Do people hibernate?

I've been sleeping a lot lately so my life has been pretty uneventful. I don't know if my body is going into default hibernation or what, but it makes for a whole lot of lameness.

The most I can say is that I'm pretty excited about Chinese. I've been slacking off a little (sleep takes precedent over studying). Despite my laziness though, I am starting to get pretty good at this whole reading thing.

Granted I only know like 100 characters, but there is something about reading a language that doesn't even resemble your own that makes you feel that much more accomplished.

The only other thing worth noting was the gigantic earthquake today. I don't know if it's being on the 15th floor of our building or what, but it seemed huge today. It actually was a 6.0 reported in the center of the island in Nantou County. As you know, Taiwan is small, so anything like that going on in the middle of the island is going to make it's way here pretty quickly.

I was sitting at the kitchen table and next thing I knew my door was swinging on the hinges and I felt like I was on a boat in the middle of the ocean. I thought I was going to get motion sick (which is unusual for me), but otherwise it's kind of a cool feeling.

How do they get so adorable?

Yesterday turned out to be a pretty decent day. I have to admit that I've been taking a lot of time to myself, but not in an I'm-going-to-entirely-seclude-myself-from-everyone-around-me sort of way.

More like an I-need-time-to-digest-things sort of way. That's OK; We all need that kind of time and I certainly have never really been one to give that to myself.

I had so much fun in my first class yesterday. It was the play-dough class I was looking forward to.


We didn't play with clay again, but the co-teacher gave me the pictures from the last class.


Aren't they so adorable?


The peace sign is definitely these kids favorite thing to do in photos.


I think it's hilarious and takes me back to the '90s. You know, when I was their age and thought that the peace sign maneuver made me look cool in pictures.


We played a lot of games in that class again and had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, because these kids are so young, it takes a lot of energy to keep up with them, which left me no energy for my last class.

We got through it OK, though, and I think I'll be better prepared next week for my regular class. I'm still trying to feel those kids out. There is Ken, who can easily be considered the class clown and gets in trouble the most. He tends to set off all the other boys into doing what they do best — being boys.

The girls are all so quiet and it's so hard to get them to be loud when it comes time to participate. Hopefully I'll find something they really like and I can convince them that it really is OK to speak loudly enough for people to hear you.

After class I went to Carrefour to buy groceries. I decided that it would be a good idea to have food on hand in case a typhoon does actually come rolling through, though I'm not convinced it will. I've also been less inclined to go out and find something to eat, so having something in the kitchen is probably a good plan.

I bought milk and let me tell you that's not easy here. I have no idea which milk is full fat and which is non-fat, but then you have to add on that, here in Asia, they like apple milk and yogurt milk and soybean milk (sugar added or not) and apple-soy milk. I think there were at least 10 kinds of milk at that store. I may have ended up with yogurt milk, but I'm not sure. All I know is the milk tasted a little sweeter than what I remember it.

I think I'm starting to get into the routine though. After Carrefour I made myself some dinner (if you can call a cheese and bell pepper omelet dinner) and then I did some yoga.

I truly believe what they say about exercise getting endorphines flowing. After my yoga workout last night I felt way better than I have in the past couple of days and I kind of felt motivated to do things.

The unfortunate part was it was already 12:30 a.m. by the time I was feeling motivated. I ended up staying up and reading about the Sotomayor hearing and about Obama appointing a new surgeon general. I miss reading the news all of the time. That's something else I will have to work into my daily routine.

At about 2 a.m. I decided it was time just to turn out the lights and force myself into bed. As I was exiting out of all my screens on my computer, my bed starting shaking. Like I told my dad, I felt like I was dizzy, as if I had stood up too fast, except I was sitting on my bed.

There was a 6.3-magnitude earthquake off the east coast of Taiwan (NNE of Haulien City). We could feel it all the way over here on the NNW side of the country.

That's something else I'm trying to adjust to. In the States, when something happens on the East Coast in the middle of the night, the West Coast doesn't hear about it for several hours. We felt it though.

A few of the others in the dorm felt it and we came out of our rooms to see if we weren't all imagining it. Then I started doing my research. If any of you know me, you know I like to know what's going on as soon as I can.

I always have crazy tidbits of knowledge like this. It's in my nature.

Earthquake aside, everyone is fine. There was no reported damage. We're lucky it was out in the sea and not on the island. That could have been really devastating.

Oddly enough, given that I didn't go to sleep until about 4 a.m., I still managed to wake up just after 11 a.m. I think that's pretty good given that I work nights. No need to wake up much earlier than that unless I have plans.

I think this may be the beginnings of a new routine. I did some more yoga this morning (I think I'm going to switch to day time yoga in order to avoid the night time restlessness) and now I'm ready to make things happen.

I think I'm going to go study some Chinese and to my lesson plans for the day.