Near and Far 進和遠

 (Although, everything's kind of far...)

So, first thing's first! I received a long-awaited letter this week: My TOCFL certification!

Shiny!

This stupid thing has taken a lot of work, six months of class, arguments with the Ministry of Education, the proverbial blood, sweat and tears, and it finally came in. You know what the really ironic thing is? It doesn't even really help me in Taiwan, since everyone who would hire me can tell I can speak Chinese because I'm talking to them in Chinese! But it makes the scholarship people happy, and if I ever move back to America it'll help me out a lot. Also, it's kinda cool!

So this week we had an opportunity to go way out into the sticks, one of the poor districts of Taipei City called Wanlong. When the Nationalist Chinese first fled to Taiwan in the 50s, they suddenly had this huge glut of refugees who had nowhere to live, so they built a ton of really cheap concrete houses sprawling out into the countryside just to give them a roof until they could build proper architecture. They didn't have individual running water; each cluster had a shared well. They also didn't have electricity at first, although they got wired up pretty quickly by the residents.

Pretty typical neighborhood out there.

A lot of the houses are abandoned now, since they actually followed through with that "temporary until we build better houses" promise, but some families decided to continue living there, so we had some nice conversations!

Also, the ties came off. Aw yeah.

We foreigners typically have a really hard time communicating with older Chinese people. As you probably know, Chinese is a tonal language, and the pitch of each word is just as important as the sounds for determining what it means: it's the difference between "mother 媽 ma1", "horse 馬 ma3" and "scold 罵 ma4" for instance. So, when people begin getting older, their hearing starts to go... and for most of us 外國人, our tones aren't the best. Personally, I can speak very well when I have a prepared comment or something, but when speaking conversationally I find it very easy to slur a word or pronounce the wrong tone. Happily, most of our friends understand just fine, but when you combine that with someone who already can't hear very well, it's not pretty.

There was a house down this dirt path, but a tree had fallen in the way and we couldn't keep going.

And then of course, most of them have accents themselves, sometimes quite thick. Still, they all read the same characters, so although the actual amount of communication happening up in Wanlong wasn't the greatest, we still managed to accomplish something!

I was also able to accompany one of the local friends, Truman Yang, on a bible study. Mr. Wang works at a "Prussian Deli", which means they serve hot dogs and pigs feet, in an underground market in the Zhongzheng District. He's usually always at work, but around 3pm he has a lull in customers, so Truman arranges to go by the deli at that time and study a bit with him. He's just completed the Good News from God brochure, and is starting the Bible Teach book next month.

Only slightly awkward when a customer comes and wonders why there are two men in suits at the deli!

Our regular service, closer to home, continued as well. I think I mentioned that a couple weeks ago, I got a new roommate? His name is Jerry Tsai (Or in Chinese 蔡勁民), he's been studying with Terry for the last year or so and will actually be baptized next month! He just graduated from college, so he can't continue to live in the dorms anymore, and we had a room open- it worked out!

Jerry's in the middle, next to Ashley from England

Actually, the next year for him will be pretty tough. In Taiwan, there's mandatory military service for every male once they turn 18, but if you go to college it's deferred until you graduate. Jerry will be drafted soon, and since he's getting baptized he obviously won't join the Army, so he'll have to first defend his case, then go do the alternative service- usually some form of community work, like cleaner or bus driver. The important bit is it's not paid at all (other than food), but still requires a 40+ hour work week, so he'll have to live pretty leanly for a while! He's got savings though, and the Taiwanese congregations support their young ones doing this work, so he'll be fine.

Later that same day- Brandy has photo radar, I swear

Finally, this weekend was fun. The meeting was very upbuilding, and was a very interesting topic, all about economic immigrants separating from their families to try to send money back. It made me think about my own situation a little; but I decided in the end that first, my motivation to move wasn't money but spiritual goals, and second, I may have left my parents in another country, but I don't have a wife and certainly no children, so it's not the same. As far as the Scriptures are concerned, my household is just me; so I take my household with me everywhere I go!

After the meeting, we went to a nearby Thai restaurant for delicious coconut milk curry.

Yunmei brought delicious stinky cheesecake!

After lunch, I worked with Sun Yunkai doing some return visits for a few hours, and oddly enough encountered an unusual number of Muslim people, which led us to have a conversation about their religion. Yunkai didn't know a whole lot about it, so I was happy to be able to help him out.

Jerry had his first set of baptism questions (hooray!), so to celebrate we went out to dinner, and while out the sky broke. Lightning, thunder, rivers of water in the streets. We were planning on going to play soccer with everyone after, but that was off! So we went and watched movies at Brandy's house instead.

We watched a comedy set in Ming China- funny, but extremely Chinese

So that's it! I start my new job at the kindergarten pretty soon, we have our Regional Assembly after that, and then I'm going to Okinawa! So it should be a good time. :-)