Free Time 空

(School's out, man!)

Six months have gone by! That's crazy!

Okay, so several important things happened, and since many people have been asking me I'll talk about these first. First, my Chinese class is over, which is crazy to me- it's been pretty much a constant since I've gotten here, I've scheduled my service and free time around having class and homework every day, and now it's done. It's a great feeling- I can finally do things like spend all day in service, or take day trips places, without having to be back before 2 for class! I really enjoyed my Chinese class, but I'm glad for the break.

Last Tuesday was our Final, a two-hour test to see how much Chinese actually stuck to us. The hardest part was the final question- it was an essay question asking me to describe my home country's (I just picked California, because America is too big) natural resources, agricultural crops and major exports. I know these things, but explaining them in Chinese is... difficult, to say the least. I felt bad for our Vietnamese classmate, though- she honestly did not know what Vietnam's resources or exports were! Still, the test was really about our Chinese, not our economic knowledge, so she did fine. I found out yesterday I got 91% on it- 耶! :-)

But possibly more importantly, I've been doing some work on the TOCFL situation I explained last blog post. I got in touch with the San Francisco office, and the bottom line is this: Considering the circumstances, they don't want the money back. BUT, I am prohibited from obtaining any other Taiwanese scholarship until I get this test taken. Could be better, could be a lot worse. However, good news! I got an email on Monday from the Ministry of Education- enough students failed the test that there will be a make-up exam on the 30th of this month! Yes!!! It's unfortunate that there's a month-long gap between my classes and the test, but at least I'll be able to take it (and hopefully pass)! I made sure I signed up this time.

So, with that good news out of the way, let's talk about other stuff! Since I've had so much time, I've gone out in the ministry quite a bit more than usual, getting a couple 8+hour days out (which have been awesome). 

The group one night taking a break

Although I don't have any of my own yet, I've conducted a couple Bible studies, started a couple return visits, had many really nice conversations with people (including a two-hour long philosophical debate with two Irish guys in a park one night)- having my classes take up so much time for six months was irritating, but I'm glad I did it. I can see the improvement in my ministry now!

One day, we all wore blue!

This last Saturday, we got about twenty people together and all went to play hide-and-go-seek in a park. That might sound ridiculous, but it was really fun- playing hide-and-seek as an adult is great, because (at least for me) you're a lot more agile, and of course bigger, than you were as a kid, so you can have more creative hiding spots- like jumping over a concrete wall to hide on a bridge support, for example! I did eventually get found, but I was second to last, so that's almost winning... right? Michelle, a sister from Reno, had the best hiding spot though:

Are... are you okay?

She said she was trying to move when she heard someone behind her, so she just collapsed near these reeds hoping no one would see her. It almost worked!

Group photo!

I also went somewhere this last week! Earlier, I mentioned day trips- Harry and I took yesterday off and went to Keelung City (基隆市), mostly because it's only an hour train ride away and we had no idea what was there. This is Harry's last week in Taiwan, you know- he leaves on Friday to head back to the States. I'll be sad to see him go, but he plans on returning to Taiwan before the year is out. If I'm still here at that time, I hope to see him again!

So anyway, we got up early and headed over to Taipei Main Station, over to their slow train terminal. They have a bullet train here in Taiwan, but it sadly does not go to Keelung. No worries, it was a short trip anyway.

Platform 4 of Taipei Main Station

After an hour-long ride through what seemed to be solid suburbs, we arrived in Keelung. Keelung is a port city, the biggest and busiest in all Taiwan. It was established in the late 1800s by the Qing Dynasty when the Port of Taipei began silting up too badly- instead of spending more and more money trying to keep Taipei's port clear, they just built a better one nearby and connected it with the only railway they ever built in Taiwan (three years after Keelung was founded, the Japanese took control of the island).

Pier right outside of Keelung Railway Station

It's like Hollywood!

I had done some research on Keelung before we came, so I had a couple places in mind to go to. First, we were off to a place called Fairy Cave, a natural cove formation made by the tides coming in and out over the years. We took a bus over to it- it was quite a long way away, and actually we missed our stop! The bus driver wanted us to get out at the final stop, but when I explained what we were doing and where we wanted to go, he decided to use some of his break time to take us right to the cave anyway. Thanks, random bus driver!

The cave is located behind these buildings.

It was a beautiful cave. The ceiling was low, and Harry and I were forced to duck many times. Water dripped from the ceiling and off the electric lights scattered inside. Many people had carved into the rock- I couldn't read all of it of course, but I near one name I saw was the date 1912. As we went further in ,the cave began to narrow...

Suck it in!

Despite being quite narrow, this portion of the cave went on for a while.

Looking back at Harry

At a certain point, the cave got very small. I was forced to get down on my knees to get through, and Harry waited behind for me. My shoulders scraped the rock on either side, and I had to carry my backpack in front of me! But after a few dozen feet of that, the cave widened again, and on the other side was this:

A simple altar, hidden by fragrant incense smoke 

Some very devout person went through a lot of effort to build that there.

We exited the Fairy Cave, walked about thirty feet to the right and entered a different cave: the Buddha Hand Cave, named for a natural formation that looks like a man's hand inside. On the way, there was a isgn pointing to a bathroom:

Ahh, nature!

Yep, no walls. Who needs privacy anyway?

The proper entrance to the cave was up some disused steps, covered in moss and crisscrossed with spiderwebs. I gather not many people come to these caves!

Going down...

This cave was much bigger than the other. It was still dripping wet inside, the walls stained by layers of lichen and mineral deposits. It was a honeycomb of small passageways and arches inside, with some portions probably twenty feet tall and others four or five.

Harry, wearing his spelunking hat (the fake hair provides cushion if he hits his head)

Because this one was so much bigger, we wandered around looking at the awesome caveiness of it for a good half hour before coming across the main attraction entirely by accident:

There it is! It looks better in person... but that's a hand!

The cave was cooler than the hand design in the roof, but it was cool to think of what processes must have carved that there.

We emerged a different way than we came in to be greeted by the back streets of a small village:

Like Taipei, but tiny!

Not many people were around. There was one person selling ice cream near the bus stop, a few cats... not much else. The village didn't feel creepy though, just old.

After these caves, we decided to head over to Peace Island Park (和平島公園) and check out the views of the ocean it offered. It was on our way there that we encountered... Nowhere Man.

So we boarded a bus when it came, and a few stops later an old Taiwanese man got on. I yielded my seat to him, and he smiled at me and sat down. A few minutes later, I looked over at him and he was still staring at me and Harry, smiling madly. That's a little odd, but not entirely unusual- we're out of Taipei, after all, and we're two very tall foreigners. It's only natural for us to get some stares. I try to talk to the guy, but to my surprise he can't speak Chinese- only Taiwanese. I know about ten words of Taiwanese, not nearly enough to do anything useful, so after it became apparent we couldn't communicate I just smiled at him again and looked away.

He didn't stop trying, though. He used gestures and very, very basic Chinese (like, one word repeated over and over basic) to try to figure out if Harry was my dad and what we were doing. He was very focused on Harry! To be honest, I got kind of tired of him- I wanted to look at the scenery, and anyway he had horrifyingly bad teeth, like he painted brown cottage cheese over every gap in his teeth. I put up with him, trying to be nice, until he got off a few stops before us.

We got off the bus at the terminal and waited for the next bus to Peace Island. Not ten minutes had gone by, when guess who walks up? Nowhere Man immediately walks over to me, grabs my arm and starts talking excitedly. Now it's starting to get funny, so I humor him for a while longer- not like I had anything to do but wait anyway. He kept trying to pull me somewhere, but I was waiting for a bus, and anyway I didn't want to go anywhere with him, so I didn't let him pull me away- there are some advantages to being a huge American! Our bus finally arrived, and looking very conflicted Nowhere Man decided not to get on with us. We thought that would be that last we saw of him...

Anyway, an uneventful bus ride deposited us a short walk away from Peace Island Park.

Nice park!

The first thing that jumped out at us was, of course, the ocean. There was a small islet nearby the entrance of the park that looked very picturesque at first glance...

Beautiful!

...but as I looked at it longer, I realized it was covered in tiny bugs! I don't know what they were- they looked like cockroaches, but with a crazy number of legs, and an iridescent blue color. They weren't bad looking, actually, but I definitely wouldn't want to have them in my house!

Walking around the path, we came across this awesome view:

Natural picture frame!

This landscape was very reminiscent of the volcanic formations at Yehliu- in fact, I would be very surprised if they weren't from the same event. The rock underfoot looked quite smooth, but powdered away very easily, and we had to be careful to not damage anything.

Such a great view...

Over at the pagoda, Harry and I accidentally woke up a napping German man named Dieter. He said he had taken five weeks off work (nice, right?) to tour the island- despite living here for six years, working for Siemens Taiwan, he rarely ever left Taipei, and he just wanted to get out and see things. And in this case, nap on them. We explained why we were here- to learn Chinese, to allow us to preach to Chinese people- and he was politely interested, but no more. We left him to his seaside nap.

It's like the ground is boiling!

Old lava flows are awesome.

There wasn't much more to the park- we walked back to the visitor center, got some delicious seaweed popcorn and headed back out.

Where we ran into... Nowhere Man!

He greeted us with a big brown smile and an aborted attempt at a hug, pointed to the park and somehow managed to explain that he would have gone in to find us, but he had no money. (It was cheap, but not free to go in- $40NT, about $1.20US.) We laughed awkwardly and started to walk away, but of course he followed us. Harry really thinks it's funny now, especially because Nowhere Man is only trying to talk to me and not him. Multiple times, he tried to pull me down a side street, but again, no way. We realized that the only way were were gonna get rid of him was by calling a cab, not by taking the bus. 

When the cab pulled up, Nowhere Man began getting agitated enough that as he talked, his- at this point I realized, dentures- began to come loose. I tried to explain to him that he couldn't come with us, and even gave him the rest of our popcorn as a consolation prize, but even still I had to push him away from the taxi door as I shut it- he was really trying to get in with us! I bet he would have followed us all the way back to Taipei if we'd let him! His face was sad as we drove away, but it was the necessary thing to do- I can't even have a cat right now, I absolutely can't adopt a Taiwanese guy! A part of me really wants to know what he wanted so badly with us, but I don't suppose there is any way to know now, and I was not about to risk being stabbed or something.

After a quick trip through the Miaokou Night Market, Keelung's most famous, and eating some delicious fresh seafood, we boarded a train back to Taipei, joking/worrying the whole way that we'd run into Nowhere Man once we got home. Happily, we did not, and we got home just in time for me to join Terry Miller's family study.

And... that's up to now! I'm putting in job applications, so my free time won't last for long, but it's nice while I have it! My mom comes to Taiwan this Saturday (!!! Hi mom!), so the next update probably won't come any sooner than the last few have, but it will certainly be an awesome time! Until then!