Thanks to my room-mate Fan Tien, I was able to take a tour of Taiwan Bethel today. It was very nice, we took a bus of about 40 people, in the group there were a handful of English speakers, a few of whom I knew already. So we had our own little tour group in English, which was very nice, otherwise you'd be looking at lots of rooms with chairs and tables but you wouldn't know the purpose of them. I took at least 50 pictures, most of them blurry, and most of them of walls, hallways, grass, storage rooms, so I probably won't post any of them. I may try to post a few of the group photos. I didn't get any of the "full group" photos since. Mostly because there were 40 of us and most of us had cameras, so my face hurt from smiling and waiting for each camera to be used to take each picture of the same group, so maybe I'll figure out who got pictures and get them e-mailed to me. After 11 pictures it's really hard to not have a fake smile, it's just not natural anymore. I also found out that there is an American brother, Chris from Wisconsin, my state of birth, that lives just a few blocks away from me. He's been here for about six months, he even offered to show me around a little bit. So it's nice to know more people around here. And after walking the streets of Taipei for 6 weeks, it's pretty amazing to be in a place as beautiful and immaculately clean as a Bethel home. By the way there are 35 Bethelites there. They do translating and then the printing is done in Japan. Chinese magazines, however, are translated in the Hong Kong Branch. Except for 2 ancient looking printing presses that print magazines in the native Amis language, I guess they print about 200 copies per month. Also they don't recommend learning this language because it is dying out with the older generation.
In more personal news, I am experiencing the pure ecstasy of owning a reciprocating fan. (I had to let the spell checker help with ecstasy, I can't believe it's spelled like that, who decides these things?) Today it's 83 degrees with 60 percent humidity. I'll spare you the gory details of what that's like when you're wearing a tie and a backpack. And I'll spare myself the gory details of continuing to try sleeping without airflow. I was recently informed that the weather in Taipei says "Mist" on the little weather applet in my side bar. If you're wondering what that is, it's fog, hot fog, or moisture droplets in the air, it even looks like fog when you look across distances, you really can't see that far. On our way out of Taipei to Bethel we could see the worlds tallest building, Taipei 101, as a big hazy outline in the sky, like a shadow in the fog. (edit 304) Permalink