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!