Today was not terribly eventful. I woke up late but I left in time to stop by 7-11 to get a fresh bottle of water and a bag of cashews, they were out of almonds. I've calculated that during my 3 hours of class I'll drink at least 1.5 bottles of water and I'll start to get very hungry after the first hour. I get especially hungry when they start talking about food, there are many words to learn relating to food, many of which I don't understand, or dishes that I've never had or seen.
Also today, after we talked about food, we talked about gods, which was kind of interesting but hard to understand. Eventually the teacher ended up asking me why I believed in a god that I could not see. I had a hard time trying to answer such a simple question in Chinese, I was wondering if she was able to see her gods, or why she worshiped them. First I tried to talk about evidence of a creator, I didn't know any words though, so I tried to say because I was here and alive, yeah that's hard to say in a foreign language you hardly know. "You have you? What? What about your body?" So I said that my "invisible God" had given us the Bible, of course I knew how to say Bible. Once she heard me talk about the Bible her confused look finally went away and she corrected my grammar and clarified and repeated to the rest of the students that "if you believed the Bible, you believed in God," then she changed to subject. What is interesting to me is that the words for god and God are nothing alike, and when she said "God" (only referring God that the "Christians" worshiped) she pointed straight up with a big gesture. However "god" or "gods" did not get such a gesture, they were spoken of more like people, actually she mentioned people dying by pointing down. I'm assuming she was talking about some sort of ancestor worship or something. She asked the Korean girl that had started the "gods" dialog if she "knew" the gods at the temple that the girl had mentioned visiting yesterday, she, somewhat jokingly, said she couldn't worship them if she didn't "know" them, or who they were.
The next class period's teacher asked us to explain what we did on particular days, this resulted in my explaining going to a meeting, and the words for that. She ended up writing Chinese stuff on the board then drawing a cross for Christianity. Of course I couldn't let that slide by, whether or not it confused everybody even more, so I said "No No. No cross. Yehehua." She seemed to get it so she wrote something that I think would translate into "Jehovah Religion." Since she just wasn't understanding the "Witness" part that I was trying to say I nodded my head. I was satisfied that I had gotten the important part of our name up there on the board. Then she sat back down to continue our dialogs and mentioned to the class (only 3 of us) that they had a lot of Witnesses attend our school. Yep, I nodded my head, glad to hear that we had distinguished ourselves from the other "Christians," and were also known for trying to learn Chinese to spread the word.

Tonight was the second meeting of the Circuit Overseer's visit, which swaps the order for us, School on Tuesday then Revelation on Thursday. Today I was ready, informed, and even 20 minutes early. I had time to walk, but I gave myself even more time (and less sweatiness) by hitching a ride on the back of my room-mate's Vespa.
"Finally" I had thought, zipping through traffic, "I'm early for a meeting and nothing is going wrong." I thought about last Saturday when my bike's chain gave up on it's job of pulling the rear wheel along, leaving me suddenly pedaling very fast with no resistance and for no reason. I'm sure it looks pretty funny to see someone's pedaling speed triple as the bike coasts to a stop, then I'm sure people really think the guy with the tie and backpack looks pretty cool using his feet to kick himself along the ground. Like those ancient bikes before pedals were invented. I ended up leaving my bike next to a tree half way to the meeting that night, making it there sweaty and in the nick of time.
But tonight I finally made myself go and get the bike on the way back from the meeting, I didn't really want to walk a bike all they way back home, but I was a little worried about leaving it there any longer. I told my room-mate that I wouldn't be riding with him back home, and set off on my little urban hike.
After about 5 minutes I found my bike, right where I had left it by the tree. I noticed that people had been using the basket on the front as a garbage can. As annoying as it is, it's kind of funny that they do that here, almost like it's the price you pay for free parking on the sidewalk. Since there aren't many public garbage cans here it's also very tempting to do, especially when it's partially full already. I've never done it, but tonight I considered transferring the garbage to one of the bikes next to me. I really wouldn't be littering, just moving litter that was already there... I chose to break the vicious cycle of bike-basket-littering and take the garage home with me, part of which was a wet towel I noticed. I didn't allow myself to speculate why someone would throw away an OK looking wet towel.
I decided on my way home that walking your broken bike home feels like pushing your car out of an intersection, it's just embarrassing. I tried to get the chain to work again, and it did, but only for a few blocks. So it's a trick chain, stupid chain. I couldn't help reliving a "Karate Kid" scene in my mind where Daniel (from a poor family) kicks his bike yelling passionately "stupid bike, I hate this stupid bike!" I giggled to myself in the dark, I thought this was funny, I didn't really hate the bike, but it would be funny if I did. As I thought about how I could work myself into an imaginary "Karate Kid" scene in Taipei at night to amuse myself on the way home, I came to a spot on the sidewalk that I had wanted to mention here before.
America is a little different than here because most of us have cars, even if they're junky, if we get kicked out of our apartments or something, we can live in our car. That might not be practical or how it really works, but it's always brought me a little comfort in the back of my mind that I could always live in my car. I don't know why I think about things that way. Not many people have cars here, including me. People have scooters, not including me. But you can't live in your scooter when life gets rough... I was wrong: there's an old guy, at least 65, that I've seen 2 or 3 times in the same spot at night sleeping on his scooter, with his helmet on. I feel sorry for him, but part of me is glad he has the security of that scooter, his home. But he must have moved on, or he has a rotation of parking spots, because I didn't see him tonight. (edit 314) Permalink