Midterms 期中考

(Students everywhere- I feel your pain.)

Hi again everyone, 好久不見. Sorry about the long pause between the last update and this one- as you may have guessed from the title, I had my midterms since the last post! It was very interesting but also time-consuming, but I'll talk more about it in a little bit.

So recently I was contacted by Casey McCoy, one of my friends back in California. He told me that his brother Roger was going to be in Taiwan soon, and why don't I go meet them? So Roger and I exchanged emails, and we made arrangements to meet in Taizhong City this last Saturday. (If you're curious: taaI-JONG) This was cool for a number of reasons! First, I get to meet my friend's brother, and get some more insight as to how it's possible Casey is Casey; second, I'd never been outside Taipei before (I went to Danshui that one time, but I took Taipei's subway to get there, so it doesn't count); and third, I get to meet new friends in Taizhong! Roger and his wife Lauren are serving in the Boston Cambodian congregation, and were on their way home from a few weeks in Cambodia. There's a sister named Emily living in Taizhong- apparently Lauren and Emily grew up together, so they stopped over to see her on the way back.

Walking through Taizhong. Those are Roger's and Lauren's backs.

Taizhong is a very different city than Taipei. Taipei is quite old, parts of it dating from the Spanish settlement (and then Dutch capture and then Portuguese capture and then Dutch capture again) of Formosa, and you can definitely tell by the city layout that some streets were not built with cars in mind! Taizhong, on the other hand, is just about fifty years old, the modern city really only starting after the Nationalist Chinese fled to the island. So the streets are huge, and the city is sprawling. There's very few pedestrians compared to Taipei; The stores are bigger and spread out farther; there's no subway and the buses are few, so everyone has a car; downtown is, of course, built up, but most houses are shorter than four stories tall. Actually, I've heard that most people in Taizhong have a modular house, as compared to Taipei's apartments!

In may ways, it reminded me of an American city, which was nostalgic. But in many other ways, it made me realize that several things I thought I liked about Taiwan are really things I like about Taipei. Taizhong is much cheaper, though!

Anyway, Emily, Roger and Lauren picked me up at the high-speed rail station, and off we drove, singing English songs on the way to a coffee shop.

And now you get to see their faces! From the left: Roger, Lauren, Emily.

We sat inside and talked for about two hours. It was cool getting to know them- I didn't know anyone who had gone to Cambodia before, or really anything about Cambodian culture, so it was quite educational. Since Roger is an MTS graduate, he was able to give me a very nice overview of the Cambodian situation.

Also, their coffee was delicious. And timely!

Afterwards, we were hungry, so we went into the city to find someplace to eat. One of the brothers in Taipei, Giancarlo, used to live in Taizhong and recommended a pizza place for dinner. He said they made pizza exactly like back home in Italy, so naturally we went to try it out.

What he forgot to mention is that it was very expensive! The pizzas themselves weren't bad, about the equivalent of US$8 for a ten-inch, but the restaurant had a minimum-charge policy of NT$650 per person- that's $25! That's still not bad, I'll grant you, for an authentic Italian pizza, some wine, salad, a nice dinner, but we still weren't looking to spend that much money. So we left and drove to a Korean place, and ate delicious cheap kimchi noodles.

Taizhong's skyline from a park downtown

Gratuitous selfie!

We stayed up far too late that night, and I ended up getting back to Taipei at 9am the next morning. Totally worth it! They boarded their plane back to Boston at about 7 that morning, and Instagram tells me they landed safely. Also, if you're reading this- hi guys!

So, right, the midterm. The project was we had to pair up with another student and prepare a dialogue. Our dialogue would be scored on length, grammar, use of vocabulary, speed, tones, inflection, how pretty our handwriting is (we had to write it in characters and actually say it- without looking at notes!) and whether or not it was interesting.

This describes the results pretty well.

My partner was a Japanese classmate named Kyoko. At first I thought that meant it would be easy- the hardest part for me is writing the characters. I have to focus to write Chinese characters so they'll be understandable- unlike English, the smallest difference in how a character is formed or stroke order can change the meaning- and I figured having a Japanese person on my team would mean we'd have no problem with that. To my surprise, I had the better handwriting! She had been writing characters for so long she'd kind of fallen into a shorthand way of writing that our teacher found very difficult to read, whereas I, even though I write slowly, am actually pretty clear!

Which led to this. Note, we don't actually have silverware, so I'm eating my eggs with chopsticks.

I think we did pretty well! The teacher seemed happy anyway, and in that whole page of dialogue I only made one grammatical mistake. We definitely didn't sound fluent, but we're making progress!

Remember when I helped Giancarlo move that one time, and he used an electric winch to help us out? I had told him that it's an old American tradition- if your friends help you move, you buy them pizza and beer. (And the inverse- if your friends help you move and you don't buy them at least pizza, they probably won't help you ever again.) Well, he finally got around to inviting me for pizza. We went to a place in the south of the city near Xindian District where they sell Italian-style pizza, and I wasn't surprised to find it was really good. I was surprised to find that he'd invited the whole congregation, though!

So... is he buying for all of you?

I love our organization. Most of these friends can't speak English, or at least not well, and if I'm honest my Chinese is just barely functional. But we're still able to converse and enjoy the friendship that our worldwide brotherhood brings.

The ministry is still going well. We still place ten magazines every two hours or so in the door-to-door work, and like 25 per hour in the parks. I'm beginning to realize that my ingrained American habits are actually holding me back a bit in my ministry- I kind of figure most people aren't interested, or are busy, and if they take anything it's only to be polite. Actually, I'm a little scared if anyone shows interest, because it's happened so rarely I don't really know what to do! But here it's so commonplace to have conversations and find interest that I really need to figure out how to shift gears.

Taking a break in front of some art.

One last thing- while walking through the market one night, we stumbled across some old friends of Mason! They're currently serving elsewhere, but they're in Taiwan for a couple weeks to take a vacation. It was very encouraging to speak with them, and although I wish I could say more, somehow I've forgotten everything they said...

But look how happy she is, eating that burger!

But believe me when I say that they had only good news.

So how's the weather back home? I hear most of America is frozen solid right now, what about California? I actually heard that in one part of Minnesota, it was colder than on Mars!

See you next time!