Loose Ends 千頭萬緒

 (What day is it again?)

The last couple of weeks have not been conducive to good blog posting, unfortunately. First I got sick, then my Final Test (*ominous lightning*) happened, then I got sick again. I'm completely well now, though, and quite happy about it! So this post might be a bit all over the place, mostly because I simply haven't had any really big, photograph-worthy things happen in the last week.

So, here's something that happened a little while ago: Mafia Night!

The Korean brother covering his mouth was the Mafia, as it turns out. Jerk killed me!

Mafia is a pretty simple game: You hand out cards with secret character assignments. People are either the Mafia, a Doctor, a Policeman, or Civilians. There's one each of Doctor and Cop, two or three Mafia and everyone else is a Civilian. The Civilians have to figure out who the Mafia are just by talking to everyone, and if they can get enough people to vote they can eliminate someone. The Mafia are also trying to have the majority, but they know who each other are and can work together to eliminate threats. The Cop can know the truth about people, but has to make sure the Mafia don't know who he is (or else they'll kill him immediately), and the Doctor can save people's lives if he guesses they're about to die. It's usually a pretty fun game if everyone gets into it, but considering we had English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean being thrown around... the chaos made it even more fun :-)

Service has been good, as usual. Unfortunately I haven't gone out as much as I've wanted to lately- that final test was brutal, and it didn't help that I was sick when I needed to be studying for it! It worked like this: Our class went to the same classroom as usual, but instead of our normal teacher (Qiu Laoshi 丘光華老師) we had a proctor watching over us. The test had several parts: First, they read off series of sentences and we had to either figure out which was was correct, or which one had an error in it. Next, a reading comprehension; read a paragraph in characters and answer questions on it. Then a slightly different paragraph; this one was full of holes, and we had to write in the word we thought could go there (kind of like Mad Libs but more formal). Lastly, we were taken aside by the proctor, shown a picture and asked to tell a story about the picture. It was quite stressful- the final test is a full 25% of the semester's grade- but I think I did pretty well! I won't hear my score until Monday, but safe to say I didn't get 0, and I also probably didn't get 100.

Near Dongmen Night Market, but in the daytime

Of course, right after that I got sick again- perfect timing for the week-long vacation between semesters! My cold had gotten up into my sinuses and I had an infection. I needed antibiotics... happily, this is Taiwan and not America, so getting antibiotics was literally as easy as walking to the pharmacy down the street from my house and asking them for some. They made sure I didn't want painkillers, then gave me a week's worth of antibiotics for $12, no doctor necessary.

So, longtimers, do you remember in my very first post how I mentioned bringing cheese to Taiwan? Well, I did. I brought three kinds of very hard cheese in my luggage, and after holding on to them for two weeks with no refrigeration, finally put them in Tan Jiemei's refrigerator... where I forgot about them for about a month. When I finally remembered, I figured they were definitely too old, and Tan Jiemei probably threw them out anyway, so I forgot about them.

Well, last week she gave them back. Sure enough, they looked rotten, covered in white mold... but when sliced open, the mold was only about an eighth of an inch deep! Cheese is basically mold anyway, so...

Delicious! Fried eggs and cheese. I had no oil so fried them in cheap wine

Hooray cheese! (As it turns out, you actually can get cheese here, it's just really expensive and at specialty stores.)

One day, we were also invited to take a ferry north from Danshui to... the other half of Danshui, across the river.

Ferry! Note Mason's stylish hat.

This ferry ride was awesome- once we had gotten underway, they allowed us to stand on the deck and walk around to the front of the boat, so most of the way there Joseph, Nikolai and I posed heroically on the bow, riding out the waves. It was both cool and cold!

Giancarlo and his fiancee, Sara

Unfortunately, besides being very cold on the coast, most of the shops were closed because of Chinese New Year. The Chinese really only have one vacation a year, but man do they make sure it counts!

Also, People Of Sacramento: Do you know Mike Miller? Mikey, are you reading this? Because I swear, if I can find out who rides this motorcycle, I'm giving her your number.

I'm assuming it's a girl, but in hindsight I actually have no idea...

Another day out in service. Ryota and I were working with this little guy, Boyi. He is probably the friendliest ten year old I've ever met- I don't think a single person walked past us that he didn't try to talk to! He also totally stole most of our doors, which we were both okay with since his Chinese is better than ours.

Ten year olds speak better than I can... practice, practice.

Over the weekend, we also visited the Daan Jade Market, which is built underneath a freeway overpass near my school. They had a lot of really cool things in there- jades, paintings, porcelain, jewelry, calligraphy, tea accessories...

I didn't buy anything, but if I ever get a job here, I'm coming back!

This shot is on the way to a study's house for dinner, in Yonghe District. There is just no way a car could fit on this street.

I kind of like this, though- it makes the city lively and friendly!

This last Monday, though, we went to tour the Taiwan Branch. They've got 42 Bethelites living there now- up from 35 last year!

Hi guys!

Here in Taiwan, besides all the administrative work from the Taiwan area- Kingdom Hall purchasing and maintenance, conventions, etc- their primary work is Mandarin Chinese audio recordings. All the Mandarin audio you hear in our organization comes from Taiwan. Besides that, they have a (really small! One guy!) printery, where they print magazines in the various native Taiwanese languages, and they occasionally assist Hong Kong branch with small tasks too.

Picture of the first Kingdom Hall in Taiwan, 1958

It was cool visiting them. They're definitely more laid back than Wallkill was, but in fairness, they have about 1/85th as many people!

One last picture. Last night after some evening service, a bunch of us brothers went out to Xiaolongbao. Good food man! The Korean brother in this picture, Hanji, had somehow never eaten xiaolongbao before, so it was an important educational experience!

The brother on the right, Yang Jie, had already eaten all his dumplings...

But things should pick back up pretty soon. I've been making plans to go on an overnight trip out in the countryside in a few months, that should be great fun!

I do have one sad announcement to make: Mason has decided that he is, without a doubt, going home. His plane leaves on the 24th. He hopes to quickly save up enough money and finish his Associate's degree so that he can come back, hopefully within six months. I'm very sad to see him go, but I hope that his plans prove successful and he is indeed able to return in a timely manner.

My class starts again next Wednesday- I hope I passed! :-D

Yehliu Geopark 野柳地质公园

(Venture forth!)

Hi everyone. So, I'm sick. I'm almost well now, but for the last five or six days I've been in various states of sick, so there really hasn't been too much to blog about. But it has been a while, so here's some pictures from a trip I took to Yehliu Geopark.

I woke up early in the morning and met some friends at a cafe. There were five of us in total: Myself, David and Sarah Llach, from Spain and New Zealand respectively (by way of Australia), Josh, from Australia and nowhere else, and Santiago, from Spain by way of China (he's moving to Taiwan permanently so I can post pictures of him). Mason and Harry were both invited, but they didn't want to come.

Artsy introduction shot! From the left, Santiago, Sarah, Josh and David

We took a bus for about an hour and a half to a small port city on the eastern side of Taiwan. It probably has a name, but I am unaware of it.

Josh is taking a picture of the fish we could see through the crystal-clear water. Sadly, his camera is better than mine and I couldn't take their picture.

We walked for a while until we found the entrance to the Geopark itself. Yehliu is, I believe, the remnants of a volcanic eruption on the coast of Taiwan. The lava poured down the hillsides and into the ocean, where it formed some incredibly interesting formations. Then, after a few tens of thousands of years of plate tectonics, the island rose slightly, exposing these awesome rocks for us to see.

On the walk to the park. Some fog rolled in from the ocean...

It's a very popular spot for Taiwanese tourists to go, but is mostly unknown to foreigners,so I'm happy the friends told us about it. Unfortunately, it was very crowded when we first went in...

...but most of those people were part of tour groups, which didn't go very far into the park. So soon, it went from this:

They call this rock the Queen's Head... I guess they didn't like their queen?

To this:

Much better!

First, the path took us down by the ocean.

The sand was mostly made of seashells and coral, and was very sharp but beautiful.

The tides make very interesting patterns in the basaltic rock. It's also littered with thousands of small tide pools.

Beginning to climb higher...

This little inlet is connected to the ocean through a maybe three-inch crevice in the rocks.

Another angle.

Soon, the path began climbing steeply up the mountain.

Aww.

Santiago is easily surprised!

On the way up, we saw one of the best trees ever:

Which, naturally, led to this:

I probably wasn't allowed to do this.

 At the top of the mountain, we had a very interesting experience. At the very top of the path, there was a red pagoda with a granite floor, with an eight-sided table in the middle of it. We were tired, so we sat down in the pagoda and brought out our snacks. The mist was heavy up there, and while we could see the ocean right around us we couldn't see much else.

Looking down from the pagoda. For some reason, I never
took a picture of the pagoda itself... sorry!

 As we sat, chatting and eating off-brand Pringles, we saw three silhouettes approaching us from the path. It was three Chinese people- not unusual, okay, but these were actual Chinese people, from China. (We could tell from the accent- Mainlanders have very strong "R" sounds, whereas Taiwanese people tend to drop their "H"'s.) So we invited them to sit down with us in Chinese, and I think they agreed more out of surprise we could speak Chinese than anything. We got to talking- where are you from, etc- and it came out pretty fast that we five were originally from hugely different areas of the world. They were amazed, and asked how we became friends. We told them about our volunteer work, teaching people about the Bible. For whatever reason, Santiago had actually brought a Bible (in Simplified Chinese, too- perfect for Mainlanders!), so he got it out and showed it to them. They were surprised again, and admitted they didn't know much about the Bible. So for the next hour or so, in a pagoda on top of a misty mountain by the ocean, we studied the Bible with them.

After that awesome break in the day (they took invitations and said they'd check out our website- Santiago knows more what to do next) we took a look at the time and decided to head back. We hit one last interesting place that we hadn't visited yet:

The Moon. Or, pretty close.

It's just solid, flat rock, with really weird patterns in it.

This did bring us back to the populated areas, though...

...which wasn't a bad thing, because here's Santi, preaching like a boss again.

There's a crab in this tide pool!

Yehliu Geopark is one of the more interesting natural parks I've ever visited, and we didn't see it all- there are caves you can dive into, if you're brave! That will have to wait for another time. Also, Mason's sister Kayla left us earlier this week. I totally didn't get to say goodbye- I went to sleep early (sick), before they got home from visiting with friends, and when I woke up she had already gone to the airport. But it's alright, Mason says she didn't say goodbye to him, either, and he actually dropped her off!

This next week- Tuesday, actually- is the final test for this quarter's Chinese lessons. I'm using my sick time well by studying hard- hopefully it goes well! And hopefully, I'll be completely well by then too! :-)

Visit 探訪

(A guest arrives!)

This week, most of our activity has been dominated by one person, a slight girl known to some as... Kayla Moore. Mason's sister came to Taiwan to visit her brother! And she picked a good time to do it, too- today, actually is Chinese New Year, so for the last few days and for the next few days everyone is on vacation! Hooray, school's out! So we've had lots of time to do touristy things with her and help her get a feel for Taiwan and Chinese. Mason's not-so-secret motive for all of this is to get her to join Chinese, and hopefully someday move to Taiwan...

We started the week by doing early service in Daan Park.

Anyone for some morning Tai-Chi? And yes, I asked before I took this picture.

Daan Park is always pleasant, and it's very nice spending the first couple hours of a day walking around with a friend or two talking to people about creation. Unfortunately, Kayla can't speak a word of Chinese, so she was a bit confused walking around with Mason all morning, but it was still a nice morning.

Afterwards, we went into the National Taiwan University's campus:

The resemblance is uncanny!

Normally we aren't allowed onto the campus to preach, but because school is out no one cared. We actually ran into someone quite interesting- while walking around the campus, we saw a bagel shop. That's unusual, because I haven't seen a bagel since arriving in Taiwan, so naturally we went to buy some bagels and coffee. The shop is owned by a sister! She's a Taiwanese sister who moved to Alameda, CA about twenty years ago, but when her mother became sick three years ago had to move back to Taiwan. She wanted to not have to get a regular 9-to-5 job, so she thought: Bagels are delicious. Americans like to eat bagels. Taipei has no bagels, but has Americans. So she opened a bagel shop, and is doing well! She gave us free coffee and bagels for visiting her, and I now have a favorite spot to do homework if, for whatever reason, I can't do it at home.

The next day, we decided to ascend to the top of Taipei 101. I've seen it many times since arriving- you can see it from almost anywhere in the city- and I've been inside it a few times, but I had never actually gone to the top. It was a bit expensive, but check out these views:

Looking East, towards the mountains

Kayla is overcome!... or something

Looking West, towards most of the City

Mason and Kayla in a window

Panorama from the 91st floor after sunset, West and North

So Taipei 101 is huge, obviously, and Taipei City is in not only an area prone to typhoons, but is also in an active fault zone, so often has earthquakes. Those two factors are why most of Taipei is shorter than 20 stories tall. In order to keep the skyscraper safe, comfortable, and vertical, it has inside of it a huge motion damper, 600 tons of steel mounted on massive hydraulics and hanging from the roof, designed to absorb the wobbling of the building. Being Taiwanese, naturally they anthropomorphized it!

Hanging out with the Damper, and the Damper Baby

According to the stats inside the damper room, it reduces the wobbling by 40%. They have a video of it working during a typhoon, and it looks like it was a really good idea to have! At the top of the tower, they also had a small display of art, such as this eagle:

Cool, right? Every single feather is carved out of a different piece of coral, then fitted together

And now for something completely different...

This last weekend, we were invited by our congregation's hosted group, the Daan Group, to go on a picnic with them. We actually drove cars to a place about 90 minutes outside of Taipei, near a town called Pingxi. There were about 20 people invited, and it was a really refreshing change from being inside the city so much.

We're not in Taipei anymore...

All the people, all the friends. :-)

It was a cool setup- we each paid the equivalent of $10, and not only got to rent an area to hang out and cook but also were provided with a bunch of meat, vegetables, fruit, beer, rice, soda, everything needed to have a nice time. They also had a karaoke machine, but we didn't have enough Japanese friends with us to use it.

Brother Qi, his two sons and Ryota cooking with gas!... actually, with coal.

After we ate a lot, we played with the kids, playing a game similar to dodgeball that I'm pretty sure we just made up, and later hide-and-seek, which they are much better at than I am. (How can those tiny legs run so fast?!)

Group shot!

 On another day, we also decided to go through the Zoo up to Maokong, that same place I went with Harry a few weeks ago.

Random penguins!

In order to get to Maokong, you need to either hike or take the gondola... so we took the gondola, because it's like five miles away.

Also, because gondolas are awesome.

Even if Kayla was a little freaked out by it...

Because we're masochistic, mostly what we talked about was the worst places to fall off the cable. We decided "five feet from Maokong Station" was the worst, if only for the irony.

So last time I was in Maokong, I showed pictures of Taipei from up there; here's some pictures of Maokong itself! We took a bit of a hike around, and here's what we saw:

Rice terraces...

Scary looking rope bridges...

And tea plantations!

Ah yes, one last thing: While we were near Pingxi, we decided to go into the town itself. Pingxi is the site of the Paper Lantern Festival, which happens once every year a few weeks after Chinese New Year. The idea is you write your wishes for the next year onto the lantern, then release it into the sky. It's not for a little while yet, but there were still a few people launching their lanterns and wishes:

Unfortunately, it has a lot to do with Taoism, so we're not going to do it ourselves (the same reason we don't hand out red envelopes or do the Dragon Dance). It's still a cool thing to see. Also, the lanterns are big; I had imagined hand lantern-sized lanterns, but you could easily fit into these things! 

We still have about five days of vacation left. I return to school on the 5th of February, and Kayla takes off for home on the morning of the 4th, so we can still do some fun stuff. We're inviting a bunch of people over to our house on Sunday night, so that will be fun!

I'll tell you how it went next time...