Progress! (Jìnbù!) (进步!)

你们好! (Nǐmen hǎo!) (Hi guys!)

Earlier tonight, Harry and I were out walking home from an errand we had to run that I will tell you more about soon. We stopped for chicken pies, boba milk tea and coconut macaroons (all told it was about $2 each), walked to a nearby park and enjoyed the beautiful night from inside the pagoda. Who saw this coming? Seriously, if someone were to take a picture of that and send it back a year ago, would anyone have predicted it? But it was a beautiful night. About 65 degrees, a light wind, green plants all around, and the pagoda was nice too.

Since I last updated, I've been working to get really settled in. I have a local phone number now, and a local bank account. My health check came back (no plague, fortunately) so now the process has begun to get my ARC. Things are progressing well!

I'll start the pictures with this one:

Qisi! (Cheese!)

I'm really not sure why we took this picture, actually- a bunch of us were just standing over there talking when one of the older sisters decided to take a picture, and since we were taking one we all got our cameras out, and... well, there we go. Harry still isn't feeling well in this picture, or right now either. Yesterday I took him to the hospital here and they gave him quite the potion to drink. Hopefully he'll be feeling better soon, it must be terrible to arrive in a foreign land and immediately be sick for weeks.

After the meeting we went to a hotpot place the one of the local brothers, Br. Zhou, knows about. About ten of us ended up going and having a really good time!

On the way to the restaurant. This is really a normal path that people use all the time, just part of the sidewalk near a park.

It was quite good! They serve goat in a pot of boiling broth, and they give you a bunch of vegetables and meat to add to it to taste. Everyone shares out of one main pot, ladling soup into a smaller bowl. As it turns out, goat is delicious! We did good, too- in the end we only had some goat bones and dregs in the pot.

Not that I let that stop me from eating it!

That evening, there were plans to go play soccer. It's a weekly thing the friends do- we all just go to a park and play soccer, basketball, tennis, squash, whatever is available at the time we arrive. Even the small children play- no one takes the games too seriously. Last week I tried to join in, but got lost- this time I promised I would be there.

Unfortunately, I didn't go. Again. I will eventually, guys, things keep happening! I'm sorry :-( !

But I had a good reason! Terry Miller invited me over to his place to help me find an apartment to rent, and after he and his wife helped me search for about an hour, they got a call from a brother in Taipei North. He was having some friends over for dinner, including Br. Wolfgang Schumacher, a Gilead grad from the 50th class who has been here for 45 years, and invited us to come. So we did!

Detecting a pattern yet? The food here is really good.

There were about 25 people there. Our host, Br. Paul Gouriet, is a British brother who swore he'd only be here for three years... twenty years ago. He got married, had three kids, and has been in Taipei for a long time now. Among those invited were also a couple who have the same Chinese last name as I do, Tang! I don't know their original last name because... we really don't use them here :-) Their first names are Flaviano and Sara, from Milan. They've also just arrived, and hope to be here for several years.

The older brother in the short sleeves and tie is Wolfgang. He's awesome.

The young man in he front of this picture, on the right, is actually a brand new... not even bible study! GianCarlo literally ran into him earlier that day while walking, apologized and offered him a tract. He was interested, so they started talking, and GianCarlo invited him to this dinner so he could meet some of the friends. He teaches English at a middle school here, so he's decently fluent (obviously not native, but still very good), and we ended up talking about the Bible, Jesus, neutrality, etc for about an hour and a half. He was especially impressed that at one table, we had Germans, British, Italians, Japanese, Americans, Hong Kongese, Koreans and Taiwanese eating peacefully together, as a family. I was invited to go on his first official study this Friday, and am looking forwards to it.

 So also, today was my first official day of class! I'm in Beginner Level 2, which doesn't sound like all that much, but I looked over the coursebooks... and these are some pretty huge classes. The difference between 1 and 2, 2 and 3, is huge. I actually already know most of these words we're learning, but I can't read or write them yet... so that's what I'll be working on at first, until we catch up to my spoken knowledge.

This is my school!

That is, of course, just the Mandarin Learning Center in downtown. The actual school is here:

Yes, that is a temple on top of a mountain that is also a school. Yes, that's amazing.

If I learn enough Chinese, I can apply for further classes at the main campus, like art, calligraphy, etc. I need to speak Chinese, though, because all the classes are in Chinese up there.

I mentioned earlier that Mi dixiong jiemei were helping me find a place to live. That's becoming urgent. Actually, I need to move out tomorrow. After many hours of searching online and making phone calls, almost every place we checked was already rented, or too expensive, or too far away, or too... terrible. One place we looked at had literally nothing in it- no gas lines, no phone lines, no heating, no a/c, no television, no internet, and only one electric light. It wasn't even that cheap! The problem is, the class of dwelling in our price range is mostly for students, appropriately enough. And there are two huge universities, actually the biggest in Taiwan, in our territory... and their terms started two months ago, so every decent student-type room has been rented out.

But good news! We found a place!

Sorry for the bad quality, I forgot my actual camera at home. This is my phone's camera.

Today, I hopped on the back of Tan Jiemei's motorcycle and we basically drove around randomly in the territory, trying to find rental notices posted in windows and such. After about half an hour, we found an incredibly convenient place. It's literally three minutes' walk from the Hall, about fifteen from our school, it's clean (kinda), and most importantly, it has electricity! (I didn't know some houses came without electricity in 2013! You learn something every day...) Bad news: It has no furniture at all. But you know, at this point I don't mind. It's got a great location, the price is good- well within our budget- it's got reasonable amenities, and the inside doesn't look half bad either. The landlord cut us a break on rent, too- we explained that the three of us living in the house are ministers, trying to learn Chinese to help more people, and he seemed to really appreciate that sentiment. Tomorrow at 6, Tan Jiemei is coming with us to sign the papers and pay the deposit (NT$42,000- translates to about $1,300 USD, divided between three people. That's two months' rent; Taiwan is cheap!)

So, that's it! Tomorrow I move out. I'm going to miss Tan Jiemei, she has been incredibly hospitable and has really shown herself to be a loving sister. Also, the new place will not have Internet for... a while. I'm not sure how long it will take to get that hooked up. My phone can use public Wifi to get messages, emails etc, but I can't update the blog very efficiently from it, so this may be the last entry until we can get that squared away.

Until next time!