Rain 下雨

(Not the Korean guy, the actual thing!)

Hi everyone! 

It has been raining almost nonstop for over a week now. Mostly it doesn't rain very hard, just enough to be uncomfortable and make your clothes damp, but yesterday it poured down. One of the missionary brothers, Terry, said that once it rained for a solid month in Taipei. It rained so much that it flooded the subway system and almost shut the city down! And up in Jilong, to the north, it rained for three straight months. Happily, Kenting (the "Hawaii of Asia") is only two hours away by bullet train...

Speaking of bullet trains, look who it is!

Jim and Fei Li Voglino!

Jim and Fei Li, as most of you already know, are in Sacramento Chinese. Fei Li is Taiwanese by birth, and grew up here. They met when Jim went to Taiwan to engineer their bullet train system. They're not out here for any happy reason- Fei Li's mother is very sick- but while they were in Taiwan, they decided to come up to Taipei and visit us. We had a really good time, and it was great seeing them! Fei Li was very happy, both as a Witness and as a Taiwanese person, to hear that I like Taiwan.

They took us out to Din Tai Fung, a world-renowned xiaolongbao restaurant that had its first store here in Taipei.

The chefs hard at work. If you look carefully, you can see pictures of Tom Cruise making dumplings!

They were, quite literally, the best xiaolongbao I've ever had. They're little dumplings filled with pork and soup, with soy and vinegar sauce, and they were accompanied by bitter greens, sour cabbage, something that reminded me of okra, spicy kimchi dumplings... oh man, I'm getting hungry again thinking about it.

Our waitress- she's from Poland, and came here on an internship so she can open a dumpling house in Warsaw. Also, Harry is amazed.

In that picture, our waitress is showing us how to make the sauce for the dumplings- there's a science to it- and then how to properly eat them, to best enjoy them. For Taiwan, this was an expensive meal, but it was still a good deal by American standards, and the Voglinos generously picked up the tab for us. (Actually, they might be reading this- thank you again, guys!)

They couldn't stay for long, only a few hours, so after lunch we waddled our way over to a coffee shop and talked for a while. It was really nice catching up with them, and hopefully next time they come they can have a happier reason.

Because it's been raining so much, service has been a little different. On Saturday, we have our biggest service group, but it was raining too heavily for us to go door-to-door. So we went to the flower market!

Flowers! And Brandy! (The person, not the drink... sadly)

Their flower market is awesome! They have almost every kind of flower that grows in Taiwan (which is most of them), including some really weird ones. My favorite was the one that looked like a spiky brain! You weren't allowed to take pictures of the individual stalls, sadly...

But the service was very interesting in here. We really did just walk around, looking at flowers, drinking flower tea, and chatting with the owners about nature and creation. If they seemed interested, we'd give them a magazine and ask if we could come back at the next market time (twice a month). It was a really pleasant, really enjoyable way to spend the day in service.

More of our group- from the right, Cameron, Mason and Sr. Dai

I also had time to think- why, in the West, is it not "manly" to like flowers? Flowers are beautiful, they give us food and drink, and they replenish oxygen so we don't all suffocate. They're aesthetic and functional, surely two things that everyone can enjoy. And in fact, in Japanese culture, it was considered one of the requirements of the Samurai caste- you had to be a good warrior, you had to be able to write poetry, and you had to be able to make a garden. I like flowers. Deal with it, world. :-)

One fine morning, it actually wasn't raining hard, so we were able to do some regular intercom witnessing. We went north of the hall, an area where we don't go very often, and the city began to look a bit different.

A bit.

It's very interesting how different districts of this same city can have such variety. My area has lots of high-rises and apartment blocks, which get denser the farther west you go (Yonghe District is, officially, the most densely populated area on earth, surpassing Hong Kong!). Up north, you get these shacks and really old looking buildings... to the east, in the richer part of town, there are glass skyscrapers and faux-Victorian mansions.

Two sisters from the Da'an Group who worked with us that morning

And of course, school has been going on nonstop. I do mean nonstop- Christmas is not a holiday here. Oh, they had a Christmas tree in SOGO, the department store, but no one really celebrates it and no one has the day off. One of my classmates asked the teacher why we don't get the day off, and my teacher replied angrily (in English!) that "this is not a Christian country!" I thought about the irony of that statement, but let it go.

Group photo!

Yesterday was also one of my classmates' last day in Taiwan- Qingmei, the shortest Japanese woman in the picture above. Her husband has been off working on a mine in Africa, and now he's returned, so they're both going back to Japan. We're sad to see her go, everyone is the class likes her and she's progressing quite well in Chinese.

This last week, we also had another test. I really wasn't confident in my ability on this test, since I'd been having a hard time with the homework, but to my surprise the test came back 92/100! So I guess I am learning things after all.

Speaking of, I need to start getting ready for school, so I'll end the blog entry here. See you next year everyone!

The Joy of KTV

(Or, Why I'm Not A Rock Star)

Has it already been almost a week? Time passes very quickly! (日子過了太快了！)

This week has been mostly unremarkable, or as unremarkable as it can get here in Taipei. I go out in service, go to school, learn things. The large majority of my time here, actually, is dedicated to learning Chinese in some way or other, whether it's explicitly at school or implicitly in the ministry. One very useful thing I've been doing, outside of school, to learn Chinese is attempting to learn scriptures that I can read at the door. Most of the words I'm learning in this way are uncommon words; you don't need to use them every day... but then, I already know most of those, because I do indeed use them every day, and if I didn't know them we'd have problems. Nothing overcomes objections like a foreign guy reading Chinese characters; suddenly they have all the time in the world to talk to you.

Yep, mostly unremarkable... except on Wednesday me and Mason were invited to Karaoke. One of the young brothers, Xie, asked us while we were out in service if we wanted to come, and of course we said yes. (Although, I later learned Mason didn't know what he was agreeing to!) So that night, we go to the karaoke place, expecting a karaoke party. You know, twenty or so people, food, drinks, maybe some dancing.

Nope. Xie and his friend Li are already there... and that's it. Just us four, in a tiny dark room with a TV and a microphone. And I have to tell you, it was amazing.

We're totally forming a band now. Xie is next to me, Li on the right.

Most of their songs were in Chinese, obviously, and although they did have some English songs they were very.... eclectic. Frank Sinatra rubbed shoulders with Lady Gaga, with Smash Mouth and Prince bringing up the rear. They also had a synth-pop version of Born To Be Wild! Can hard rock be mellow? Either way, it was hilarious. 

Also, they didn't have the real music video; they made their own, and judging from the fact that their video was a Taiwanese girl blowing bubbles on a field, they didn't understand the song.

 Here's a test! I haven't tried to upload a video yet, but if this works, we will truly be able to say Xie's singing echoes throughout the world!

Okay, so it doesn't work. I've tried for a while, still nothing. Here's a link to my dropbox, you can download the movie and watch it directly: Xie Singing

This week, I also had probably the best meal I've had since arriving. We went to a Japanese restaurant right across the street from us, since we saw they had sushi. And man, did they have sushi. Not only did it taste amazing, after you ate it your mouth felt good... it had that slick feel of really fresh fish. And real Japanese wasabi, not the green-dyed horseradish we have in America.

This meal cost $9. I know, really breaking the bank.

Later on, we were invited to play ping pong at the missionary home. I had been before, but it was Mason's first time going. We had a blast! I really like all of our friends here. You know, many people remarked after our Annual Meeting how happy and jovial our Governing Body is. I've noticed that it's a trait shared between all of Jehovah's long-term servants, all of the missionaries I've met, all of the long-term Bethelites, the Circuit and District overseers... Jehovah is a happy God, and  his message is clear: We should be happy too. And honestly, we have no reason not to be! Although we might be facing problems, even trials, maybe beyond our capability, at the end of the day we know the truth. This world and its problems are temporary, not really real. The love we have between ourselves and between ourselves and Jehovah is very real. If we have love, and act on it, what else do we need? Everything else will take care of itself.

Anyway, right. Ping pong. It turns out that Asians are amazing at ping pong. Mason and I did our best to represent American ping pongers (ping pongites?), but first a pair of Japanese friends beat us... then a pair of Koreans destroyed us... then the Taiwanese missionaries themselves, Kent and Huey, pretty much wiped the floor with us. It was a lot of fun, though- by the end it had kind of degenerated, and we were bouncing the ball off the walls back onto the table while a sister drilled us on our Chinese.

The Japanese and Korean couple- Kent and Huey hadn't come up yet

Also, while walking one day, I saw this: 

I'm still really far away from it- it's huge!

That's the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. I gather he's actually buried in there! It was closed at the time of night I went by, but I hope to go inside soon and look around. It's in the middle of a beautiful park, too.

Here's another shot of daily life here in Taipei.

Trash collection!

How trash works in Taipei is this: every night, these trucks will drive around blasting Fur Elise by Beethoven, and every now and then they stop. That's your que to run outside with all your trash as quickly as you can, because they don't stop for long. You need to have things presorted- plastics go into one truck, metals, glass and paper go into another, food goes into a third and everything else goes in the fourth. It's actually pretty fun- your entire neighborhood is all clustered around these trucks, so it's a good time to kind of see who lives near you.

Yep, pretty uneventful! Except for all the events. :-) Tomorrow Jim and Fei Li Voglino, a couple from Sacramento Chinese, are coming up to Taipei to visit us- I'll keep you all posted! Gaitian Jian!

Tourist Dude

(Also, China landed a rover on the moon!)

Hey guys! I meant to update the blog yesterday, but for whatever reason I was having problems uploading pictures. It's fixed now, though!

My parents have asked me to take more pictures of day-to-day things, which results in me looking like a tourist. A really easily impressed tourist, at that. But, you know, whatever- I'm obviously not native anyway. Smile!

This is my favorite coffee shop:

They're studiously ignoring me- it took like three tries to get this picture right

It's called Cama Coffee, and it's pretty legit. They make coffee using vacuum siphons, they have their own roasting machine in-house, and you can ask for a certain kind of bean to be put in your coffee! (But you need to ask in Chinese. So I pretty much got whatever they felt like giving me. Still good though.) It's a bit of a walk away from my apartment, on the other side of Da'an Park, but sometimes it's worth it.

School is good. We had another test, and I got a 90 on it. I'm actually surprised I did so well, I was really nervous about the grammar we'd been learning in that unit. Actually, although I am learning a huge amount compared to back home, and although I am doing pretty well in class, I recently had a bit of a reality check. This last Friday, we all did a project where we wrote a short article comparing one thing to another- not a complex concept, but a good grammar exercise. After we wrote it, we traded with a classmate and attempted to fix their errors. She did pretty well, only one major error (although granted, she is Japanese). I... didn't do quite so well. Actually, my paper was full of errors, none so bad that you couldn't understand my meaning, but still not right. And it goes without saying that my Chinese characters are chicken scratch compared to hers (again, Japanese). So although I may be doing fairly well, I need to stay on top of it, because I've got a long way to go.

Despite my busy schedule with school, I managed to go out in midweek service several times. Here's a shot of us all meeting up:

We don't usually have a formal meeting for field service on weekdays, but we still take a couple minutes to arrange things.

That was Wednesday, and actually that day was amazing. In four hours of field service, I managed to place 36 magazines and 30 tracts, along with many invitations! Mason placed a similar amount. It's amazing how many people are interested in learning about the Bible here compared with back home. Even if half of them are only taking the literature to be polite- even if 3/4ths, or even 9 out of 10- that's still five or six truly interested people in four hours, and that isn't bad.

After a few hours, I had to leave to go to school, and walking through Da'an Park I saw these guys:

Chinese ducks! Delicious!

Unfortunately I couldn't get closer, the "Ecological Pond" is marked off so you can't get too close to it.

After school, I joined up with the evening service group!

We all met at Dongmen Station. If it's translated, it means "East Gate", which is nowhere near as funny.

Service in this area at night was... interesting. As soon as we got away from the main street, we ended up in a warren of narrow alleys, roofed over with sheet metal, filled with cheap restaurants and small shops. Most of them were closed this time of night. I tried to take a picture, but one of the brothers told me it probably wasn't a good idea to bring my camera out there! The air smelled heavy, filled with the smell of many kinds of food and refuse, and the voices of people echoed loudly in the narrow spaces. The ground was not paved for vehicles, but cobbled and looking quite old. 

The alleys extended for a really long way, and I'm glad that I was with local friends or I might have gotten totally lost, but there were people in them and most of them were happy to talk to us briefly. Our current magazine is about lies people tell about God, and as most people here have only a passing familiarity with Christianity they're quite interested in the subject. They know that most churches disagree, but they don't know why, so they're glad to read up on what the Bible actually says.

Eventually, we escaped the aboveground tunnels and resumed regular door-to-door work.

This is us just about finished for the night. The brother on the right (Kent Huang, one of the missionaries) is double-checking our lists against what we've done, just in case.

On the way home, I remembered my parents wanted me to grab a picture of a bus I take or something, which is really difficult. In Taiwan, buses do not wait for you. You have five seconds to board, if that- I've actually seen people board and leave a bus before it's stopped, which means it gets to keep on driving, never actually stopping. The MRT is similar, sort of- it has a predetermined small amount of time to wait, usually ten seconds or so, but most times people will shove you out of the way if you don't board immediately. Next time I'm there and it;s not busy, I'll try to get a picture. But all of this is to say- this is not my bus:

Hello, random bus!

-but just a random bus I saw pulling up in time for me to get a shot. They're all identical anyway.

One last stop before I make it home: my local market, Matsusei. It's apparently a Japanese chain of stores that have expanded into Taiwan, which makes all our Japanese friends happy. The inside looks like this:

Hi everyone! I swear I'm not a spy taking random pictures!

Pretty much a regular grocery store, except everything is in Chinese. You can get some pretty good stuff in there, actually- their alcohol selection isn't bad, they sell six-liter jugs of water for NT$40 each, and they even have an ethnic section with stuff like ketchup and black olives!

So yesterday, Mason and I went out in service early, meeting up with the group in the Park at 8am. We'd made the plans a couple days in advance, so we definitely were going to make it!

Sadly, it was raining Saturday. It still is, actually. That didn't stop us from going out, but it did make Mason very sad he didn't have an umbrella.

It was the sound of ultimate suffering.

He also discovered that his bag isn't waterproof, so all his stuff inside got completely soaked. We had a decent time, but after not too long we were soaked, me from the knees down, him from the... everything down. My shoes are actually still drying out! So we got some coffee and went home for a while.

After not too long, though, I got bored. So I had an idea! Let's go to the National Palace Museum!

For those that don't know, the National Palace Museum is awesome. Back in the 1940s, when Mao Zedong and the Communist Party came into power in China, the Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-Shek was fighting a losing battle and knew it. So when they evacuated the Forbidden City in Beijing, they basically looted it and took all their art, all their jades, all their gold, all their valuables, and shipped them to Taiwan. All that wealth not only allowed them to turn Taiwan from a backwater island to an arguably first-world country in just about fifty years, it also gave them to basis for an awesome Chinese museum, with more ancient Chinese artifacts than even Mainland China has. (They used to be really angry about that, but they're getting over it.)

After taking the subway a long way north to Shilin, then a bus even farther out, Mason and I approach the gates: 

Although it had been raining all day, it was still about 75 degrees out. Ah, tropical islands...

They're done in old style, but only about forty years old. China has all the big old stuff, Taiwan has all the small old stuff. And the gold.

The main walkway, with one of the guardian lions outside.

Closeup of the lion. They say that they're not trying to reflect the actual outside of the lion, but what the lion thinks it looks like. These lions always come in twos, one male standing on a globe, one female protecting a cub.

Chiang Kai-Shek himself, sitting in audience. He's a national hero here.

Sadly, there were no pictures allowed in the museum itself, so I have nothing else to show you.

Okay, so I took some pictures anyway. But they're not as good as I would have liked, since I had to take them quickly with my cameraphone when the (very vigilant!) security wasn't looking.

A stunningly beautiful carved jade screen, showing a forest scene. The details on the carving were incredible.

An inscribed lapis lazuli stone, once marking the western border of Qing Dynasty China along a road.

A calendar jade, dating to about 1000 BC. The stand is new, obviously, but it't the same style. Its rim has very worn markings along the rim- the thought is that some monk or other would turn it one mark every day, and thus keep a unified calendar throughout Zhou China.

I believe this is an imperial decree from the Qing Dynasty, carved in jade plates and bearing the imperial dragon on the front. I asked a sister to translate this for me, since the characters are fairly modern, but she was too terrified of the dragon!

That's just a very few samples of all the beautiful artifacts they have. I've heard that they can only display 2 or 3% of all their things at once, so if I come back next month it will be totally different!

And then they had this:

Taiwanese mech! Run away!

They had an area where they took one of the more famous Qing emperors, Emperor Qianlong, took all his portraits and writings, and created a computer representation of what they believe he would actually look like. Then they put him in an interactive comic that takes your picture and puts your face in it. Then they made a model of him and put him in a large mech with furry hands and feet, with more hands for shoulders... naturally enough.

On the way home, we went through Shilin Night Market, one of the more famous ones, and one that (by size at least) blows our little Shida Market out of the water. But not only were they big, they had a ukulele store!

If it was ultimate suffering before, that's the smile of ultimate contentment.

Mason didn't have enough cash on him, so he couldn't get anything, but we may very well go back. The workers seemed happy just to listen to Mason play- he's pretty good!

And we capped the night off with some of the best xiaolongbao I've had here.

The line was so long they had us wait behind the counter, so I got this picture of them making it.

So that's been my week! I've been very busy, but it's a good busy. I will say that school is taking more of my time than I was expecting it to, when you account for travel time and especially homework, but it's valuable stuff I'm learning that will pay off in the long run. I'm grateful I'm still in good health- Harry was sick for the first two or three weeks here, Mason says he might be slowing down a bit, some other newly arrived people are getting sick- I guess I shouldn't jinx it, but I'm happy it seems to have missed me.

If anyone has anything they'd like me to take a picture of in particular, please let me know! Until next time!

Great Learning (大學)

(It also means "college"!)

Hello everyone! This week seems to have gone by very quickly. I'm almost out of the 'setting up' phase and into the 'normal person' phase, I think. 

This last week in school we mostly focused on Chinese grammar, relating to time phrases in particular. Needless to say, it wasn't fun. Grammar is hard! Still, I have to remind myself that in many ways, this is why I'm going to school and not just learning through the meetings and ministry; by going to school, I can not only be understood but be able to speak well. It's the difference between being able to preach and being able to give talks. Granted, everyone learns grammar eventually no matter how they learn, but this is certainly speeding things up.

I'll give you an example, and hope that I get it right (the test is on Wednesday!). If I wanted to say the sentence "The first time I went there, I ate with my French friend", I would need to literally say "I the first time with my French friend went ate". If it seems a bit confusing, don't worry, it is; but the Chinese think English grammar is strange too.

But enough about grammar! Here are some pictures from more interesting things last week.

The library's sign says "Forest of Literature"

While out in service the other day, we came across this park with a beautiful library in the center. We sat on its steps for a little while and preached to people nearby, which was very nice. Inside the museum they have some modern Taiwanese art on display. I'm not quite sure I understand their art, but it did contribute to a very relaxing atmosphere.

Traditional shrine

We also saw this very traditional shrine to the ancestors along the path. On certain days- a birthday, an anniversary of death, important events- the family will give gifts and burn incense to their ancestors, hoping that somehow they will get help. They typically leave fruit out, sometimes money too. I have never seen what they do with the rotting fruit after a while...

On Friday, Mason and I were invited to go bowling! We all met at 8AM in Sanchong Station. I had never been bowling in the morning before, I had never met most of the friends we were going to be playing with, and I had never been to Sanchong, although I was told it was the Oakland of Taipei. And I will admit, it did look pretty seedy... but the bowling was fun!

We split into four groups of five. This is Ginger, Kate, Brandy and Xie (action shot!)

I'm not sure about the other groups, but everyone in my group was terrible except for Xie, who pretty much owned us. (And yes, I know, those aren't Chinese names; for whatever reason, most young sisters here have picked English ones and they won't tell anyone their Chinese names. I don't know why.) The bowling was actually just a small part of the building; they also had a huge arcade (all games are free!) and even a gym inside! We had a good time until about 1, when we had lunch and went our separate ways.

This week I also tried to explore a bit more. Unfortunately my school keeps me busy, but I was able to see things a little out of the way. This is Da'an Forest Park Station:

The main thoroughfare; it's pretty empty right now!

Outside they have this area with fountains and a few statues. Kids were playing, it was quite nice.

Walking along the path, on the edge of the main park...

And looking into the main part of the park. 

The park is huge, I haven't seen it all yet. It's not quite Central Park, but it might be close. The brother from Reno, Cameron, saw a huge awesome spider hanging out in there! He showed me a picture that I unfortunately don't have- black and green, and almost as big as his palm! Taiwan has a huge number of unique animals. Most of Taiwan's animals only live in Taiwan. It's extremely interesting to be able to see these creatures!

Some bad news, unfortunately- my laptop broke. It had been giving me some problems ever since I arrived, but it just stopped charging altogether. If it had power, it worked- but it didn't work if plugged in, only off battery power. You could plug it in to charge the battery, obviously, but you couldn't use it for anything. Well, you could- one day it just wouldn't charge. I tightened the connection and left it all day, nothing. I taped it down, twisted it a bit, reset the battery, cleaned the contacts, and let it sit overnight- nothing. I took it to several local shops, but sadly, it's a Dell- and Dell is unknown in Taiwan. That meant that no one really knew how to fix it, and the one guy who did had no way of ordering the parts. I also spoke with Dell Support, and they agreed with the local guy- it was a motherboard issue. Dell said they could fix it! But- I'd need to ship it back to America to my family, have them take it in, then ship it back. All on my own money, of course.

So I bought a new laptop! (Some advice: Don't buy a Dell. Especially if you ever plan on leaving America.) As it turns out, there was a huge technology fair going on at Taipei 101 at the same time, so I headed over with a mission.

Taipei 101, from the ground, looking up. Now that's a skyscraper.

The fair was huge. Every brand I'd ever heard of was there, and many I hadn't heard of, with TVs, cell phones, GPS, servers, industrial electronics, these new smartwatches they're selling here, cameras, and most importantly- laptops.

There was a sign outside- the fair was at 14,000 people out of a maximum 32,000. It was less than half full, and it looked like this.

I got a really good deal on a brand new ASUS X550V, a model that hasn't come out in the States yet. I managed to haggle down US$300 from the original price! There is the slight problem that it has a Chinese OS, a Chinese keyboard and everything is in Chinese... but it'll help me learn! :-)
All things considered, I'm happy with it. Although I got a good deal, it wasn't cheap, and I especially wasn't expecting that expense right now. Still, it's a good machine, it'll last me a long time, and it's one less thing to worry about. The good thing about ASUS here is that their headquarters are actually in Taipei- I could take the subway there if I wanted- so I'm guaranteed the best support if anything goes wrong with it.

I'll end this entry with one last event. Last night, GianCarlo asked me to help him move. I agreed, of course- always happy to help a brother out- but little did I know what lay in store.

You see, GianCarlo lives- I should say lived, we did get him moved- on the seventh floor, actually the roof of a six-storey building, with no elevator. So we got to move all his stuff down six flights of stairs into another friend's waiting minivan, his books, his mattress, his shelves, his washing machine, everything. The one respite we had- and it was nice- was this:

Winch power!

GianCarlo had set up an electric winch at the top of his stairwell. It couldn't get the big stuff, and it couldn't take that much weight, but it helped out immensely with bags of clothes and such. After we helped him move, we capped the night off with a soccer game. (See! I did eventually go! And to think Nikolai doubted...) My legs killed me all today, but it was totally worth it.

Well, I'm writing this at 1am my time, and I'm tired, so I'll end it here. My parents have told me a little of what's going on back home- that snow is crazy!- and it's very encouraging to hear that so many people are doing so well. Please feel free to leave comments, I promise nothing bad will happen, and if you want to say something I'd like to hear it.

Until next time!

Playing Catch-up

(Hi again!)

As promised, here are the rest of the pictures from my period of absence!

This is actually the first update I'm posting from my apartment, which is pretty cool. This weekend we've had our Circuit Assembly- 1,700 attending from Taipei City, with 29 baptized. The atmosphere was great,and I met many new friends, but it was also quite taxing. Listening to that much Chinese- and high-level Chinese, not my usual "I want to buy one milk tea" conversations- makes my head a bit fuzzy. And I had homework on top of it! I'm glad I went, though- even if I can't understand most of what was said yet, it's important to go where Jehovah's holy spirit is.

The baptism pool! Our assembly was held in one floor of an auditorium- the bottom floor was being rented out by a kung fu competition, as I found out when I got lost on the way to the bathroom.

Our group for the assembly- Nikolai, Joseph, Mason, Harry, and myself

The assembly was on the outskirts of town, in a place called Yongning. We had two options to get there; either we could join the rest of the congregation and take a rented bus, or we could take the subway, then a taxi. Naturally we tried to take the bus!... but both of them were full. Apparently you had to reserve your seat a couple months ago. So Nikolai led the way onto the subway, and about an hour later we arrived.

One of the many parks in Taipei

Taipei City has lots and lots of parks. Apparently it's a law here; if you are a company, and you want to build a building taller than a certain limit, you must also build and maintain a park of corresponding size somewhere in the city. We often get to enjoy them while out in service. If our group is working a street and we see a park, often we simply stop and rest in the park for ten or fifteen minutes, preaching to whoever might be there with us. It's quite a refreshing break.

Ikea is the same in all languages! Except Chinese; it's pronounced "ihKEYah", not "EYEKEYah".

Have I mentioned my bed is awesome? Because it totally is. No beds have boxsprings here; instead, you buy polished bamboo slats. By setting them in a frame and compressing them slightly, they bend upwards and give you quite a springy base to put your mattress on.

Taipei Arena. They're currently in the process of expanding the subway out here.

Basketball is big here, but baseball is even bigger. They claim that if Taiwan was allowed to join the American World Series, they'd win every time.

Mason in Taiwan, with iPad and ukulele!

Mason brought a ukulele and he knows how to use it. We're trying to keep that a secret from the Japanese sisters here- apparently many of them would love to learn to play, and Mason would become very popular...

Speaking of...

Earlier today at the Assembly, we somehow got pulled into this picture. It just happened, I can't explain it, we were just standing there and bam, posing girls all around us. And also that older brother to the left, looking quite satisfied.

Nice apartment!

I saw this while walking the other night and had to take a picture. If only I had known about this when I was looking to move!

Time is interesting in Taiwan. Not only do you get things like the above- a wooden shack with no power, water or heat in the center of a huge, reasonably modern capitol city- but it genuinely is different. In Taiwan, I am not 22 but 23- they count from date of conception, not birth. It is not 2013 CE here, but rather the 102nd Year of the Republic. (Seriously, my official papers say I was born in Year 80 of the Rep.!) The new year is the Chinese New Year, in February, not January 1st.

But smaller times are different too. Most of Taipei, at least, opens shop at about noon- 11 am if they're feeling good, and they stay open until midnight or two a.m. None of this 9-5 business, are you crazy? That's way too early! But in the summer, I am told at least, they open quite early and close early too, because it gets very hot and they need to rest.

Grammar practice in class.

Grammar is hard. If I want to say, for example, "My friends often help me out", I must literally say "Often my friends help me very many busy". Or, as in Example 8 in the picture, "I live with two French students" becomes "I with two French students together live". It's not that it doesn't make sense, or that I can't learn it. It's just hard.

Arch?

We've decided that this should be the cover of Mason's first album- "Awkward Ukulele Vol. 1".  By the way, he has a blog too; if you'd like to hear his side of the story, you can check it out at mmmtaiwan.blogspot.com. 

One more thing- I was speaking with my parents through Skype the other day, and they said many people were having problems posting comments. Here's how you do it:

From the main page, read things. At the bottom of the article, there is a link that says "(X) Comments", where X is however many comments we have so far. If you click that, you can read what other people wrote, and at the bottom of that page there is a box. You can say whatever you want in that box, then click "Publish". If you don't already have a Gmail account you may need to create one (which is free), or post as a guest. You'll then have a preview of whatever you wrote, with a box asking you to prove your humanity. This is so automatic computers- robots- don't flood my or other people's blog with ads and such. Simply type whatever you see in the picture into the box, then press Publish again. If you didn't type it correctly, you'll get a different image and will be asked to try again until you succeed.

Hope to hear from you all soon! :-)