Radio Silence

(Internet Silence doesn't sound nearly as cool...)

(Although it might make a good band name...)

 

 

Hi everyone! I'm not dead!

 

I'm typing this from the computer lab of my school, on a Chinese keyboard:

And I discovered my phone can upload pictures to Blogger!

I'm very sorry about the long period with no updates. Life has been quite hectic recently- I have many places to go, they're usually about a half hour from each other by walking, and I still don't have Internet at my house. Or a phone. Or TV. But yesterday we got our gas working, so at least we have hot water now. (Side note: You do not know frustration until you've had a Taiwanese repairman attempt to explain to you in a weird Mandarin-Taiyu hybrid what's wrong with your gas lines. "Something-something-pipe-something-gas-something-fire-yes/no?") And on Monday our furniture arrived, including a bed! Hooray bed! Beds are underrated, seriously, it's amazing how much better you do all day if you sleep on a bed at night.

I took many picutres of all these happenings, but they're on my camera at home, so I only have those few I snapped with my phone to share. I will try to fit the others in soon- this will just be a quick update.

My school is going well! It's very, very hard. But I am learning a lot. Each night I have about two hours of homework, on a three-day schedule. The first day the homework is to write, ten times each, the twenty characters we learned this set, then use them in sentences- in characters, of course, no pinyin allowed. The second day is to write more sentences, along with some workbook activities, such as "Draw a map and label the locations on it. Give directions to various places." Over the weekend, I was assigned a full-page essay on what has changed in my life since I arrived in Taiwan.

My class in action- that's my teacher, Qiu Laoshi.

On the whole, my speaking is better than anyone else in my class, but my reading and writing leaves a lot to be desired. Many times the class will have a sentence on the board with the word we're working on in it- I can read the word fine, but there are three others we're expected to already know that I'm just blank on. I'm catching up- after one week I'm already doing better- but there's a gap, mostly because I started in Class 2 of 5 and these guys all did Class 1. (There are actually more classes, but they have 5 designed for comprehension. After you do 5 you're considered to be fluent, any more and you can start teaching Chinese.)

My class has a nice balance of ethnicities in it. I'm the only American, we have two Japanese, two Indonesians, a Korean, an English gentleman and a man from Jordan. I actually had to change classes- the first one I was assigned was in the morning, which was quite convenient but killed all service plans, so I changed to the afternoon. In my first class, we had an older Japanese couple, probably about 65, who were retired. Their kids had grown up, they had nothing keeping them in Japan, so they decided to move to Taiwan and learn Chinese together for the adventure. They can't speak English and I can't speak Japanese, but we used our Chinese to talk a bit and they were quite nice.

To my surprise, they showed up at the meeting on Friday! They were very happy to see me- they almost fell over when they recognized me! They came with another Japanese sister who has been here for years, but unfortunately I'm not sure if they're Witnesses or studies or what. I think they're a sister and her mate... but there's a definite language barrier here.

After the meetings, or service, or just randomly, many friends love going to this restaurant:



Those are actually some of our friends in front.

This is a Japanese-owned Italian restaurant in Taiwan, and while it's not Italian food, it isn't bad. Try the escargot pizza!

I've been out in service a few more times here, and it has been a great time every time. When you think of intercom witnessing, you don't think of a very productive ministry, but almost every person we talk to accepts a tract or literature, and many are eager to hear a scripture or to take an invitation to the hall. The Bible answers questions that their traditional Chinese and Buddhist beliefs don't even approach. One popular topic to bring up- although you must be careful not to offend- is ancestor worship. Specifically, you must always appease your ancestors by giving them food, money, respect, and by bringing the family honor. If they're displeased, they will attack you by making you sick, or by causing an accident, or by killing your pet, etc. But they never show favor, only anger. So the question is, do your grandparents love you or hate you? If they love you now, why would they hate you when they die? Then you introduce what the Bible says about dead loved ones.

For those of you who aren't on Instagram, my apartment!

I mentioned my house earlier- it's becoming more livable by the day. We got beds at IKEA (My parents were very generous and bought mine for me- thank you so much!) (Also, yes, Taiwan has an IKEA.) We have gas now, Internet tomorrow, we went out and bought a set of large appliances from Toshiba- washer, dryer, fridge- for NT$10,800 (That's a total of $350- Taiwan is super cheap)...

And also Mason arrived! All my pictures of him are on my camera, so you'll have to take my word for it, but he is indeed here.

We're having a great time here. The friends are warm, the food is great, the preaching is very productive and the language is interesting. There have been some bumps in the road- Harry is still sick, dealing with repairmen when you don't share a language, the proverbial "cold showers and warm beer" of a new apartment- but I think I'm getting into a nice routine. This weekend is our circuit assembly, so I get to meet yet more friends, and tomorrow is our first big Chinese test here at Wenhua (my school's short name).

I'll post again when I can Internet at home, even if only to show more pictures! Mingtian jian!