Mom's Visit 我媽媽探訪我了

(:-D)

This has been the longest pause between updates since I started this blog, but I have a good reason, I swear- my mom came to visit me!

Hi mom!

She arrived in Taipei on the 17th of May at around 9:30 pm. I wanted to be at the airport waiting for her when she arrived, and after an interminable bus ride arrived just in time to see her walking out of customs. We hugged, I grabbed some of her stuff and hailed a cab back to the city- unfortunately, I didn't have quite enough money! Already, the trip was going well. Happily, the cab driver was very kind to us and dropped us off close to home in exchange for just whatever was in my wallet (I was only like US$5 short).

She was very excited to be in Taiwan, although very tired- she said she couldn't sleep at all during the whole plane ride! So after we walked back to my apartment and I showed her her room (Harry's old room, now that he's moved out), she almost immediately went to sleep- although not before giving me some presents! Thank you, everyone who sent me things- I really appreciate your thoughtful gifts and encouragement. (And the truffles are delicious!)

The next morning, there was no sleeping in, sadly, for it was Sunday, and that means 9:30 meeting. We went down and got some very Chinese breakfast (pork fried noodles with a sunny-side-up egg on top, coated in black pepper sauce), then went to meeting! Although Mom couldn't understand any of it, the friends were very warm and loving towards her (as always), and we were invited to lunch afterwards.

Mom wasn't as good with chopsticks as she thought- Judy is helping her out

But the day was not done! After lunch, we went back to the house, packed a backpack and went to join a group of people heading to Wulai! I've mentioned Wulai before- it's a little Aboriginal village about an hour south of Taipei, in the mountains, with some nice free hot springs and a beautiful river.

Yep, Wulai is still gorgeous.

So besides the awesomeness of soaking in a boiling hot springs, then jumping in a very cold river, and repeating until totally relaxed, and interesting thing happened...

Although Wulai is a bit touristy, it is very much a local tourist place, a place for the people of Taipei to get a break from the city, but not really anything you'll find listed on travel boards or anything. So, we eight were the only Westerners in the whole village. Eventually, one Taiwanese guy worked up the courage to come over and start talking to us in his actually pretty impressive English, asking us the usual- where are we from, why are we here, etc. As it happened, our group was made up of four Americans, two English, one Dutch and one Danish person, and the Taiwanese guy (named Zhen En 真恩) thought it was very cool that so many nationalities were all hanging out together. He seemed like a nice guy, so I decided to preach to him a bit by explaining that although we have different backgrounds, we all have the same reason for coming to Taiwan- namely, to help people understand the Bible.

My mom took this picture like a ninja.

I gave him our tract on the Future- I always carry some tracts in my backpack- and he decided to follow us around the rest of the day. He couldn't swim, so whenever we jumped in the river he just kind of waited, but while in the hot springs we chatted a bit- a little travel, a little religion, a little hiking, a little prophecy. It was funny actually, earlier he had mentioned that he had some Russian friends who were nominally Christian, but he felt they were bad Christians because they "put Putin ahead of Christ"! I mentioned the hypocrisy in most religions and we went on... I did not know those same Russian friends were actually in Wulai with us! As we were leaving the hot springs to get something to eat in town, they called out to him in Chinese "Will we see you at church next week?", to which he responded "Oh, I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses now!"

...Great! 

I got his information and gave him a copy of all the tracts I had, but he lives outside of the range of Taipei's metro, so I can't visit him unless I borrow someone's scooter... which probably isn't going to happen. Still, I gave him our web site, and if he's serious about wanting to become one of Jehovah's Witnesses, Jehovah will certainly bless his efforts!

Also, we got food. It's like... wheat jelly, coated in seaweed and spices, and is way better than it sounds.

The next day, we kept the momentum going and went to the National Palace Museum, which was as impressive and crowded as it always is. Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed inside, and my mom is a better person than I am because she took that rule seriously, not letting me sneak even one picture. Still, it was a nice time, and the people inside were happy to see two Americans appreciating Chinese history. You know, we aren't taught anything about China in school...

That night, we came across this guy!

This could be an ad for Taiwan.

Well, first we came across Terry and Joe coming home from a study, then Terry wanted us to check if James (that guy^) was home, which he was. James is a very old call of Terry's, he never really goes anywhere but he's always happy to accept and discuss our information. Also, he has a beautiful garden full of handmade art made up of trash... he collects old things, like plastic bottles and cans and CDs and stuff and makes art out of them, then plants flowers inside the art and puts them on display. While talking to us, he became overwhelmed with emotion and gave my mom a really nice plant in an artistic plastic water bottle... that she couldn't take home with her, so now it's mine. :-)

Afterwards, we went to Matsusei, bought beer and sat outside drinking... as you do.

It's legal in Taiwan!

We got busted up around 1 am though... one of the neighbors thought we were talking too loudly and called the cops on us, who very politely asked us to take it to a park or something. Rather than do that, we just went home.

The next day, we went on a rip to a town called Jiaoxi, on the east coast of Taiwan. My mom had heard that in Taiwan, there is a kind of fish the will eat the dead skin off your feet and make them all clean, so she wanted to do that while she was here. Terry recommended Jiaoxi, and Terry knows everything, so Jiaoxi it was! We took a bus to the town, which took about an hour and a half, and it dropped us off at a random street in the middle of town. After wandering around for a while, asking directions a few times, and trying unsuccessfully to use a McDonald's wifi (turns out you need to buy an account to use it in Taiwan), we eventually found the spa with the "doctor fish".

Kinda disgusting, kinda cool.

They don't have teeth so they can't actually bite you, although I'm sure they would if they could... they just kind of scrape your feet and legs clean. It's a really weird feeling, but afterwards your feet do feel cleaner... even a bit lighter! Unfortunately because the bus just dropped us off randomly (not at a stop or anything), we didn't know where to go to ride the bus back, so we took the train home, which was not only twice as expensive but also took twice as long. We did get some nice views of the ocean though.

We were hoping to go to Hualien, the biggest city on the East Coast, and see the famous Taroko Gorge National Park, but last Tuesday there was a fairly major earthquake in Hualien County (big enough that it shook me awake in Taipei), and combined with the constant heavy rain large portions of the park had suffered mudslides and were closed to the public.

So instead, we did something completely different... we went to Gaoxiong!

Gaoxiong 高雄 is Taiwan's second-biggest city, in the far south of the island, solidly in the tropics. We took the Taiwan High-Speed Rail to get there; despite being on the other side of the island, we got there in under two hours. Not bad!

We didn't really know what to do in Gaoxiong. Before we left we looked online and picked out a couple likely places to visit, like the Lotus Lake and the Dragon Tiger Pagodas, so we grabbed a couple maps and walked over to the bus station... where we quickly ran into this dapper gent!

The one in the suit, not me.

That's Jimmy Johnson. Not only does he have one of the best English names I've ever heard a Taiwanese person give themselves, he was incredibly friendly and happy to meet two foreign Witnesses- Gaoxiong doesn't have as many as Taipei! He recommended we go to a place called Xiziwan 西子灣 instead, so we did!

And his two lovely assistants!

They gave us young mangoes! Sour and delicious! It's worth noting here: Gaoxiong is hot. Although it wasn't as humid as it usually is in Taipei, the tropical sun beat down on us hard- it was at least 95 degrees in the shade, and yet here these three Witnesses are, wearing a vest and black tights. I guess it really is whatever you're used to...

We took Gaoxiong's subway to the Xiziwan station, as far south and west as it goes, then walked for about another fifteen minutes out to the harbor.

The weather reminded me of summertime in San Francisco, actually.

We wandered some more... we were pretty sure this was the right place, but despite Jimmy's recommendation we were unable to find anything to do. We did, however, find a ferry to a small nearby island, so... why not? We got on.

I got this nice shot of Gaoxiong's skyline, too!

The island, it turns out, is called Qijin 旗津, which means something like "Sweaty Flag". Not all Chinese placenames are pretty...

Although its name is a bit nasty, the island itself was really nice. It had a few shops selling food and drinks, a few stalls with roasted seafood (we got an oyster baozi- delicious!), and a 7-Eleven, of course... and then this:

Ahh yeah. Black sand beach.

We weren't expecting to go swimming, so we hadn't brought swimsuits or anything, but we still wanted to go walk around and enjoy the beach, of course.

At least my ankles will get wet!

The water was warm, the sun was hot, the people were nice, there were coconuts and spiral shells washing up on the beach... I really like Qijin. I'm totally getting a group together and going back this summer.

Another shot of the beach

After chilling on the beach for a while, we went to Ruifeng Night Market, one of Gaoxiong's more famous markets. It was fun, but mostly the same as the markets Taipei has- a little different food, and more games than I'm used to seeing. Delicious xiaolongbao, though! Afterwards, we got a train back home to Taipei and got in just before midnight.

Friday was actually a little irritating- in the morning, right as we were getting ready to make some tea to wake up, the power cut out. It turns out that we... er, forgot to pay our bill, so they shut us off... anyway, we spent the first part of the day walking down to the Taipower Company's office and negotiating to get our power turned back on. Not the best way to spend a vacation, but Mom had a sense of humor about it. Friday night is of course our meeting, and Mom actually managed to comment! In Chinese! :-D

Saturday, we went out in early morning service in Daan Park. Besides being a really nice way to start the day- the Park is beautiful- if you do it right you can have really good conversations with people.

What we ended up doing is spotting a group of people practicing their Tai Chi Fan martial arts, and asking them if we couldn't record them a bit. They seemed embarrassed and flattered, and although they said they weren't very good they let us sit down and record them going through their kata.

Feel the energy!

It was very kind of them to let us do that! Afterwards, we got talking, and as usual our reason for coming to Taiwan came up- because we teach people the Bible. They really were busy practicing their art, so we only talked for twenty minutes or so, but my mom gave the woman in that picture some literature and an invitation.

We went in the door-to-door ministry for a couple more hours (Mom thought it was very interesting, although she couldn't talk at all), then went back to the house to rest up a bit.

At around 3, we left to go check out the Flower Market, and Mom ended up buying some beautiful fans as presents to take back home, then we rushed off to meet my student Alex and his parents, Lillian and Steve, for dinner! They invited us to a really traditional Taiwanese (not Chinese) restaurant- duck noodles, beef meatball stew, broccoli with a weird orange sauce- my favorite was the pineapple shrimp! It was a huge amount of food, and they very generously picked up the tab for us.

Alex looks like a Power Ranger!

Sunday was another meeting- more happy smiling faces. Afterwards eight of us went out to Saizeriya for lunch, and we sat Asian style- all the brother together at one table, all the sisters at another. It gave me a good opportunity to sit with Kuanzheng, one of the young studies in our hall, and see how he was doing, which was cool. It also gave my mom a chance to meet some of the sisters while they were all relaxed- it seems that they really a bit tense around brothers, for whatever reason!

That evening, we went to the Tonghua Night Market, at Terry's suggestion, for a nice massage. I've typically been a bit suspicious of getting a massage here- I am a young, single Western male after all, could be a bit dangerous- but with my mom around I figured it was pretty safe. Not only was it safe, it was painful and relaxing, and they gave us a couple coupons for next time. Definitely going back!

Afterwards, we ate some grilled squid!

And then Monday came, which was my mom's last day in Taiwan. Because it was such a beautiful day- amazingly, it had finally stopped raining- we decided to go to the zoo, and because it was a weekday we actually got to see the pandas this time!

Panda!

All good things must come to an end, sadly. After a nice day at the zoo, we headed back to the apartment, got a last bubble milk tea in Shida Night Market (it was open despite being only 4 pm), packed Mom up and got in a taxi to the airport. The time passed quickly because it was so much fun! I really enjoyed my mom's visit, and I know she did too. (Besides, she bought so many gifts and stuff she had to buy a second bag to take on the plane home!)

Since she left, I've been busy. The TOCFL re-test is tomorrow, so I've been working on that, trying to fill my brain with the Chinese that may have spilled out over the last month or so. I took the practice test online and got a 90% on it, so I'm reasonably confident I'll do OK, but that's no reason to slack off! I'll tell you how it went...