Keep Changing 持續更動

(It's a good thing, life is change!)

Change is a hard thing to get used to, sometimes. Many people fear change; anything that could change their lifestyle, or habits, or environment, or anything- is immediately bad, and must be avoided. Others love change; they bounce around from place to place, getting restless if they stay still for too long.

I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I do enjoy an adventure, which of course needs to have new experiences and encounters in it; at the same time, this is definitely a learned ability. It's always sad to see friends leave especially, even if you know they're going off to new and potentially better things. Still, as my little tiny superscript above said, life is change. If nothing changed, that wouldn't really be life, would it? Even memories change every time we access them, being updated with new connections and information. The real key is making sure you're changing in the right way, and the only way to be sure of that is to have some sort of guideline, a model to follow. Happily for us, Jehovah knows we need these things, and many examples are laid out in the Bible for us to follow. 

One couple that recently left us here in Taipei are following those examples quite well. Cameron and Michelle took off to Myanmar a few days ago, going to their new assignment of Mandalay. This city has somewhere around 750,000 to 1 million Chinese people, but previously only had one Witness who could speak Chinese. So, now there are three!

The day before they left, Cameron had a public talk in the Taipei English congregation, so naturally many of us went to attend. This was actually the first time I have ever gone to the English here in Taiwan- I kept meaning to, but I've been busy enough with work and pioneering and my responsibilities in Chinese that I just hadn't made time to before.

English!!!

They don't have their own standalone building like Taipei South does; instead, we've bought the fifth floor of a building in the north part of the city and fitted it out to be a Kingdom Hall. The English congregation is much smaller than Taipei South, with only about 80 people. The majority of the publishers are originally from the Philippines, but they've got brothers and sisters from all over- I even met a family from Zimbabwe who regularly attends Taipei English!

Cameron's talk was very good, all about technology and its proper place in our lives. The branch, as always, has a very balanced position- technology is good, and a very powerful tool, but it can't control you. I've gotta say, it was nice listening to the meeting in English. My Chinese is such that I can usually understand about 90% of what is said at meetings; however, when I want to comment, say, during the Watchtower study, it takes a decent amount of preparation and focus, which distracts me from the material being discussed. It was amazing being able to listen and think at the same time!

Cameron, teaching like a boss

A little while afterwards, a bunch of us went over to their house and help them get stuff moved. They put most of their possessions up for sale, since Myanmar only lets them take one bag each with them. (side note: Myanmar has crazy rules, and they're very serious about them. You can't bring playing cards into the country on pain of imprisonment. Bikinis either. Foreigners are not allowed to stay in the same house as locals, under any circumstances. This last one was especially a headache!) Some of their stuff is pretty cool, so I asked about buying some- only to find that within minutes of it being posted, all but about three things were bought by the same sister, Alix from Minnesota. So we basically moved things from Cameron and Michelle's place to Alix's place for a few hours- happily, she lives nearby.

Also, Nikolai can play the didgeridoo.

Maybe you can tell from Nikolai's coat in the above picture- it's gotten cold in Taipei! Well, colder than usual anyway. It's about 50 degrees Fahrenheit outside right now, around 12 degrees Celsius, which doesn't seem all that cold... but no one has heaters in any of the houses, so you're stuck with that temperature all the time.

Of course, there are ways to solve this problem.

Two of our sisters were in no mood to complain, though- Angelica and Anica, the Swedish sisters, have also gone back home within the last couple weeks, and compared to Sweden Taiwan is downright balmy!

Sad happy face?

We will miss them all. They're all going off to more service, of course- the great thing about change is that it keeps happening. No change is ever truly permanent. So if you don't like your current situation, just have faith that change will happen! Cameron and Michelle will do well in Myanmar- they've sent us some pictures, actually, and they are already doing well from the looks of things- and Angelica and Anica will do well in Sweden, assuming they don't freeze. The two sisters have plans to come back to Taiwan next year, once they've saved up some money. 加油!

It works both ways, of course. Some people leave, and others arrive. And when they do, we celebrate by eating!

吃到飽喔!

The sister on the left is just recently arrived, also from Minnesota- she and Alix knew each other back home, apparently. Not hard when your state only has like twenty people in it. Anyway, her name is Avery, and she's already having a good time!

Speaking of Averys, Joe appears to have good taste in cardigans:

Yeah, sure Joe, of course it wasn't on purpose

Because he keeps matching with various sisters, who of course have good taste themselves.

Not fooling anyone, man

At the very least, he makes up for it by being brave/crazy enough to walk out into traffic and preach to people sitting at a red light!

He took the tract, too!

As opposed to Alix, who of course is just crazy.

I'd make fun of her raincoat/trash bag, but I totally have one too.

While Cameron and Michelle, while they were here, dealt with the colder temperatures by adorably sharing a blanket while they walked down the road, that method isn't available to everyone.

Poor Jenice!

When you're moving around on a bike, the cold is actually nice; but once you've been standing in one place for a few hours, it starts to get really cold!

This is, of course, at Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall; our ministry there is still going strong, with an average of ten books and twenty-thirty brochures placed every three-hour shift, and actually recently more and more people are signing up for a free Bible study! It really seems to help that we agree to use Skype or some form of video chat to study; many people are a little wary of random people just walking up to their door and talking to them, even if they signed up for that very thing. Having an alternate means of communication makes them feel a little safer, so more people agree to the study.

Of course, the regular ministry doesn't stop just because of a little cold or rain, either. A good umbrella is very important, though!

Look at them go!

And of course, the cold makes it even more important that we do fun things together. (That's our excuse at least.) We haven't been able to play soccer lately because of the weather, so instead a few of us went over to Terry's house and cooked things!

Master chefs!

Terry and I made handmade pizza, right down to the bread;

Master baker!

Alix made amazingly good cookies;

Master taster!

And Joe didn't make anything, but brought drinks and boosted our egos by complimenting the food a lot.

Oh, and here's a shot of the finished pizza, courtesy of Brandy:

It tasted as good as it looks. Seriously, why don't we do this more often?

It was a fun night! Afterwards, we meant to play nerdy board games, but watched movies instead. If we did this instead of soccer more, we'd probably get fat, but every once in a while is fun!

...is Alix okay?

A few days after that, I gave my very first public talk in Chinese! And then I gave it again the next day! The topic was 行事忠義, Walk the Path of Righteousness, and although it undoubtedly wasn't the best talk anyone had ever heard, I think I did okay!

Taking pictures of people while they're speaking is funny.

At the very least, no one died. I think. That's success right there!

I'll end this post with an amazing discovery I made recently. I was doing some return visits with my Taiwanese roommate, Cary, which of course means we were riding his motorcycle around the city. One of the things I like about motorcycles (and bicycles too) is that you get a chance to experience the things you pass- if it's cold, you're cold, if it's hot, you're hot, and if there's a delicious smell, you smell it. While driving past a new restaurant on the way to a call, I smelled an amazing smell: Chicken and waffles.

With sweet potato fries!

Who would have thought Taipei had a chicken and waffle restaurant, of all things? But it does, at least, now it does. I didn't exactly eat chicken and waffles a whole lot back in America, but it suddenly sounded perfect, so after we had finished our ministry Cary and I drove back and ate some chicken on top of some waffles. Cary was bewildered by the combination, but had to admit it was pretty good!

Isn't it beautiful?

So there we go! People left, people came, we all did new things, Joe can't cook apparently, and I found some soul food in Taipei. A pretty good time! It'll be the 1st of January pretty soon, and that means another great fireworks show from Taipei 101; I'll see what I can do to get some shots! Until next time...

Too much fun 太多玩

(Is there such a thing?)

These last couple weeks have been really busy, but in a really fun way- mostly, every bit of free time has been devoted to hanging out with people and doing fun things! It's not all happy, though (depending on who you are)- the reason we've been so frantically playing is because there's been a batch of people who have left, or will leave soon.

Of course, Mason was only here for a couple weeks, so we wanted to make the most of the time he was here and do lots of things together. Even before he had arrived in Taiwan, he was planning a game night based off of a Korean variety show really popular here, called "Running Man"- it's stupid but really funny. One of the things they do is play hide-and-seek in a large area, but with weird rules, and all of the seekers have to wear bells on their feet. Don't knock hide-and-seek, it's fun! Anyway, we got our group of 14 people together one evening in Da'an Park, assembled the teams, and got to it!

Fearsome!

I'm told it was a lot of fun! I would've been able to tell you myself, but there was a little problem...

So, my team was the first to hide. The rules were, if 5 of the 7 people on our team were found, we lost; if 30 minutes went by, we won. We had the entire park to hide in, but we also had quite a few people looking for us and only a short head start, so we had to be quick about finding a place to hide. I found an awesome tree and promptly used the vines hanging down from it to climb about 15 feet into it. I had it all figured out; it was near very bright lights, but they didn't shine into it, so people looking for me would have dazzled eyes from the lights and be unable to see me. I was pretty high up, and people usually don't look up, so I had that going for me; also, because the tree was full of vines, I could use them to move around inside the canopy to put more tree between me and people looking for me. I was set!

Time passed. I saw a few people come near me, clearly looking for people, and I evaded them all. Even when several people came at once, I remained undetected. I felt like I had been up there for a while, but that was fine; I got some nice thinking done. The only downside was that the tree was full of large brown spiders, but they all stayed away from me, so we were cool.

Did I mention my phone had broken? Yeah, a few days before it had bricked itself installing an update, so I had no phone (and by association, no clock). Eventually, I heard Cary calling my name, so I hopped down... yeah, I was up there for like two hours and people thought I got kidnapped. Apparently I'm really good at hiding. Good to know, I guess?

Anyway, everyone was mad at me, but then we went and ate food and we were all cool again. 

Food makes everything better!

A few days later, we all went to a different park for a music party! Music, friends, food, beautiful weather...

We even had a shark kite!

This one was really for two sets of people leaving soon; the first set is Ashleigh's mom and dad, who have been visiting Taiwan and studying Chinese for the past month or so. They've been really encouraging to all of us here, and we'll miss them; but I'm sure they'll go back to the UK full of Chinese and enthusiasm, and really help the congregations back home.

Ashleigh, rocking that guitar!

The second set of people leaving soon are Angelica and Anica, the Swedish sisters who have been here for about six months now. Their plan was always to come for just a short while, learn good Chinese, then go back home to Sweden. They're pretty sad about leaving (comparatively) warm and sunny Taiwan for (objectively) freezing Sweden, but at the same time optimistic about being able to help their friends back home. Their home congregation has a story familiar to many of us serving in Chinese congregations abroad; many Chinese students come, study for one or two years, then go back home to China. That means there is a ministry, a productive one even; but before these students can get very far in their studies, they go back to China, so the local congregation is perpetually small and needing help. Anica and Angelica will definitely contribute to that help.

This is neither of them, but 欣如 (Joise), rocking that Ukulele!

Mason, of course, had to be part of this; he's unnaturally skilled at all forms of music, and although he obviously didn't bring a guitar with him from America, he managed to borrow Ashleigh's guitar and belt out a few tunes for us. 

He really is very good!

Afterwards, I played a couple songs on my mandolin, but I've just started learning it, so I wasn't nearly as good as the others. I also haven't learned any songs I could sing along to yet, unlike them. I know, patience, I will get better. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of myself, since I couldn't manage a selfie during a song!

Afterwards, we went over to Cameron and Michelle's house to play a game or two of Settlers of Catan, a surprisingly fun board game about trading resources and building up a colonial empire. Naturally, Nikolai, the Dutchman, is really good at it. Cameron and Michelle are yet another couple who will leave us soon- they're originally from Reno, NV of all places, and will soon (Next week! Man!) be leaving to Myanmar. There's a city in Myanmar with over 750,000 Chinese people in it, but only one Witness who can speak Chinese... so soon there will be three! That's a 300% increase! They have a noble cause, but we'll still miss them here in Taiwan.

That didn't make us go easy on them, of course!

The ministry was fun, too. We got to enjoy the last of the good weather while Mason was around; he left on the 1st of December, and that same week our warm, sunny blue skies became gray and rainy. Taiwan misses you man! He graduates in May of 2015, and once he's saved up enough money after that he'll come back, hopefully for good this time. 加油!

Saturday morning fun!

A bit of good new on the ministry side; in eight days (!!), I'll be giving a Chinese public talk here in Taipei South. One of my bible studies agreed to come to the Kingdom Hall to hear it! That'll be his first time to a Kingdom Hall, and I'm sure the brothers and sisters will make him feel welcome. Who knows, he might like it enough to come back; now that would be cool!

A few days later, Paul Gouriet had another get-together for everyone still left in Taiwan, kind of a pot luck thing. Almost everyone there was a foreigner; I think I've only been to two or three events like that since being in Taiwan! It was an odd feeling, but it in no way ruined the fun of the night.

In other news, Joe is very tall.

Actually, these kinds of parties are nice, because it's an opportunity for people of various congregations all get together and make friends. Taipei South is so big, sometimes we can get a little isolated from the other halls; happily, Paul was there to rescue us!

Jason, Esther, Anica, Marco and Leah

And then I started getting fancy with my camera and began taking art shots.

Which, of course, means black and white.

Tunmise, a new sister from the UK, and Ashleigh

Sisters Qi and Mi, looking fierce!

And we finished this crazy week with a night of Karaoke, naturally! There's a place up at Ximending, a very popular part of Taipei, that will rent out a Karaoke room for four hours for about $15 per person... they throw in free food and drinks too!

KTV! 哇!

They didn't really have any new songs, but that's okay- we spent the night singing the top hits of the 90's. I can think of worse things to do! Joise even showed off a little and gave us all an introduction to a couple really cool/weird Chinese songs; if you want to listen to one, copy and paste 公公偏頭痛 into Youtube.

Alix took this pictures, then she took a picture of a dead rat. I thought this one was better.

All of these cool people are leaving soon! It's a little sad, but not the end of the world for us or for them; mostly, they're going on to new, exciting experiences, and they'll use the time they had here in Taiwan to further accomplish Jehovah's ministry in even farther parts of the world.

Visitors 客人

(Look guys, it's Taiwan again!)

Sometimes, it's good to get back to normal routines. While I was in America, my daily schedule was familiar, but in a strange way, like putting on clothes you haven't worn in a while- I remembered how to do all the things I needed to do each day, but it seemed to fit me differently than I remembered, and I wasn't quite used to it. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice trip; but I was still happy to get back to Taiwan.

While I was gone, the weather has gotten quite a bit cooler! The Taiwanese are having a harder time with the 'cold' than most foreigners, of course- it's just gotten to around 60 degrees at night, so we're not exactly arctic here- but it's a refreshing change from the humid heat of the summer.

It doesn't stop the ministry, of course!

The weather here has actually been really strange this year, and even now it's acting a little oddly, like it can't make up its mind. This Monday, while standing at Chiang Kai-Shek at our table, it was cold enough that I needed a jacket; the next day, it was 85 degrees, humid and sunny, which according to the locals is the hottest it's ever been in Taipei this late in the year. The weather all over the world has gone a little crazy, it seems!

Despite any weirdness, the congregation is still doing well. Some people left while I was gone, but we got a few new faces as well, and our spirits are high!

Smiling faces!

This time in anticipation of food!

My work was piling up for me while I was gone, unfortunately. My school has started a new policy- I've gotta give my students a test every single day now. They're not hard, just ten-question reviews on what we studied that day, but I can see from the results that not all the kids are getting the material... so although it's boring for them and annoying for me, I suppose it's good to have that kind of progress monitor.

It's good practice for me, too!

But of course, tests aren't interesting. Visitors are! We've had two very special people visit us in the last couple weeks. First, one rainy night two weeks ago, after a long day of work, I was walking home from the store laden with groceries and water, when I heard a familiar voice call out to me- "Dylan!" It was Jerry!

Jerry! (And Joe! But he's not news...)

Jerry was in town just for the one night, being transferred from his civil service assignment in Tainan to Taoyuan, a city just an hour away from Taipei, and instead of getting a hotel he thought he'd try to stay with us, which of course we let him do. He's doing well, although he's sad to have to move out of his new hall just as he was making friends, He stayed with us one night, which we spent catching up on things and playing card games, and in the morning joined us at a cafe for a little breakfast and letter writing service before catching the train onwards to Taoyuan. 加油 man!

The other guest we had- still have, actually- is a very familiar face:

Mason!!

Mason flew into town about a week ago on his winter vacation from school in America. Longtime readers of this blog will remember that he originally came to Taiwan with me around the same time, after I'd gotten us set up with a place to stay and stuff, but after having a really hard time finding work decided to head back to the States to finish the degree program he was enrolled in and come back once he's gotten that settled.

He says he's making good progress on that front- actually, if you want to hear from him directly, he's updated his own blog for the first time in like a year, mmmtaiwan.blogspot.com- and is really happy to be back in Taiwan, if only for a few weeks. He's been pretty active in the time he's been here, out in service with us, hanging out with the friends, and just in general enjoying a well-deserved vacation!

Also showing off his agility!

Mason came out with us one day while working at CKS, and while witnessing at the stand a man from Mainland China decided to show us how to catch some of the millions of pigeons that hang out with us with our hands. Both Mason and I managed to catch one, although our partner, Paul, showed us up with British class:

You just let them come to you, you see...

Mason had good timing. Completely without meaning to, he happened to come to Taipei just in time for our Circuit Assembly, the first one we've had since it changed to one day only. I wonder, can you tell if he had a good time?

(Hint: he did.)

It was a really good program, very encouraging and upbuilding. In total, we had a little over 1,900 people attend- we're North 2 circuit, which covers the cities of Taoyuan, Tamsui, Taipei and Keelung- and 24 people were baptized, including one sister from our congregation!

Not a bad, seat, either!

Of course, having the convention to attend made us all very busy, particularly us pioneers- we had the separate Pioneer Meeting to attend on Saturday, besides having cleaning assignments and working to set up the convention site, and then I myself was assigned to Parking the day of the convention. I remember Parking in America being a really boring, if quite important, assignment, as basically all you do is guide people into their spots and wait for the program to start. In Taiwan, it's a bit more entertaining, since most people here don't really know how to drive- or at least, it seems that way! We did well though, and no one was injured by any of the craz- er, enthusiastic driving of our brothers and sisters.

We also helped set up chairs!

All the work was totally worth it, of course, especially since I was assigned to Security during lunch and got to see the entire baptism procession.

Not quite as fancy, but no less encouraging!

Mason will still be here with us for a few more days, and we'll enjoy the time we've got; but then he'll have to get back to work, sadly. It's for a good cause, though, and hopefully he'll be able to come back more permanently in the near future.

So speaking of near future, this weekend there's going to be a couple events- one Running Man (a Korean comedy show) party, and then a jam session in a park! I'll see if I can't record some of it for you guys...

America, Part Two: Places 美國, 第二部分: 地方

(About time!)

Writing these two posts about America is interesting- hopefully for you, but definitely for me. I've lived in America most of my life, and most of that time was spent in California, so a lot of the things I'm writing about in this post and the one before it wouldn't have seemed odd or in need of explanation before coming to Taiwan. It's been one year already- can you believe it? My one year anniversary of living in Taiwan was November 5th. Of course, I really like it here, and I don't plan on moving back anytime soon- but my first sight of America from the plane window still made me pretty excited!

Look! It's America! That bridge is in like a thousand movies!

Often, while in Taiwan or Asia in general, when people ask me where I'm from I simply say "San Francisco". I'm not really from SF, I'm from a smaller city called Sacramento, but not many people over here know where or what that is; I'd end up having to explain "it's near San Francisco" anyway. Still, it really is not far from the City, and I went there often enough to do things that it was nice being back in a familiar place.

Two things immediately struck me. First, San Francisco is really clean. That might surprise people who live in the City, because you probably don't think so. But check this out:

哇! (Wa!)

There's no mold on the sides of the buildings, not even dirt! The street is so wide and nice! Look, the buses have their own lane, that's so cute! And cars give people a crazy amount of room, even stopping for them at crosswalks- how considerate!

There was a flipside, though. The second thing I noticed- America, even a big city like San Francisco, is so empty.

This is actually back in Sacramento, but it's still true.

The roads are crazy huge for the amount of traffic they get. Houses are enormous. There are no pedestrians walking around, no bicycles, no street-front shops spilling onto the sidewalk. Everyone is in cars. It felt... sterile, almost, like no one really lived there, they just passed through. I didn't like it. I like how busy and crowded and energetic Taipei is.

Maybe it's because I'm young. I've showed these pictures to several friends back here in Taiwan, and that seems to be their opinion- as I grow older I'll want more space to myself, and a quiet place to live. Maybe. I know older people who seem to really like places like Taipei, and I know younger people who enjoy Suburbia, so it seems to me like it's more of a temperament thing than and age thing, but- maybe.

I will say that American houses are really nice, though. I mean, really nice. This is one of the better neighborhoods in Sacramento:

They're like mansions!

Granted, Taipei does have its share of nice houses, but not nearly as many, and not nearly as nice, I'd say. Even the areas around town that I would consider "bad areas"- areas I probably shouldn't just hang out in after dark- had big, spacious houses, and everyone had their own yard. Like I said earlier, all of this isn't news to me- I've lived in California most of my life. I just saw it differently this time.

In fact, I began thinking about it. America has poor people, of course- American standards of 'poor' might be different than places like, say, Somalia's, but still- in many ways, America does not allow truly poor people to have a life. In most places, you can't not have a car- you wouldn't be able to get to work. By and large, there aren't any social safety nets, since children are encouraged to move out young, and they often move very far away. Basic necessities are very expensive, too. Although most people outside of America have a conception of Americans as all being rich- which is true, as numerically Americans do make a lot of money- the truth would seem to be that although Americans earn a lot of money, they are required to spend a lot of money, too, or else they really aren't allowed to live in America.

It does have its benefits, though. My parents, like most Americans, have a yard, but unlike most they chose to build a chicken coop and raise chickens in it.

Fresh eggs!

Also, American supermarkets are amazing. Look at all the cereal!

Too many choices!

And huge cheap bottles of wine!

These might actually be worth their weight in gold in Taiwan.

Besides stuff in and around the cities, though, I managed to sneak in one really good road trip while I was back in California. The second to last day of my trip, me and my parents went up to Lake Tahoe, one of the most beautiful places in all California, just to get away for a little while.

On the way up, we got some pretty nice views of what Central California looks like after a year-long drought: 

Not nearly as green as Taiwan...

It's not the same beautiful as Taiwan, but it still is beautiful, just in a different way. It's no tropical rainforest, definitely, and it doesn't help that this drought is one of the worst California has ever had; still, the rolling hills and blonde grass are very nice.

We stopped in a little town called Placerville for breakfast, first.

Very classy, Placerville.

Placerville's nickname is Hangtown. Way back when, during the California Gold Rush, there were a lot of people and not very many laws; but every now and then, someone would do something so bad that they just had to be arrested, and when that happened they went to Placerville to face the judge. If they were found guilty of doing whatever they had done, they got hanged- so Hangtown was the town where people got hanged.

Despite its fairly grim history, Placerville is a really nice place, although lately it has become a haven for hippies.

One of those houses is a restaurant!

After a really nice breakfast- American style French toast, eggs and bacon- we drove around through the mountains, seeing some really beautiful sights.

Evergreen forests...

Mountain passes...

Even tiny waterfalls! (And my smiley car! (And parents!))

While driving around the mountains, we got a chance to stop at one of California's many wineries. I never really thought about this until I left California, but we're really quite fortunate to live so close to so many good wineries; it means the wine in California is both cheap and good. Napa Valley is, of course, the most famous wine region in California, and that's where the world-famous varieties are all from- still, California has many places you can grow grapes, even if they're not quite as famous!

Hooray wine!

I do miss wine sometimes. In Taiwan, wine is very very expensive- even cheap bottles of nearly undrinkable stuff is close to US$15 per bottle, and although I've had it a couple times since being here, it's just too expensive to enjoy very often.

This place is called Kids Inc.- wine for the whole family?

After driving for quite a long time, we reached our 'destination', not that we were really going anywhere in particular- Donner Lake.  

Really, the reason we took a road trip was to hang out together. I really was quite busy during my time in California, and it was nice to have a solid day just with my parents before I took off for Taiwan again.

Aww, aren't we cute?

But eventually, it had to end. We drove back home, I packed my bags, and the next morning we drove to the airport and I was off.

I liked my time back in America, but I realized that it no longer feels like my home. I like Taiwan. At least for now, I'm happy to stay here for a little while longer, or maybe I'll go somewhere else in Asia. Everyone reading this back home- I truly appreciate your loving support. Thank you. If anyone wants to come out to Taiwan, send me an email- I'll hook you up! 

Next week, I'll talk about Taiwan some more...