Tonight was a pretty good night, we had meeting, a talk and Watchtower study. I recorded the talk with my camera, it has an audio-only record feature. During the talk I accidentally turned off the camera, but I was able to turn it on, open the audio record screen and press record all in between two sentences. I didn't miss a word.

I was also able to get in a comment during Watchtower study, I read it from PinYin and didn't actually know a lot of the words I read. I only knew it was the answer from cross checking my English magazine and guessing that the meaning was the same. But not much goes unappreciated by my congregation here. A few of my favorite Chinese girls, the Ling sisters, came up to me as a pair to thank me for my comment and test my Chinese conversation skills. I don't remember what they said, probably something about my not being here for much longer, but felt the urge I leaned towards them and spread my arms wide open.

They are both very small and I'm sure I could have hugged four of them and still had room to adjust my watch band behind them, but I was really only kidding. Giving them a big hug would seem out of place here. Even though I'm at least 17 years older than the oldest sister (They are just little girls) she quickly warned me that I couldn't hug them. It isn't appropriate for a man to hug girls here. Then she asked me if we had cross-gender hugging in America. I told her yes, but not too often or for too long. At that moment, even though I wasn't really planning on hugging them, I missed home a little bit more. It breaks my heart that I can't hug my cute little friends here, or hardly anyone else, but at the same time I can't quite imagine it ever feeling quite right to do here either. I guess that's one of those things they call culture. If I had remembered at the time I should have told them about the first time I was kissed good-bye by two people I had just met in Venezuela. I can see the look of horror on their faces now. I can't wait to tell them.

After meeting, as is common, a bunch of us wandered around the night market in the rain bumping umbrellas in search of food. I eventually made YiQi share his with me so one of didn't get hurt. I'm sure one of those umbrella spokes could put an eye if aimed right. I don't remember much of the conversation, maybe because I was too tired and it was mostly in Chinese, but I remember bringing up paragraph 16 of our Watchtower study. The sister that came with us was trying to learn how to read some Chinese from her magazine. I guess, according to Sammy, Chinese doesn't really have a word for nudge, although the word they used conveyed the same idea. As you can imagine, during this conversation, many of us were nudging each other with our elbows to show what we meant by nudge or whatever other word they were using. I guess Korean has a word for nudge, but doesn't have a word for listen, at least not that means that you're really listening. Which is a word commonly talked about in the magazines, but I told him that the word isn't always very clear in English either. I'm always curious about the gaps that languages have, like the gap English has with you and you (plural) (as in you guys).

But the best part of tonight was the ice cream cone I got for 10NTD15NTD at Burger King on the way home. There is just something incomparable about a soft serve ice cream cone. The ice cream cone was not only delicious (A word they love to use in English here, I don't think they realize that we usually just say "good" when something tastes good) but it also helped keep my left arm from dangling down low, out of the protection of my umbrella. My arm wasn't so wet when I got home, but my belly was full of creamy sugary icy deliciousness. (edit 479) Permalink