two more things that i hate about taiwan that i forgot to post were squat toilets and bug bites. and another thing i love about taiwan is getting my hair washed. do they even do that at salons here? like just hair washing and massaging? oh well i am back.. :) in some weird way i totally miss it and want to go back forever. it's odd. my cousin and my mom were all like "you can change your return date and just go home later" which is weird because my cousin didn't hang out with me until the last day... so i was like "yea.. right. :P" but oh well.. i'll just have to go back again or something. we'll see. the last few days were kind of draining because i got in more fights with my parents.. so it was a little rough, but i think things are smoothed over by now. i hope when my mom comes back on sunday she is in a good mood.

sunday night i spent the night at my uncle's house with my mom and on the way home from the bus stop we passed by a bakery and i got my mom a birthday cake. so we went up to the apartment and my uncle had bought my mom a cake too! (haagen daas..mmm.) so we had to mini cakes and champagne that my uncle had also bought, it was really cute, and i think my mom was really happy. it was fun :) i spent the night watching i, robot and under the tuscan sun... and didn't go to sleep until really late, but it was okay. under the tuscan sun was cute but i definitely liked the italian guy marcello way better than whoever she ended up with. hah.. he is my new crush.

monday i spent the day hanging out with my mom. i went with her to go get her hair done and i got my hair shampooed and in the end a little cut and trim. but it was such an ordeal! my mom really likes this lady and she really wanted me to get my hair cut, but i really didn't want her to trim my hair.. i don't know why.. because i think that she just didn't know what i wanted, so i didn't want her to mess it up. i adamantly refused several times and my mom kept saying "i'll give you $1000 NT if you don't like it" or "i'll pay for you plane ticket" or "i'll buy you this or that" but i kept saying no telling her that if i was ugly that none of that stuff mattered.. and in the end she pushed me so much i just started crying (what a baby.. i know) and said "fine! if you want to cut it so bad, just cut it" and i was really pissed off.. i knew the lady wasn't going to totally destroy it.. and my mom had said that she wanted me to cut it because she could tell that my hair was "poorly cut" like the ends or whatever.. and i thought that that comment had some merit since my hair was cut by a hair cutting student so i figured she could just fix it and i'm sure it wouldn't be too horrible. and in the end it isn't so bad, she just styled it wrong, like i thought she would.. but i ran the flat iron over my hair and it's okay now. styling makes a big difference with this haircut i have noticed. i can no longer just go out with my hair wet anymore.. damn. too high maintenance for me.

that night we and a lot of our closer family went out for my mom's bday celebration. it was this pretty nice japanese restaurant that my sister and brother in law picked. they had taken my mom there before and she liked it and their vegetarian cuisine was not just salad or pasta like my mom usually has to put up with so it was good. it was a really fun night and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and i think that made my mom happy and we had birthday cake again so that was fun. the night turned a little bad when i couldn't decide where to stay the night because my aunt & uncle wanted to spend time with me, and i thought my mom was making other plans, so i said i'd go over to my grandma's to spend the night, and my mom was like "fine if you want to break our plans, then do it" and i got really scared .. so i just went with her. but we went shopping back a shih lin night market .. and it was all good. we bought a lot more stuff and then i came home and watched my illegal movies that i bought (such a horrible person!) the quality is a little bad.. but not totally unwatchable.. although one movie was in french, so i gave that away, and another movie is pretty bad, but i didn't have time to go back an exchange it, so i'll take that as a loss.

tuesday i had lunch with my "aunt" pearl and her family with my mom and dad. they had really good beef noodle soup - the noodles were hand made and fresh and thick.. yum! and afterwards went shopping at yuan ling street market again since my mom hadn't been there yet. even though i already went there, i, of course, found stuff to buy. :P my sister joined us, which is always fun, and we did the family thing. this lady was rude to me, so i told my sister not to buy her sweater. she wanted like $790 NT for this sweater, and i was like i'd only pay $500, and she was like "you know you can't do that here, you can try to sass or bargain like that because we're already so cheap here, no one here likes it..." and i was like whatever, lady... it's a street market.. you ALWAYS bargain. and we bargained at other places so screw you. rude. and then it was the first day of winter, so in taiwan they eat "tong yuan" which is like these rice balls either filled with salty meat stuff or sweet sesame or peanut stuff. and i don't why exactly, but you eat them on the first official day of winter.. it's kind of cute. but my dad stood in line for like 45 minutes to buy fresh made ones from this one place. it was kind of crazy, but i think the wait was so long because the guy 2 people in front of him ordered 100 boxes. the ladies were mean too! although i felt kind of bad for them.. my dad first ordered 2 boxes of sweet, and 2 boxes of salty and then my mom was saying how she wanted to get some for her brother, and my sister chimed in that she liked the sweet ones.. and so my dad's like okay lemme have 3 sweet and 3 salty. and the lady was like "NO.. you only ordered 2 of each.. no more!" gawd... tong yuan nazi! and i was like "umm.. my dad waited for like 45 minutes and he can't even get 1 more box.. it's not like we're buying it for someone who doesn't want to wait in line, we're buying it for ourselves" and later on while we were just getting the boxes my mom asked the boss lady (not the nazi) and got the 2 we wanted.. so that was good. :) we went back to my grandma's and had tong yuan.. plus fresh salty ones that my grandma made herself!! they were waaay better than the store ones. mmm.. and then my mom, sister, grandma and i went back to the working house store and the hello kitty store to do some shopping. i wanted to hit up those two stores before i left so we got to do that :) afterwards was big family fight 1 of 2 so that night didn't bode so well... but i spent the whole night packing up all the goods and trying to conserve space so i could take stuff for my mom and went to bed at like 5:30am.

wednesday morning i met up with maurene's friend jen escorted by my cousin, gen-tai, since none of my relatives wanted me cruising the streets of taiwan by myself. we ate breakfast at "mc cafe" which is like a cafe owned by mc donalds, it's very starbucksish inside and they serve coffee and weird meals that aren't mcdonald'sish at all... which was surprising. i had tuna salad sandwiches where the bread was actually waffles. it was interesting... sweet and salty, but pretty good. we just sat and talked, which was fun and i made a new friend :) yay. afterwards i headed to my uncle's to pick up the stuff i left from when i stayed and went back to my grandma's for lunch (beef noodle soup and dumplings from the bestest place near my grandma's house!), my sister came over and we ate, chatted and she watched us pack, and fight 2 of 2 started as me and my dad were leaving. blech. but i'm glad that i got to hang out with my sister for a little bit.. i'm sad that we didn't get to hang out for that long and that we didn't go shopping as i had originally intended.. but we did exchange some more gifts and cards and had some quality hanging out time. i don't know, i really miss my sister and i always want to hang out with her.. maybe that's just the bratty little tag-along sister still inside me. my uncle dropped me and my dad off at the airport where things were up and down, but we got on the plane and i didn't have to sit next to him.. in fact i snatched up a whole row of 3 seats to myself.. so i was pretty content. i got to lay down and no one to bother me and i could look out the window and yet get up to pee without bothering anyone. it was great. i watched princess diaries 2, the bourne supremacy and the thunderbirds (anyone ever heard of that movie before... was it even out in theatres here?) and then slept and ate. we came back wednesday afternoon (wow.. we left on a wednesday afternoon.. it's like time travel!! :P) no problems with baggage (yay) and came back to 6 messages (all for my mom) and stacks of mail to sort through. oh damn.. i gotta pay my credit card bill... i just remembered! anyhoo... that was my trip. i should probably upload the photos soon. i've given out a majority of the presents i bought.. and unpacked a little today (to find the presents).. but i still have this damn jetlag.

i thought i would be okay since i went to bed at 1am yesterday and i was super tired. i woke up at 8am and i was like "hmm lemme sleep for a little while" and did that again at 11am, 2pm, 3pm and then 4pm when my dad came home from work and i figured i should probably get out of bed. awful! i did random stuff, and then went to beth and ryan's christmas party, where i stayed until 5:30am.. insane! dropped off my sister's christmas cards at her office and got home at 6:15am ish. i thought i would try to beat the jet lag and not sleep all day today.. but i don't think that's going to happen since i'm getting a little sleepy now.. (it's midnight in taiwan now).. maybe i'll just sleep until noon - when i'm sure my dad will make me get out of bed and i'm sure i'll be tired by night time. i wonder if i'll do what i did last time and just have jet lag for a whole week since i don't have to go to work. bad bad bad.

yesterday after i got back i met up with nicole at disneyland at night and we watched the holiday fireworks. they were sooooo cute and me and nicole were tearing up. it was so lame.. i mean.. in the way that who knew music and snow fireworks could make you cry?! leave it up to disney... nicole screams "damn you!! stop toying with my emotions!!" i was feeling a little teary but the "i'll be home for christmas" part was what got me. haha.. and although we weren't standing in the right spot for the snow to fall on us, it was still nice. i'll have to go back and really properly see it. maybe 2 or 3 times. and video tape it.. it's that awesome :)

i gotta get to best buy today so i can buy napoleon dynamite for the "first week out" price.. but i'm sooooooo dreading going near any shopping sort of place the day before christmas.. especially when a ton of people have it off. i was going to go to the mall to talk to my boss to see if i should work.. but that seems insane too... maybe i'll just call. they showed this live shot on the news yesterday of the insane parking lot at this crenshaw mall or something and like it was so bad that this car trying to leave couldn't even get out of his parking space.. and then when he was like backed out of the space, but still didn't have enough room to leave, this car in front of the spot (as opposed to the one waiting behind it) drove in and "stole" the spot.. maybe he was waiting for it first and didn't want that car who thought he deserved it to take it.. but to try and park in it while the car is still backing up sucks. hahah.. it's ruthless.. but if you wait then you're not gonna get the spot. you could he all the news people jeering and laughing.. it was pretty funny.

hahah.. that's holiday spirit for you.

happy christmas eve!!