Nothing

That's what I have to write about today: nothing. I got up at noon and was careful to eat a healthy meal to prepare myself for a grueling afternoon of falling asleep on my book and watching a podcast.

The rub, of course, is that today was NOT supposed to be one of lethargy. I have an application due in 10 days, and so far I have only a first draft of the big essay, which, at present, looks as though it has swallowed parts of the other two essays I need to write. Today, I was planning on teasing these components out and nurturing them into independence, and then filling the holes they left in the original with the dozens of crucial experiences I had left out in my first enthusiastic writing spree.

But, given my current mental state of mind, I have a hard time imagining that whatever work I would do would be any good whatsoever. So...I'm stuck sitting and waiting and hoping that the people I asked for recommendations get back to me SOON, and debating the merits of just getting SOMEthing done. I did turn in my first weekly report today--a bit of a pain, really--but that's it. I guess I should go write the dialogue for Morning English at Han-Min, which begins Wednesday.

Oh, and it's the Moon Festival today! Which is why such lounging was possible on a Monday--Taiwan National Holiday. (The 7-11 is still open, though, and they gave me a cool Moon Festival folder when I went down a while ago to buy eggs.) Moon festival festivities typically include sitting outside with your family, eating moon cakes, barbecuing, and eating pomelos and putting the skins on your head like a hat*, all while watching the huge full moon. Yesterday, Tom told me that today is supposed to have the brightest full moon in six years. But the sky here, unfortunately, is overcast and rainy--retrospectively, yet another reason yesterday's barbecue was so amazing: it's been all but impossible to celebrate today in Kaohsiung. It was big, bright, and almost full yesterday in Taipei, at least!

Ever seen this before? I definitely used it to run for student council in high school, and it's labeled "watermelon helmet cat"--but yeah, that's definitely a pomelo skin. Happy Moon Festival!

So far, by the way, this has been the summary (and highlight) of my day:

It's a Taiwan-shaped mooncake, given to me by one of my students! And note that this picture was taken on my bed. Yep, my day in a nutshell.

So I'll go back to eating off of the mountain of moon cakes I received from my students, LETs, and Dr. Tsai, and maybe see how much I can wake myself up to accomplish.

Either that, or go watch TV. Hmmm....

*not my class, for the record. But cute!