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! :-)