy seatless van and headed to the beach.

We snorkled towards a little boat. Half of us got onto the banana boat (or as dr. cooper calls it, a water weiny) and got towed around until we flipped. I gave Gina a bloody nose and she gave me a mild concussion-figures. We also fell inside the boat a few times and the toothless captain prodded us with his big walking stick.

Once we recovered we went tubing in pairs behind a jetski. Nobody flipped but I definitly thought we were going to. After everyone had a turn (and team grab-a-heiny had two!), we snorkled back.

The fish were ok, but I think snorkeling in Hawaii has spoiled me forever.
We got back on the bus in our towels and headed to the hotel. I thought it was a joke when we pulled up because all we saw was this HUGE pool with slides and lots of buildings. Not a joke, this is where we're staying. Bad news: our rooms weren't ready and we looked liked stupid americans walking around this really nice lobby in towels and bikinis holding our luggage. good news: we used the showers downstairs and played in the indoor pool, hot tub, and steam room. Big thumbs up. Our room is ready now, so I think I'm going to check that out. We're going out tonight :) :)

the one where Gina almost got in a fight

another long day today (I feel like I say this everyday). We started off the morning with McDonald's breakfast, which I quickly gave to Megan and Hannah, and bussed it to the national palace museum. Long story short, there is a very different view of personal space here, we all got body checked by tiny asian women atleast three times, and Gina resorted to screaming "rude" at them. Since we obviously don't appreciate art and culture, we high-tailed it to the children's part of the museum where we had the most fun of the whole museum experience.
After entirely too much time in the museum we went to lunch at this dumpling place that was pretty good. I just had a few bites because I wanted to take it light, megan and hannah ate nothing, and everyone else liked it.
The Cheng Kai Shek memorial was eerily like the Lincoln Memorial, with a big statue sitting in a memorial and looking down on all the visitors. What was NOT like the Lincoln memorial was the fact that there were two guards (thing the guys in London that NEVER move) guarding him. We watched the changing of the guards which was pretty cool, but strangely reminicent of Nazis, took some pictures, and headed over to Taipei 101.

We traveled to the top of the world's second highest building, took pictures, got pushed around by people that don't respect personal space, yada yada yada. After we got on the bus everyone passed out until dinner.
We went to a Mongolian BBQ place where we picked out our meats, veggies, and sauce and the people cooked it in front of us. Just like O-house stir fry! It was nice to have chicken which apparently is rare here, and it was also nice to know exactly what I was eating for once.
A short bus trip away was a cross between a night market and a mall where we bummed around, shopped (aka bought myself more shoes), and then we headed back to NTSU.

I'll add pictures, videos, and info to this later, but I have to pack for Kenting and start working on my paper. Hey procrastination!

oh the irony

dear faithful followers, this is gina... the infamous roommate who contributes to the chaos of team awesome and enjoys napping on gabi's shoulder. i just wanted to inform you that gabi is not only nauseated but also just threw up and continues to insist on providing you with a synopsis of our taiwandering adventures... she says, you're welcome. so i encourage you to READ ON. love, gina

so tonight will be a short blog, obviously. today was such a long day, however I will cover it all with the following list:
class
judo championship
mcdonalds
rain
track and field meet
more rain
public transportation
ew
night market
candied strawberries (and cherry tomatoes?)
hot
bubble tea
fried mushrooms
presents for people I like
found luggage
still hot
bumpy ride
head ache
still really hot
puke
hooray

i love you all, but mostly my parents, gina, and the rest of team awesome.

goodnight

(also, i feel the need to mention Megan because she gets cranky if she doesn't make my daily blogs)

**while reading over this later, I realized I never explained the irony of my life. While trying to figure out what made me puke, Gina and I realized that the only thing we BOTH didn't eat was a McDonalds salad. While everyone else was craving fries, I was craving a salad...so with all the crazy food that i've eaten, McDonald's was my downfall. awesome.

this one's for Jaden!

Soooo yoga didn't exactly go as planned...our teacher spoke about five words of english and sounded like a cross between a dinosaur, a dying cat, and the noise the water cooler makes (turn up the volume when you watch the video...you'll see). Anyhow, as soon as she turns on the music, we realize something is wrong. It's poppy, up-beat, and so not yoga like at all. And cue aerobic dance. I think the following pictures can describe our experience far better than my explanation ever could. and here is team awesome in our full glory
and last but not least Megan, Gina, and I dancing, wait 'til the end to see me breaking it down

That wasn't the end of my sweet moves though. Outside our room were three guys breakdancing. Eager to show off the hip hop routine Jaden has been teaching me for the past month or so, Candice and I asked if we could join the fun. We did. I did the macarena...but then redeemed myself my teaching them the worm. They couldn't do it-who's laughing now? Worm+Jaden's hip hop dance=bow to my dancing greatness. Of course then Candice showed me up with her Dance Dawg routine...but hey, you can't win them all.

This would have been posted last night, but the internet wasn't working so I finished outlining my paper and went to sleep. Today we're going to class, some Judo championship and then another night market? Yay shopping!

"your hands are stupid"

Rainy day today :( For some reason we slept in a little later today, met in the lobby (Cooper's here now, not Dr. Brown), and walked over to eat breakfast. Breakfast today was a big box of potstickers. I wasn't hungry, so I just tried a bite, but it tasted just like the ones we'd order in the states.

Tasty? yes. But a special K bar was a much better choice.
Class today had something to do with Chi again, which meant I understood a total of 1% of the lesson. Instead of paying attention, we spent our time doing massage trains and falling asleep standing up. Very productive. The only thing I gathered is that our chi is weak and we have stupid hands. By the time lunch rolled around, I was starving. We ate at the NTSU cafeteria today which made everyone happy. I had the same problem I have when I eat off the Earthfare hot bar-I can't decide what to choose and get a little bit of everything. And there really was everything.

Like I said, everyone was happy. Megan loved the fact that there were chicken fingers and hashbrown cakes, and I was happy that there was an abundance of vegetables. sidenote: I did not eat everything on my plate by any means. I had bites of everything, but the only things I finished were the veggies. Eggplant=so good. Gina and I bonded with Dr. Cooper over lunch and our walk back to our rooms. In response to our whining about the lack of shopping time he responded "don't worry, Daddy's here". He will make a welcome addition to team "grab a heiny".
The rest of the day has been pretty uneventful. Just did clinicals in the AT room and tried to do some research for my paper. We did get pizza hut pizza and fried chicken tonight for dinner which was amazing. I didn't think I was hungry until I tried a bite and then realized I was ravenous. I had my fair share of pizza but didn't try the chicken. Pat ate about 1 1/2 chickens total, so I'm guessing it was good. We have yoga later..10 bucks says I'll pass out again.

option one? or option two?

Another long day today. Got up early to run, but never actually made it out. Instead, I attempted to be a responsible student and start working on my final paper. We then walked to breakfast which was some sort of meat ball, noodles, and a fried egg. I also tried one of the spiciest sauces I've ever tasted (it's the red stuff in the little packet)..seriously one tip of my chopstick lit my entire tongue on fire.

After breakfast we had class where we learned about herbal medicine and prepared Ru Yi Jin Huang San, which is a mixture of herbs that when combined with water and spread on some gauze makes a pretty good pain patch. It kind of smells like curry and tea tree oil, and looks like baby poop. I think the term "doody pie" describes them accurately.

Today we switched it up a little bit and instead of going to lunch and clinical after our first class, we grabbed a box lunch and hopped on a bus to take a day trip. Everyone was delighted to see that our lunch was another bakery box.


Today it was filled with a cranberry tea, some sort of sandwich, pound cake, a chocolate/orange peel, and some sort of cheesecake tart. And I wonder why I'm getting fat! Ha Ha

I'm not exactly sure how long the bus ride was because I have developed bus induced narcolepsy and passed out soon after we took off. I woke up to find us at the Beitou Hot Spring Museum which reminded me of a place we'd go on a middle school field trip. It was an old public bath house that was turned into a museum. We alotted WAY too much time to spend there, so after the tour Gina, Megan, and I walked to the 7 eleven to get something to drink and explore for a bit. We boarded the bus again and surprisingly I stayed awake on this leg of the trip. Gina, however, did not. She fell asleep and somehow found her way to my shoulder. Yeahhh we're cute. We stopped again in some Yang-Ming Mountain national park which seemed like a huge garden on the side of a mountain with lots of stairs and some gazebos. Megan, Gina, Hannah, and I plopped down in a gazebo and chilled for a while until we heard a voice over the loud speaker telling all the uga students to meet at the bus. We found out way back and were relieved that we weren't the last people back for once. After a few more minutes when a group of 3 or 4 people still hadn't come back we made the announcement again....split up and searched for them....announced again....looked for them...this whole process went on for an hour until they finally came back. We took a quick poll and decided nobody was hungry for dinner yet so we'd go to the hot spring first.
Last night we were told that we had two options for the hot springs. 1-unlimited time in the public hot spring. The catch is they don't allow swim suits in it. 2-choose a partner and get 50 minutes in a private bath with them. Picking number 2 was a no brainer for me, Gina, and the rest of our little posse, but everyone else seemed pretty excited to sit in the buff in a huge hot bath with a bunch of naked strangers. Turns out there was no need for us to choose between option 1 and 2 because the ladies' public hot spring was broken so we all got to soak in private. I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting our private hot spring room to look like, but it was the size of a walk in closet and looked like a hotel bath tub.

After soaking in the sulfur water we had dinner at the rooftop restaurant. It was so good! It was too dark to take pictures of the food, but (most of) it was great! We had peking short ribs, an amazing seafood "salad", some chicken dish, a seafood and bean sprout dish,a whole steamed fish with the head still on and two different soups. One of the soups had pork intestine in it. I debated trying it for about 10 minutes, but against my best judgement ended up trying a bite. After promptly spitting it out, I decided that maybe from now on I should take it easy and stay away from internal organs..
We just got back a few minutes ago, and I feel so huge. I think it's the combo of big meals and not really getting much exercise in. Why is school getting in the way of my life?!

assume the position

so today started off kind of iffy, but definitely rallied to a great finish. The whole group's been in a funk; I think we're all exhausted, overwhelmed, and craving some American food (yes, even me. I would kill for a pizza and salad right now). Plus we had a midterm today which everyone was stressed about. Needless to say, nobody paid attention in class this morning. Not that we could actually understand what he was talking about (something about chi?)...but yeah. Cram session. After our morning class we took our midterm which was pretty ok. Not as bad as I expected, but I probably didn't get a 100 either. We had lunch (kind of like mongolian beef) and then went to clinical. Today I got to work with Tae Kwon Do which was really interesting and full of injuries. One guy got kicked in the hand so hard that they think he fractured it. All the kicking made me miss fight club a lot. I'm counting down the days until my Omni membership unfreezes. Around dinner time, things started looking up. It reminded me of moo shoo duck, which was dubbed as "mexican chinese fajitas" by Jena. Ha ok Jena, whatever floats your boat! We had a little time to kill so we went back to our rooms to hang out, and then went back to class to learn about kinesio taping. We were all dreading it, because the last thing we wanted to do is sit through MORE class, but I seriously thought I was going to pee in my pants due to the events that progressed. The class started out innocently enough-we learned various shoulder and neck taping procedures.

The fact that tape was hot pink at went with my outfit made me quite happy. I make learning stylish :) I then tried to teach the NTSU students about back fat, arm jiggle, and my personal favorite...the love muffin (the oh so cute merger between love handles and a muffin top).

AND THERE'S MORE
After we practiced the shoulder tapings on each other we learned how to treat the lower back. Somehow Megan was the model and had to "assume the position" in front of the entire class. She would probably murder me in my sleep if I posted the montage of pictures we took to document it...so here we all are showing off our taping jobs

the following picture needs no explanation

and finally, me doing the "sexy girl pose" (their words, not mine)


good times with the hot pink tape.

when we got back to Pu Yan (our dorm) we had like 5 cans of pringles and a 2 liter bottle of coke zero. THANK GOD. All's well that ends well I suppose.

Tomorrow is going to be another busy day. We have class tomorrow morning and hot springs tomorrow afternoon. Pretty sure we have to be naked in public.....we'll see how that goes..