Hi Family and friends. I've made it to the Hong Kong airport, I leave in 3 hours, they lost one of my bags but the are supposed to be on a flight coming in at 7:45, so I gotta check in to the baggage office. I stayed the night in Kowloon, I was going to just ride around the MTR system all night, but it closes at 12:48pm, or at least the line I was on. Hong Kong is cool, there is English everywhere, British accents, it seems like most Customer Service people speak some English, which is nice of course. So I have an hour to kill, and probably less battery life on this thing. So I didn't really see much of Hong Kong except the Kowloon Station, which has a huge mall on top of it. I've decided I like Taxis, I should have taken one when I got to the Kowloon Station. Although I don't know where I would have gone. I really need to come here during the day. Oh wait, hey, I have a ticket to come here in June. Anyway, not much else to say till I get to Taiwan. It's kind of funny, in a dark way, I'm listening to a British CNN reporter talking about another school shooting in the U.S. I feel safer here. (edit 272) Permalink

Yes, I'm starting to feel almost at home here in Taipei. I've got a room-mate now, his name is Fantien. We live above a restaurant on the second floor near my school. I start school in about a week. I went on a study today with a brother who studies with a guy who studies 5 times a week and goes to meeting. The guy, the study, Leonard, took me out to dinner afterwards and made me eat two of his pot stickers, I had already eaten 20, plus some beef soup. I ate about 3 times as much as I would normally think that I could. I probably didn't have to, but I did, and what's done is done. The dinner was very very good, they really know how to make Asian food here. Then Leonard ran off to the meeting, I hope he wasn't too late. After that, I bought a cheap phone to plug into my Vonage box, and a power strip to plug everything in, then I walked home. After that I walked the streets for at least an hour in search of sheets and blankets. It turns out that there is a sheet/blanket store across the street from me, and a block down, but it's kind of small and I don't like the selection. So my plan is to go to Ikea and get what I want. If I get too much junk I'll have to take a Taxi back. I'm not sure if I'll be able to direct him right to my alley, my Lane, Lane 55. I'll have to take another picture of the Lane sign to show the Taxi driver.
I've been trying to upload some pictures to live.com, but it doesn't want to. (edit 273) Permalink

I just got back from Saturday night meeting, sitting on my new Ikea blanket, listening to my room-mate's Alicia Keys "No One" in the other room, he listens to it at least 5 times a day. I should be ashamed, but I don't mind, I kinda like it. I think he's on the Alicia Keys myspace page, where you can listen to her top songs. Yes our public meeting is on Saturday night, afterwards we went out for dinner afterwards. Now, typing this, I just realized that it's after midnight, I thought it was maybe 10:30, so much for a good night's sleep. I'm going out in service tomorrow. I tried to explain "services" verses "Ministry" or "Preach" to Fan Tien. But I couldn't. Everybody knows a little English it seems. And many want to. Fan Tien has an English Watchtower I noticed today. Anyway, the congregation is pretty cool, I wrote down several of their names, since they are difficult for me to say and remember, Chen Li Li actually wrote her name down for me, it turns out she's a foreigner too, Japanese. Cheng Jiemei said that she can't tell German's from Americans either, like I can't tell Japanese from Chinese, most of the time. I think it depends, sometimes it's more obvious that other times. Today most of my day was occupied by buying a couple sheets and a blanket, and a duvet? (A blanket cover) as well as a pack of wash cloths and a collapsible sock shelf thing that hangs from the bar above my bed. I hope that thing doesn't fall in the night. Anyway, I still can't get pictures to upload correctly, I haven't tried Flikr yet though. The time difference is a little weird for me wanting to make phone calls. Right now would be a good time, but it's too late for me. I better get to bed yes? (edit 274) Permalink

Today I went to book-study and, I think, the overseer asked me if I would read (the paragraphs) I wasn't sure what he wanted me to read at first, I was trying to decipher in in my head, meanwhile the whole book-study busted out laughing. It took me at least a minute to realize he was joking and he had asked me to read the paragraphs, but then it was too late. So my typical slow reactions are even slower in Chinese hahah. One thing I noticed is that it appears in Chinese that there is no distinction between Har-Megeddon and Armageddon in Chinese, they just have one word for it. Why do we have two? After the book study the rice & seaweed treats were brought out, fortunately for me I like seaweed. Also there were 3 people visiting from Japan, in addition to the 4 already part of that book-study from Japan. They had Pin Yin literature just like me. So it was a very international book-study. There are many brothers in Taiwan from Korea and Japan expanding their ministry. Everyone there thought it was funny that I can't tell the Koreans and Japanese from the Chinese. Then they told me they can't us apart either, that we all look the same. So book-study is certainly fun here, even though I don't understand hardly any of the comments. The brothers are very enthusiastic and accommodating to us foreigners. Service can be tricky here, they move it every day, since not many of them drive cars, just scooters, they just meet where the territory they want to work is for that day, and it's all listed in Chinese and announced in Chinese so I'm usually hoping someone can guide me or take me there, addresses are hard enough in English in Seattle. So a sister, the hostess for the book-study, is going to meet me outside by my apartment, very nice of her to do. So there you have it. As much as I can remember.
Also the video below is very funny, totally unrelated to this entry.
(edit 275) Permalink

Pictures (edit 276) Permalink

Today was my first day of school. It was a success, I arrived on time, I didn't cry in front of the other students or teachers, I had all my books, and a pencil, and a pen just in case, and none of the other kids made fun of me, and I did make fun of them either, at least not on purpose. There are 4 of us in the class, 2 Korean girls, 1 Japanese girl, and 1 American (me). The class is taught in English, with a tiny bit of Japanese and Korean, making it easier for me in comparison. There are 3 teachers, one for each hour, with a tiny gap in between each teacher, the teachers move from room to room, kinda of reverse from High School. There are maybe 10-20 other class rooms on the 3rd floor, and as far as I know, one other floor in use. The class was half easy/boring and half hard. Today we just repeated sounds all day, some sounds are exactly the same as English, and some are exactly not the same and hard to say or differentiate for my tiny American ears. And the other students had different problems with different sounds since they speak different languages. So maybe by the end of the week the Chinese that I do know will sound better to the brothers and sisters in my congregation here. I'm pretty lucky as far as the students go, like my room-mate and others have said, because I get to practice the Chinese that I learn at school a lot with my brothers and sisters a lot more that the other students probably do. The brotherhood is like having dozens of instant friends and family. They've taken good care of me.
So with all that said, I'm going to close this "blog entry" and go outside to see if I can figure out how to buy some food for myself, since it's much cheaper to do that that buy groceries here, buying food here for me is a lot of pointing and saying "Wo Yao" or "I want" Then when they ask me a question that I don't understand (which is all questions so far) I just say "yao" which (I hope) means "want" which is proper Chinese for "Yes I want that", and hope that whatever it was that that they asked is going to be OK, usually it's some sort of hot sauce or extra add-on, maybe a bag or something. If there is no food in sight to point to and merely Chinese character menus then buying food is much more difficult, usually the menu is in front of the shop-keeper and facing away from him so he can't see what you are pointing too, and in case you didn't know Chinese is not phonetic so you can't just sound it out. But don't worry there is, I would say, a plethora of food shops/stands, so I can always figure something out to eat thats good. (edit 277) Permalink

I'd love to tell people that no one speaks English here, and most people don't, but I'm guessing at least 1 in 3 speak as much English as I speak Chinese (so far not much.) Today, after school when I was getting hungry, I resolved to go out and try something new. Not new food, but new words and new situations. So I figured I'd be ordering something I didn't know, and frustrating the poor people taking the order. I set my sites on dumplings, dumplings was my goal for tonight. I decided on them because (a) I'd never ordered them, (b) I had learned at least two Chinese characters for a type of dumpling, (c) I like them, and (d) there isn't blood in dumplings, which is an issue here for us. I also chose dumplings because I'd had trouble saying dumplings before, or getting someone to understand what I was saying. The dumplings I was going to order are called shui3jiao3, the numbers are the tones, and it sounds kind of like: shway jeeow. So, without making the story any more complicated, I walked out the door and down the stairs with my heart beating fast in anticipation. Starting from my alley I walked in a 6 block circle, trying to choose a suitable vendor to give my money and my broken Chinese to. My first victim told me "no" they did not have dumplings, the vendor 3 vendors down had "shui jiao." I was excited that they understood what I wanted, even though they responded in English and Chinese. So, 3 vendors down, I only knew which vendor they were pointing to because I had been there before with someone else who was picking up dumplings. So I stood in front of the vendors menu-sign trying to see if i could recognize any of the characters for dumpling, (actually if you want the true flavor of the story and the surroundings, I was standing about dead center in the street, about 10 feet from the menu-sign.) But a woman comes around from behind the sign, and asks me, in broken English, what I want (to order) (they don't usually come out) I don't think she understood the disappointment on my face. I ended up ordering 20 "spicy flavor" dumplings. That's about 10 too many for me, and I really don't like that kind, so I really had to force feed myself that last 10. But the story is not as sad as it sounds, because, as I remembered on my way out, passing the first vendor, I had successfully communicated "Do you have dumplings?" to the first vendor. So the mission was a success! Thanks for tuning in. Mission 2: Order less and better tasting dumplings. (edit 278) Permalink

Hi friends and family,
I thought I'd send out an e-mail about what I've been up to in Taipei. Just to let you know I've been updated a blog style webpage at http://www.marcdurham.com it has a link to some pictures I've uploaded. But I really haven't taken that many pictures, I'll try to take more.

So, in case you haven't already heard from my blog, I've been here in Taipei for just over two weeks, I started school on Monday just a few days ago. I'm in the Wenshan congregation, it's about the same size as most congregations in the US. The Kingdom Hall looks about the same as any, though it's the only one I've seen with an all tile floor and no carpet. And of course all the meetings and parts are in Chinese. I'm the only white guy and the only American in that congregation, though the other several congregations here usually have a few of us English speakers. There are at least 3 Korean and 3 Japanese brothers and sisters in the congregation too, expanding their ministry into Chinese too, but I think some of them are there permanently. So while I'm the only American in my congregation, I'm not the only foreigner learning Chinese.

But other than being confused most of the time, you sure don't feel like a foreigner when you're at the meetings and with the brothers and sisters, not only do they study the exact same material we do but they welcome you in right away ask you hundreds of questions. Also quite a few of the brothers and sisters have learned a little bit of English, so sometimes that helps clarify things a little bit for me.

More about school, I go to school for 3 hours a day, Mon-Fri, you can read a little bit about it on my blog. School is pretty intense, for me anyway, one of my teachers is especially strict on pronunciation and tones, I feel like I've had to relearn every word that I already know. But there is much learning and laughing in class, so even while it makes you pretty tired after only 3 hours, I look forward to it each day.

I think that's about all I'll say in this e-mail. I'll try to keep updating the blog entries at http://www.marcdurham.com, I'll put a little more detail there to describe what it's like here.

Thank you for reading,
Marc Durham (edit 279) Permalink

Well my first week of school is almost complete. Today a Meiguoren (an American) joined our little class of 4, so now we are 5, so now I have to listen to English all the time, I was hoping to escape it. And I feel bad for her because she's already way behind and didn't know what was going on today. Will that be me in a month? Also a brother in my hall who's learning English asked me what "confidence" means. Like you can "have confidence" in something, like it's this abstract thing that you keep inside of other things, and you can put other people inside of it, so they're "in your confidence." I'm glad I don't have to teach English, because I don't get it. Also the word "That" you have confidence "That" "he can do something" What does "that" mean? Do we need it?
I should have brought an English textbook with me.
Also I had meeting tonight (Thursday), meetings are always enjoyable, afterwards everyone is pretty talkative, lot's of little kids to tease. One of my favorite things to do.
Another one of my favorite things to do, is watch snake robot videos.
(edit 280) Permalink

Today 2 more people were added to our class, 2 Japanese girls, our class went from 4, to 7. I miss just having 4... but I guess they get more money for 7. And I can't complain too much about 7 because that's still pretty small. By the 3rd period students were talking about being Hen Lei (tired), and one student said her head was on fire. It seemed like the hardest day yet.
After school, and after a much needed nap, I walked a few blocks over to a designated spot to meet with our service group, there were about 10 of us, it was 6:30, already dark, and it soon started to rain. But the brothers and sisters didn't seem to notice, we just all carried umbrellas. I have to admit, by 8:00 I was feeling like I was done, but I persevered until 8:30 when we all dispersed. I also noticed that no one writes anything down, the brother I was with told me they'd visit again in 3 or 4 months. They work their territory pretty often here.
I'd like to correct a misconception about here. There are not a lot of mosquitoes here. Just a lot of mosquito bites. I never see them, they're sneaky. (edit 281) Permalink

Our public meeting is on Saturday night, so it is my social life. I'm not sure why they do it that way, but that's the way we do it.
I'm getting used to riding on the back of a scooter. At first I hung on for dear life, but now I sit back a little bit because I figure if anything bad happens I'll fly back forward again any way. Except when he's accelerating, then I feel like I'm going to fly off the back. It's kind of fun, as many dangerous things are, I almost want to buy one of my own. But I have a bicycle, that should suffice for transportation and danger. (edit 282) Permalink

Taipei has forever ruined "Fur Eliese" for anyone who's ever been here for more than a week. Or after you leave here, and miss it, the song will have special sentimental significance to you. The first week I kept hearing "Fur Eliese" echoing up from the street, I thought it was an ice cream truck. I thought it was funny that they had ice cream trucks playing music just like we do back home. Now I don't know if they have ice cream trucks here, but I bet they don't play "Fur Eliese." When you hear "Fur Eliese" you check to see if you have any garbage that needs to be taken out, because here we don't seem to have garbage cans and scheduled pick-ups. The garbage truck just rolls through every day or two playing "Fur Eliese" and people run out to toss a special stamped and paid for garbage bag into it. It's kind of a neighborhood event, you get to see all the neighbors. I wonder what people do who are away all day.
But today is not just about garbage. Today I bought a Mosquito zapper, made in Taiwan. It is a beautiful instrument that looks like a tennis racket and emits a satisfying blue spark when a mosquito passes through it's grill. You can also, as Brian showed me, tap it with your finger to create the same spark, and it doesn't hurt at all. But I don't want to get in a habit of doing that, I need to save it's juice for mosquitoes. Where are they when you want them?
Revision: Tapping the mosquito zapper with one finger doesn't hurt at all. Squeezing it from both sides when you forgot it was on, could probably kill an "ordinary man." ...and makes you feel like your heart stopped for a second, in addition to making your whole body hurt. Poor mosquitoes. (edit 283) Permalink

"Taiwan de mattresses" is Chinglish for Taiwanese Mattresses. Today in class I learned that it's not very good Chinese, I don't need the "de" But I like it... I heard about the mattresses before I got here, I heard they were hard, like a board. I figured it was an exaggeration, and it was. But I do find it difficult to sit up on mine because my feet slide off of it, they don't sink in at all, even with most of my weight pushing down. So my feet end up on the floor, which is also slippery with my $15 IKEA floor rug on it. I usually end up in a "super slouching position" when I'm typing e-mail or blogs, or watching a black & white DVD on my laptop. I can't describe it because it's never the same position.
I'm starting to notice that I like to write about the mundane details here. They're more fun. Like at meeting tonight a sister asked me in Chinese, that had to be translated for me, if I thought that the color of a pale purple onion shaped apple type-of mystery fruit was beautiful. I stuttered, I had nothing to compare it to but an apple, it didn't look like a good apple, maybe a good onion. What is a beautiful color anyway? So I gave the best response, since she was persistent, "Why do you ask?" But someone else distracted her into a different conversation by the time I gave her that answer. But the guy who was translating for me laughed, I guess he didn't know if it was a beautiful color either.

In my last entry I mentioned "Fur Eliese" as the song garbage trucks played here. But now I think they play more than one song, because today the garbage truck wasn't playing "Fur Elise." But don't worry, I'll get to the bottom of it, it's important.

Class is going good, I'm only lost and confused 1/4 of the time, and our student count is down to five, nice and small. And I get to be the only native English speaker in the class again. Which is interesting because most of the class is conducted in English so sometimes the teacher asks me if he spelled something right, or the other students ask me about English pronunciation. It amazes me that the two Korean girls had to learn English to learn Chinese, so they're double translating lots of the time. They also speak Korean about 2 octaves lower than they speak Chinese and English, they can't figure out why I'm always laughing at them. I can't help it. (edit 284) Permalink

This evening, after service, Chen Dixiong took me to a little restaurant and bought me a bowl of what I can only describe as Vodka Rice & Sweet Bean Dumpling Soup. It's probably not vodka, probably rice wine, like Sake, but that's the first thing I thought of when I tasted it. I should have taken a picture of it, the dumplings especially were pretty good, kind of like a warm dessert. But after we finished our Vodka Rice Sweet Bean Dumpling soups, Chen Dixiong told me he didn't like his, that he'd never ordered it before. Then he pointed to a picture of what looked like the same sweet bean dumplings floating in tomato sauce instead of vodka & rice (rice wine soup). He said next time we go there we'll get that instead. I'll update this blog to let you know how that turns out.

Also this evening, during evening witnessing in front of an apartment building's many button intercom panel, I unintentionally made my talkative 14 year old service partner scream to the top of her lungs. I put her ultraviolet pen-light that she had been playing with the whole night against the bottom of my eye-ball to make the back of my eye glow. Her mom was nearby and scolded her, but I think I've been put into the "irresponsible kid" category now. My mature-adult facade has been blown. The next block we worked I was put with a less talkative and older sister, my age, who had absolutely no toys or gadgets to play with. (edit 285) Permalink

Today after service, when the sun went down, a bunch of us played basketball at a nearby elementary school. (Me play basketball? I know shocking!) After a couple games some of us had to take a turn sitting out and waiting for a turn to play, which was nice because I was already tired from walking around in service all day. I miss cars and long calls. So I sat there on the maroon running track that encircled the double basketball court, ignoring the game, speaking broken Chinese to a young brother. It took the brother a half hour and a lot of pantomiming to ask me if I had seen "Titanic." I think a major point of confusion about it was the release date, he was was shocked it came out when he was about 10, 10 years ago, and I thought he was talking about a recent movie. Only now do I understand why he was talking about an ice mountain (berg) and a person with wings.
After that interchange I sat in a daze for awhile, my brain was numb from trying to make these casual conversations with a 25 word vocabulary continuously since morning. While I dazed I noticed a little kid I'd never seen walking towards us across the court with one of the sisters. He was about 2 or 3, with a very serious and intent little face, which he pointed at me as soon as he could see me. He walked directly up to me looked me in the eye, which was at his level since I was sitting on the ground, pointed his little finger at my face and said something in his serious little voice. Everyone around burst into laughter. I've heard that Chinese kids marvel at the size of our noses, and I was dying to have it translated for me, which involved a dictionary. He had asked me why I had changed my hair color. Which I had never thought of as being different than everyone around me, but it's the first thing he noticed about me. Four minutes later he walked up to me again and asked me to take him to the bathroom. I can't imagine this place without all of it's little kids.
(edit 286) Permalink

Yuan Dixiong, our book-study conductor, asked me after book-study today if I had experienced culture shock yet. I had to say no... not yet. I'm not really sure what culture shock is, maybe I have experienced culture shock but I just didn't know it at the time. What is culture shock? Do you pass out? Does the room start spinning? Should I carry a warm blanket with me? Does it only happen one time?

Tonight is the second time I've had Stinky Tofu in Taiwan, and it was good, it seems to be growing on me already, I scarfed it down pretty fast. Maybe the place we ate at just makes it better, it's about 75 ft from my apartment. I just found out, an hour ago, on my way home from that Stinky Tofu place, that there is a "Wellcome" grocery store 1 block behind my apartment! That's about 1/5 the distance I've been walking to get groceries, when I bother to get groceries. The 5 block walk already seemed so close to me. With school and meeting 5 blocks away, and if it wasn't for service, I could live comfortably for a long time without ever traveling more than 5 blocks from my apartment. I should make it my goal for next month. There's even an MRT (subway) station 3 blocks away, so I could extend my radius an additional 2 blocks from any other MRT station. Unless I counted the MRT trip as 1 block, then that would be a 1 block radius from any MRT station... but counting the MRT trip as 1 block would be ridiculous.

I do have one mundane detail to add to this entry, it's about napkins, or tissue, to me there is a difference. I'm going to put my foot down on this issue. When I wipe dumpling grease or beef noodle soup off of my face, I don't want the "napkin" to leave little pieces of itself snagged on my whiskers. But here in Taiwan every restaurant I've been to so far has bathroom tissues at each table. I've seen it written in English right on the package "Bathroom Tissues." But I have to be fair, the square packages of "Bathroom Tissues" are way cooler than the vulgar cylindrical "Toilet Paper Rolls" of America. I'm glad they don't have those at each table here. (edit 287) Permalink

I don't have much time, I should be sleeping it'll be midnight in 1 minute, and I have my first test tomorrow. But today, this morning, I saw my first full size cockroach laying upside down right outside our apartment door on the landing (Which is a small enclosed "inside" place where cockroaches don't belong. I had to put my sandaled foot no more than 10 inches from it!) I always thought it was funny when people said cockroaches were so horrible and gross. I always thought they were just silly harmless little bugs... until I saw it's legs move! It was about 3 inches long and upside down on it's back. The first one I've seen over 1/4 inch long, ever, in my life (outside of zoos and exhibits). I jumped when it's legs moved, even though it was helpless on it's back, I thought it was dead when I first saw it. Wearing skin exposing sandals I choose to believe increased my chickeness. It could have touched my foot! I also believe too the size got to me. 3 inches doesn't seem big, but it sure seems excessive for a six legged bug in person. It's probably the biggest bug I've ever seen, that I remember. I was surprised at how much it gave me the creeps, the night before a smaller version crawled from the back of my laptop computer onto my shirt and I flicked it off, not creeped out hardly at all. But a giant bug helpless on the floor, with it's huge legs trying to walk upside down, that's just creepy. A bug that big must have a bigger brain, and feelings, and thoughts, and a personality and stuff, and a little bug face. I think he saw me.
Also as a mundane side note, hot water heaters here run on D Cell batteries. I assume they also use propane or natural gas for something, but they sure do need those D Cell batteries. I know this because our D Cell batteries died this morning, before I took a shower, and then during the shower. My room-mate crawled outside his window, behind the big Chinese sign to change the battery. The cold water may also have contributed to my edginess towards that D Cell sized cockroach.
Also as a side side note, a little less mundane, I stuffed myself with Sushi tonight, for about $10 US. No tax, no tip, which brings it down to about $8.50 or so I think, about 1/3 the cost back home. So I figure a really cheap plane ticket to Taipei is about $700, so if you ate Sushi every night for a week here, the savings would cover the cost of the plane ticket. I don't know if they have Sake though. But for Taipei even $10 is pretty steep. Last night I stuffed myself at a dumpling house for $3.20. Taiwan has no sales tax or tipping, so everything is priced actually as what you end up paying, that's kind of trippy for me, having grown up in a $9.99 plus 8.5% tax plus 15%-20% tip world. It's like a whole country with a 23.5-28.5% Off Sale. (edit 288) Permalink

This is Pu Dixiong and another brother in service. Notice the brother's hat: it says "Sweetty"

(edit 290) Permalink

Normally Joanne is more animated than this, she must have been tired tonight. (edit 289) Permalink

Memorial Night is an exciting time here, I think I had my picture taken about 30 times. Here is one of my favorites.
(edit 291) Permalink

Today my room-mate, Fan Tien, came into my room with a handful of invoices and a pencil. It was time to pay the bills. There was a phone and Internet bill, an electricity bill, and some sort of water bill or sewage. He showed me where he had done the math dividing out the month that I hadn't been there, looked good. So I added the three numbers up, 542 kuai, walked over to my wallet pulled out a multi-colored bill and some coins out of my "change jar" and gave him the exact amount. Then I thought to myself 542 move the decimal over 2 places = 5.42 times 3 = USD$16.26 for my half of one month's utilities. OK that's not the exact exchange rate, but who cares? If it wasn't already overly warm here I might start smelting aluminum in my room and selling it on eBay.

I'd like to correct an earlier entry about Mosquitoes that I'd never seen. Today I saw plenty in service trying to land on me and giving me that I-swear-I-can-feel-bugs-landing-on-me feeling for the rest of the afternoon. At one point I made a little scene expressing my concern about the myriads of maybe imaginary bugs that I thought I felt landing on me. But that may have been more because I couldn't express my mosquito concerns verbally in Chinese to the charming young Korean sister standing there at the time. I was awarded with a smirk of either disdain or understanding, which satisfied my need for attention at the time (edit 292) Permalink

In school vocabulary words are piling up like unwanted spicy dumplings. I wish I could remember and use every single Chinese word in our text book, but that dream is gone. In it's place is my confused face, a regularly seen thing in room 331. My Korean class-mates called my face "Mong" which is a misspelled Korean word for something about "a blank stare." But things are not all disappointment and dismay, today after our substitute teacher pointed out that I was the only male and American in the class, my 4 female class-mates laughed and told me that I was a flower. So I guess I should be happy about that, no one's ever called me a flower.

Today after school, after the sun had set, I had a goal: I looked at my little goal list, nodded my head to myself, slipped on my sandals, puffed out my chest and charged out and down the already familiar narrow sidewalks of TongAn Street towards 7-11! Once I was there I had to pace myself, so I went first to the ATM, easy, not a challenge at all! Ha! Then I located a pack of gum, not my goal, not a challenge (unless you want something other than the 2 kinds of gum they have there.) Now I was ready, I had done my research, looked up the words in two on-line dictionaries, and practiced them. I handed the checker girl my package of Wriggleys mint gum, looked her square in the eye and asked her if she had any garbage bags... She replied in a somewhat complicated 5-8 word sentence, but I heard a word I recognized, and I guessed that she was asking me which bags I wanted. Ha! I was ready. 300 kuai. I knew this was not a real bag price (I should have asked for 297, which any Taiwanese person would know.) But I think she knew that I knew what I was doing, I'm sure she was impressed, so she whipped out two packages of bags for me to choose from. I confidently pointed to the bigger more expensive one, I knew I could fill it, after all I come from the king of garbage making countries. The rest was a daze, money was passed, garbage bags were passed, I think I passed another gape mouthed customer on my way out, (how did this foreigner get those bags?), but it's a haze now. When I got home I filled one of my very own official City of Taipei approved garbage bags full of my own garbage tied the top expertly and put it against the wall near the front door. My room-mate wasn't long in getting home after that, I could see the approval in his face. He even asked me how he would say "throw away" in English, he could tell I knew how to say it. (edit 293) Permalink

It's hot and muggy. I was designed for cold arctic environments. Actually I don't mean to be gross, but I love to sweat, it's like a free sauna. OK I did mean to be gross. Because I'm gross, sweaty and gross. And they say it gets much hotter here.

But before it was hot today, I almost got hit by a scooter. The scooter was going about as fast as I can walk, not quite even, it would have fallen over if it was going any slower. I was on my way to school, crossing a cross walk, and a woman on a scooter turned left to cross my cross walk. She had plenty of room to see me. I saw her so I stopped, since the pedestrian right-of-way is not as powerful here. But she thought I was going to keep walking so she turned towards where I would soon not be, then noticed I had stopped... So we "played chicken" basically, back and forth, it would be reverse "chicken" I guess, both of us not wanting to hit me. I don't really remember who moved out of the way first without the other compensating the wrong way, but I do remember my arm brushing along the back of her jacket. I actually remember wanting to pat her on the back to give her the "that's OK you almost ran me over it was half my fault anyway, boy wasn't that silly of us?" pat on the back. I'm not sure she would have understood that particular pat, it would lose something in translation I think. I'm glad she didn't hit me. It would be pretty hard to live with injuries caused by a scooter coming at me going 2 mph that I watched run me over. And I'm sure even my near encounter will be a story unique to me with my "special" reflexes, and my self preserving instincts.

Also today another Japanese girl was added to our class, making our class 6 students. So my first teacher asked me how many people were in the room (part of our Chinese Dialog) and I answered in a complete sentence that there were 6 people in the room, in my best flowing Chinese of the day, but he looked disappointed in me. Then he asked me if he was a person too. I'm not really sure but I don't think it's a graded class. (edit 294) Permalink

I crave it fortnightly now. I know I've written about it before but the first time I had it I thought to myself that I could eat it if I had to, it was "that bad." It smelled "that bad" but it didn't taste that bad. Can't be worse than the oddness of eating cheese. Tuesday night I had it for the fourth time, quoting from the movie "So I Married An Axe Murderer": I think they "Put an addictive chemical in it, making you crave it fortnightly." They sell it so close to me too, it's probably closed by now, but I could walk there in 2 minutes, and smell it in 1 minute. The smell doesn't do much for me yet, it smells like a chicken coop to me, if you've ever smelled one. Like many things here, they put it in a bag, dumping in the sauce and all, and sell it to you. They sell lots of things in bags here. The dumplings I've mentioned before are served on a bag with a plate inside of it, or you could say they are served on a plate with a plastic bag over it. I'm not sure of the why on that one. A couple weeks ago a sister gave me some soup to take home in a plastic bag. I worried about the bag leaking, but over here bags are built to work right, to hold solids as well as liquids. Maybe it'll catch on in the States, maybe you'll go through drive-thrus and order super sized bags of clam chowder. I could go for one right now! (edit 295) Permalink

In Taipei people say things like "Let's go to KFC!" And they mean it, it is actually part of the plan, they may even take a train or a bus to get there. It's not because they are low on cash, or because they have a secret junk-food craving, or because it's really close and convenient, or part of a "why not? just admit you like it food dare." It's exotic American food! I guess anyway, I'm making this up because I don't know why people go, or even if it's really that popular, but it's there and it has customers. KFC is 3 stories high here in Taipei, it's about 5 times bigger than any KFC I've ever seen. It's a classier than an American KFC, somewhere you might go after spending lots of money shopping near-by. Of course even though it is plastered with English slogans and signs to give it that "American" feel, the menu is still in Chinese, and you can tell the employees wish you'd speak more Chinese. Well I guess I might as well give in... and learn how to speak Chinese. But I'm no food snob, I enjoyed my chicken nuggets, fries, and Pepsi. Especially the fries, they taste just the same as back home. But I'd still rather have Stinky Tofu. (edit 296) Permalink

In my previous entry, just a little while ago, I said "I'd rather have stinky tofu." And so I did. And it was as good as it was on Tuesday. It was so good that I hardly noticed how easy the communication between me and the stinky tofu maker was. I think it may be a break through actually, I understood 90% of the words, and he understood me. There weren't many words of course, but I said "I'd like to buy a thing of stinky tofu." And he said "To eat here, or to take and go?" I said "To take and go." And he said "Please wait a minute." So I waited a few minutes then he said "40 kuai" and I gave him 40 kuai, exact change, and he said "Thank You." It was like a dream, even better, way better, than the time I bought garbage bags. I would like to add, as an amusement, that while I waited in the dining area I watched Japanese Samurai puppets having a heated argument in the woods on TV. They really have the walking motion down pretty good, it looks like they're really walking even though you can't see their legs. (edit 297) Permalink

Apparently some people don't get bumps from mosquito bites. I have many. (edit 298) Permalink

I've always thought the box "Alias" was for people with double lives and secret identities, like the government was hoping that they'd forget it was secret and type it in there. But now, for the first time in my life, I have an Alias. You may call me Du Ma Ke 杜馬可. I am now registered with the United States Department of State, now they know where I am and how to call me in the case of an emergency. So rest easy. I know I will, but I might not sleep well on the account of the excitement of having a real official "Alias". (edit 299) Permalink

It seems like the Chinese words I should learn I have a hard time with, but the strange useless ones stick in my brain. Like WanJiaJiaJiu "Play House", like little kids playing house. Today the word came up in our class-room dialog, we were learning words having to do with time, like "When I was a small child..." Apparently kids in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and America all "play house" when they are small, it's a global phenomenon. But at the same time: "Big Person" means adult, but "Small Person" means "bad sneaky person," so you never know what's the same and what's different. (edit 300) Permalink

Taipei is famous for it's night markets. They are full of all kinds of things you can eat and drink. Milk tea, a squid on a stick, stinky tofu (of course), deep fried ice cream (had some), little kids, stray cats, black goo clogging the floor drains, pumpkin seeds, beer, dating couples, smoking people, bright lights, bright signs, brightly lit bright signs, cheese and bacon sandwiches, mutton sandwiches, beef floss sandwiches (I'm not sure what that is), narrow crowded isles, foreigners (hey, that's us) loud people selling food, menu items with blood, hundreds of smells, cigarette butts on the floor, vending machines, hand made sausages, greasy food, oily food, deep fried food, weird food, really good food, and finally cheap good food. And it's open late, it's the "Night Market."

Tonight at book study some friends of my room-mate were visiting from Japan, a sister and her daughter. They commented in Japanese and my room-mate interpreted their answers for the book-study. Afterwards and when everyone had eaten their treats and finished chatting and getting to know the two sisters, people started to filter out and go home. Fan Tien, my room-mate, asked me if I'd like to go with them to the "Yesher" or the "Night Market." Of course, I'd love to go. I thought it was very close, a walk away, but we ended up on the subway for a 15-20 minute ride, Pu Dixiong (Brother Pu) a 20 year old Korean brother who speaks a lot of Chinese and a tiny bit of English went with us, making us a group of five foreigners touring the night life of Taipei. Brother Pu, I should point out, brings my maturity level down to about 14 years old. I'm not sure why, maybe it's because our communication abilities are so limited that we end up reverting to basic things. Most of the time we trailed behind "the adults" (two of which are probably younger than me) at the night market giggling and asking each other if we wanted to buy this or that ridiculous thing or disgusting piece of food. On the subway we stood a few feet away from "the adults" and dared each other to sit in the "old people" seats, (Dark blue seats marked with signs to yield to the elderly or handicapped.) Brother Pu on the sidewalk on the way into the Night Market grabbed my shoulder and asked me where my muscles "had traveled to." But I think I'll always remember tonight with Pu Dixiong persistently harassing me to "talk to the Japanese girl in English" (referring to the daughter who is somewhere near my age) "Ask her a question in English." "Talk to her!" which is extra strange and awkward when she's standing right there not understanding him only because he's speaking in Chinese. And of course I'm resisting, "I don't know what to say, I have no question!" "No" But since he was literally poking me and pushing me towards her, I was forced to grow up instantly and think of a question or two, "So did you really like that Stinky Tofu?" "Are you here on a vacation?" "How long will you be here?" and "Where in Japan are you from?" I love that last question because I don't even know where Tokyo is much less any other city in Japan. Fortunately she was able to (with concentration) speak enough English to keep a little conversation going for the short remainder of the train ride. Somewhat to my relief the two sisters had to suddenly get off at their stop. Pu Dixiong had nothing to dare me to do anymore but sit in the "old people" seats. So I did, since the train was half empty and there was no one standing but the three of us, perfectly OK to sit in. But Pu Dixiong tricked me, he wouldn't sit in the old people seat next to me, instead he sat next to a guy across from me and told me in his favorite memorized English expression that someone [else] taught him: "I'm ashamed of you." (edit 301) Permalink

Eric and Anita Bradstreet are here, they got in early yesterday morning. I just got an e-mail from Anita, they've already slept off their jet lag and we'll meet up soon. Today they're going to check out the school they'll be attending for the next two months. I'm not sure yet, but they seem to be far away from here, maybe 45 minutes away, or even an hour. Distances are strange here when you ride trains in round about ways. (edit 302) Permalink

I think learning any language is hard, so far it all seems to be logical too, so I think it'll get harder yet. But today I wasn't feeling very well and I felt extra out-of-it in class, especially when the second teacher started talking to the students in Chinese about slightly off text book topics, then I'd space out for a second, then lose track of the conversation. Of course they'd notice and ask me if I understood, then laugh at me. So right before I left for home I set fire to the storage supply closet near the bathroom and burned the place down. Just kidding. The last 1 hour period I started to feel better and pop off answers to questions before anyone else could (It's all a competition you know.) I seem to find sentence structure easy to understand in concept, but in practice when I hear people speaking quickly I get lost easier than most of my class-mates. When I hear a word I don't understand I tend to freeze and stop listening to the rest of the sentence context. But this is pretty much the same as I am in English, so I foresee myself continuing to progress as planned despite the pain of learning.

I've gone to the next level in my Stinky Tofu obsession. I'm doubling up. Why have one order (bag) of Stinky Tofu when you can have two? I also felt kinda sneaky ordering two because the guy put it into two bags and added two sets of chop sticks. If I spoke better Chinese I could have told him to put it all in one bag, but I didn't want to risk any confusion in the delicate, crucial, and time sensitive process of ordering and acquiring Stinky Tofu. I can only wait so long. Yes it may seem excessive but one bag of Tofu is hardly a whole meal, and I was hungry. Also I'd like to point out that my class-mates have picked up on my Stinky Tofu problem and regularly work it into our dialogs: "Marc how far is your house from a stinky tofu shop?" "Marc, do you feel sick because you haven't had sticky tofu in two days?" "Marc where do you buy stinky tofu?" It's easy to say in Chinese too, and I like talking about it. As you can tell.

Something I just realized is that I'm starting to forget my name. Not really forget, but nobody calls me "Marc" here, I'm "Du Dixiong" to the brothers, and "Ma Ke" to my class mates, which sounds similar but not really. If someone called me "Marc" here I'd wonder why they were calling me that. It's a weird thing to miss your own name. I guess it's all part of the fast lane stinky tofu life style I'm leading over here. (edit 303) Permalink

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

Today was a busy day. A few hours after we got back from the Bethel tour I was back in my florescently lit bedroom taking a 20 minute nap under the soothing breeze of my new fan, the nap turned into about 35 minutes. I woke up with Chinese curse words on the tip of my tongue (I don't know any, but I could feel them) I threw my Theocratic Chinese Language Learning Binder (my TCLLB) into my back back after putting on a new short sleeved shirt and tie, (the other one from this morning wasn't dry yet, heheh) and hopped on my foot-kick-vehicle (bicycle) feeling that "I look like a Mormon on this thing" feeling that I always feel riding that bike. I raced out of my alley and up Tong An Street, made a bold and risky right turn to save time, and then I merged with traffic along with hundreds of scooters and tens of bikes, and probably a few pedestrians that I don't notice anymore. During my ride I thought about how I was riding my bike with cars and motor scooters. In America drivers are usually pretty unhappy to be behind a bike, but here you're behind a bike, scooter, or a pedestrian more often than behind a car, unless you're on a highway. Also I noticed that I had to slow down for the car in front of me, so most of the side traffic doesn't really move very fast anyway, so why would drivers care either way? But then I don't really know if the drivers get upset with us bikes here, how would I know? I've only been in Taxi's 3 or 4 times when I first got here, and I never understood what they were saying anyway. Traffic has a nice flow to it here though I think, maybe it seems that way because I'm not in a car anymore. But I'm digressing. I'm on my bike behind a taxi, weaving through people overflowing off of the sidewalks, racing towards my "other Chinese class," eying my watch at every turn. The brothers in my hall started a Theocratic Chinese class for us foreigners at 5:30 on Saturdays, even though I only understand about 20% of what's being said it's quite beneficial to my Chinese and encouraging. By the time I locked up my bike and walked into the Kingdom Hall I was 1 minute late to the class, but half the other students were 7 minutes late so nobody noticed. Haha! Bikes are awesome.
We all did a practice presentation in front of the class of about 7 students and then brother Jiu would tell us what was good and what was bad about what we did. He also said something that I have found to be really true he said it Chinese first, then he translated it "They say you don't understand your own language until you learn a foreign language. Then when you learn another language you build on that." I've been almost shocked at how much I don't understand English when people ask me questions about it. All I know is what "sounds right." I've also noticed that with the Taiwanese who speak a little English or whatever, they can simplify their Chinese for you so you can understand them, because they understand what it's like to learn a language, whereas people who don't speak any other languages just talk louder.
You may be either happy or disappointed to hear this, but today, I did not eat any Stinky Tofu. And I didn't even think about it until now. Am I over it? Can I move on with my life? I hope not. (edit 305) Permalink

As the world turns each point on our beautiful blue and green globe passes through the horizon, from day into night, and night into day. Here in Taiwan we do it before you do it over there in the Americas, and some of us, over here in Taiwan, like to rub it in your faces in their blogs. Those people are childish, immature, and remarkably good-looking. As many of you Americans were sleeping in your warm beds on Saturday night, this American was listening to the final talk of the special assembly day in the balcony of an aging concert hall. Learning a language, as I've mentioned before, brings you back to your childhood. When you were a kid you didn't really get what the talk was about and time slows down the closer it gets to the time that you want it to be, like the end of the last talk in my case. I apologize as this may not sound encouraging, but to help you with this I'll add that I've already had this assembly in English. So it was really a chance to go to my first assembly in this country with my congregation here, shake hands, learn a couple words, and practice listening to Chinese speech patterns. And it was quite exciting during the session, from the back rows I saw a sea of the back of black haired Chinese heads. Other than that it was as every assembly I've ever been too, the movement of people in all directions, the roar of hundreds of conversations, children running and squeeling. As always I'm mesmerized by this. Yesterday I remained in my mesmerized state for at most 15 minutes before someone recognized me and tried to engage me in conversation. If I had been less mesmerized and less conversational I may have sat down and noticed a Chinese note on the back of one of the chairs in front of my chair. It wasn't until after the song that I noticed the little sign, I wondered for a second what it said, then looked around me and noticed that everyone around me was much older than me. I decided that I'd stay in the "Elderly and Infirm" section until lunch and then I'd move, but it did take me awhile to get over my embarrassment. A brother, before the session started, pointed to the end seat in my row and said in English "These seats are reserved for older people." I nodded and looked across the next aisle over and saw another end seat with a little sign on it. I thought "that's interesting, they reserve the end seats for the elderly, I guess they do things differently here. It makes sense though because those seats are easier to get in and out of." But they really don't do things that differently, it was the whole row. Just like back home.
There were 18 baptized at our assembly, they were baptized in a narrow tank outside behind the concert hall. The guys who do the dunking actually stand outside the tank it's so narrow, but they still wear white T-shirts, and there is a little stair case that goes up over the lip of the tank and then down into the tank so the baptismal candidate can feel self conscious for a second right before they are dunked, adding to their excitement I'm sure. But they didn't have to worry about shivering once they got out, that day it was 86 degrees outside.
Another thing I noticed about the assembly was the large number of foreign speakers, all spoke Chinese pretty well (as far as I could tell) so they'd been there a few years at least. But I think this shows you how young the territory really is when some of the original missionaries and need-greaters are still there. The work was legalized here in the sixties.
So that was the circuit assembly, soon we'll be having an English one in TaiZhong, a few hours south of here.
Saturday I forgot to mention something very important, something that I don't want to forget when I decide to reminisce and read all of these "blog" entries. I haven't had much Indian food in the states, I remember liking it. But the Indian food I had here was maybe the best food I've had here yet. It was kind of expensive though, I spent NT$290 for dinner, a nice classy little place. NT$290 is a little less than US$10 hahah, I love this place, but living here does change your idea of what you want to spend on food. I won't eat there very often due to the price. They even have a NT$200 minimum, 3 of the people at my table had to leave because they didn't want to order that much, which was a bummer... because it was sooo good! (edit 306) Permalink

Today I have to get my attendance records and some sort of "certificate" from the school. I'm a little nervous about tomorrow when I have to take all that paperwork to the Immigration, then I'll find out if they really think I'm a student and will let me stay an additional 60 days. Yep, that's the life of a foreigner, always worrying about his "papers" in the back of his head. If you stay longer than sixty days without permission they'll never let you back into the country again. My 60 days is up in a week or so, if I'm denied tomorrow it'll give me enough time to get an airplane ticket to somewhere else for a day, so I can get that silly little stamp in my passport. On the plus side of this, I'd get to go to another exotic Asian country, but I'll try to find one close and cheap as possible. Hong Kong, Phillipines... maybe I should look at a map. And in case you're wondering "didn't he get a student visa?" technically they don't have student visas in this country, first you get a "visitor visa" (60 days, extendable 2 times up to 180 days) then at 4 months you can apply for a resident visa which lasts a lot longer. So there's a chance that in a week or so I'll be writing about my experiences in a new country. Which could be fun. (edit 307) Permalink

After meeting tonight I was invited to by a young brother, Wen Dixiong, to join him and some brothers for a "midnight snack" as he called it in English. I had to think about that expression for a minute, I guess after dinner we Americans just say "Do you want to go get something to eat?" We don't have a name for a meal at 10pm. So we walked exactly one block, crossed the narrow street, and walked into a little shop. It turns out this meal is called "dessert" in English. The shop looks like an ice-cream shop, with stainless steel and the curved glass shield between the customer and the big buckets of chilled delicacies. Where you point to things by tapping on the glass, and the server says "This one?" No the one closer to you. "This one?" Just to the right of that one. "Yeah two scoops of that please." Everything in the shop had that white color too, I think the server wore white too... as ice cream servers should. But it wasn't ice cream. I never thought it was ice cream, despite my description of the shop. You must learn not to expect certain types of food here or the disappointment will prevent you from enjoying food that might you might actually like. I half expected this food though, I've seen pictures of it in windows, but I'm not sure I can describe it. I'll try. It's served chilled or hot, it's like pudding, but it's not dairy, and it has beans in it. It's sweet, but barely. There are many varieties, buckets, of the "pudding" ranging in color from white to dark brown, some of it looks like chocolate Jello, if there is such a thing. There are buckets of what looks exactly like white pinto beans, and brown too. Thankfully the brother I walked with knew exactly what he wanted and directed the server to build him a bowl of this monochromatic pudding/Jello/bean soup. I say "thankfully" because all I had to say to the server was "Yiyang" (with means "the same") and point to brother Wen. Who knows what bizarre combinations I would have directed her to assemble for me, or how it would have tasted? I'm happy to say that my dessert was a success. Judging by their dessert foods and snacks the Taiwanese people are not as obsessed with sugar as Americans are, sometimes this is disappointing. But my taste buds seem to be adapting to the merely slightly sweet dessert foods of Taipei. I wonder if American food will taste strange to me after awhile. Now if only I had written down what he ordered I could have ordered it in the future. I guess I'll just have to play the pointing and guessing game instead. (edit 308) Permalink

Yes everyone has an accent, and according to Wikipedia everyone has a dialect too. Unless you can't speak at all. I speak with an American accent, and depending on your definition of dialect, I speak with an American English dialect. Which is funny because even as I'm typing this "blog" entry I hear myself alternating between a British accent and my own American accent. This is what happens when you hear another accent more than you hear your own. My hall has a new double addition, and 5 visitors, all who's English may very well be better than my own. Of course when you're here to learn Chinese you don't want to spend all of your time speaking English with other foreigners, but then again it's nice to hear jokes that you understand. And despite being surrounded by authentic Chinese speakers and a handful of other languages, it's still fun to hear exotic European accents, and to be slightly unsure which kind of football people are talking about. Or "which kind of football people are going on about." But last night I was hungry, and Steve, a young English brother, kept talking about fish and chips, English breakfast (eggs, bacon, etc..) and Japanese girls with blue hair. The last of which had no effect on my appetite. But there we were, a pack of foreigners, an Englishman, an American, a Korean sister and brother, and a Japanese brother, all dressed for meeting, squeezing through the crowds in the night market at 10:30pm in search of food that we could all agree and decide on. (edit 309) Permalink

Most of my entries here are probably a little silly and light hearted, but eventually I'll have to confess how hard for me some things are.
Like today for an example: Service here is arranged a little differently than back home, as I have mentioned, we meet in the territory we are going to work that day. The meeting places are printed on a neat little schedule sheet then magnetically attached to the information board in the back of the hall. After each Thursday night meeting there is usually a small crowd there with notebooks and organizers manually copying relevant information to their own personal schedules. But I can't read or write Chinese very well, I'd be there all night. Instead I use my digital camera, James Bond / KGB style, to take digital pictures of the 8.5x11 inch schedule sheet. I usually do it in two shots, top half, and bottom half, giving myself an easy to read (if I could read Chinese) image to examine later.
This morning I woke up early so I could study the intricate little hieroglyphs on the schedule image. Sometimes it can take me an hour to decipher one location, or it'll take me an hour and a half to give up because service is already halfway over anyway. This morning was one of those mornings, I should have tried getting someone to try explaining where it was earlier on Thursday, but it had looked easy and I thought I had it, but I was wrong. All was not lost. I sucked up my pride and began looking for the afternoon service meeting place... after 45 minutes I realized that it was not something on my map or that Google maps would recognize. I was worried that one of my characters was wrong, sometimes they look different in different fonts, it had 17-19 strokes, I think, and it was the only one I could find. But my room-mate was home, thank goodness, so I asked him if he could help me. He did, he knew where it was, he clickity clacked on my keyboard and mousey clicked with my mouse for a few minutes using some Japanese looking map websites and pointed to a spot on the screen. Ahhh, easy, right near the main road near here, just 2 MRT stops away. It should take 10-15 minutes to get there. I gave myself 30.
It took me about 100 minutes, instead of being 15 minutes early I was an hour late, they were close to being done.
I had taken the MRT up the wrong line, twice. The MRT has very easy to use English signs and maps, but somehow I ended up in the exact same station, on the wrong line, twice. The second time when the doors opened and I saw the same station I had already just visited on accident I was so surprised that I burst out laughing. I had walked right back onto the exact same wrong train as soon as I had returned to the original station, and now I had to go back. I knew I'd be at least 30 minutes late now, I might not find them if they were all working some obscure little alley. My spontaneous laughter stopped almost sooner than it had started (I wonder if anyone noticed.) So for at least the fourth time since I had missed service that morning I prayed, I prayed that I could just find the group.
So after being on 5 trains (instead of 1), I stepped out of the correct MRT station and instantly recognized the same area I had been lost in a few weeks before. And I knew that I was going to have to be patient on my prayer being answered today, because I was in the middle of a very busy and dense part of Taipei that looked nothing like the map I had forgotten to bring, so I walked for a mere 4 blocks in the wrong direction, not knowing north from south, but that was a 50/50 gamble anyway, I was prepared to be wrong on that one.
I walked south through dense crowds of shoppers and street vendors, looking almost exactly like a Mormon with my back pack, short sleeved shirt, tie and short hair-cut. At least I wasn't on my bike, that had broken last night half way to the meeting, it's still there now. The place I was looking for wasn't really an address, which was why I couldn't find it on the map, it was the name of a university, "ShiDa" and it said "branch door", I think indicating to meet near the entrance. After awhile I ended up far beyond the crowds of shoppers on the deserted sidewalks running along the side of a huge university, not the university I was looking for, so after reaching the end of that long sidewalk I turned to cross back to the main street.
I had gone much further than it looked on the map, but I was pretty sure I had been going south, maybe it was on the other side of the main street a section over. I figured I had come this far I might as well keep looking, I only had an hour left before they were done, or 58 minutes. I had been walking for over a half hour. Even if I only had 1 minute left I had decided I was going to at least let the brothers know I had tried to find them, I was longing to see their faces by then.
On my way east I heard a noise and noticed a brother from my hall 200 feet away, across the street waving his arms. I of course smiled, but I braced myself for any more challenges, it was a very wide street to cross with a median in the middle. OK I'm kidding, I wasn't really worried about the cross walk, even as long as it was, when I got to the cross walk I saw about 30 of my dear brothers and sisters a little ways down the street standing around waiting for the next set of instructions from the same brother waving me down. Yes, after an hour and a half I had finally found the group, I had found my brothers and sisters, and at that moment they really did look like family. One that I had been missing all day.
They had been working the territory exactly on the edge of the street where I had decided to double back, they wouldn't have seen me if I had kept going or doubled back earlier.
I've grown far beyond being very embarrassed by these things, but I was still happy most of the brothers and sisters weren't paying attention to my late addition to the service group, but I got enough smiles to feel missed and welcomed. Of course there was Pu Dixiong right in front laughing and asking me why I hadn't answered my cell phone. I pulled it out and noticed that he had called me three times. But it didn't matter now, even though they were more than half-way done, with some help from above I had found them. Stand-around-and-wait time was over. The brother that waved me down starting directing different groups in different directions, putting me with Pu Dixiong again. Two of the cute young single sisters giggled at this often-seen pairing, behind their hands as Asian girls often giggle. But I was pleased that I had gotten giggles of course, naturally I love getting giggles. But Pu Dixiong told me that my fly was down, and apparently had been down as I had crossed the extra long cross walk, navigated the pressing crowds of shoppers and street merchants, gone north instead of south, and as I had transferred between 5 trains.

That's the end of that story but I can't stop there, after about 10 minutes of service we took a 15 minute break, sweet deal for me, and 30 of us crowded into a little shop to eat, Chinese people like to eat as often as possible. I did the smart thing and had what Pu Dixiong and 3 others at my table were having. Then I ate something I'd never had. I can only describe it as an apple pie mixed with a meat and potato dumpling, it was good. But Pu Dixiong, being a spice loving Korean, had to put a mini-spoon full of red oily pepper paste into his. But I was not to be out done by Pu Dixiong today, I put a slightly larger mini-spoon full of the same on my food. I think I he was impressed, the Korean couple on the other side of the table noticed too. It was hotter than I thought, but I'd had hotter many times before, the Korean brother across from me said in Chinese "very hot!", I agreed and I finished my food. But the thrill of my day was when I turned and looked at Pu Dixiong who had put slightly less red paste on his food, his eyes looked stressed and his upper lip was sweating. So I laughed for a long time, asked him if he was Korean and told him he was a small young girl. (edit 310) Permalink

It's official, I'm legal, at least until June 1, 2008. I was hoping for June 16... but I don't know how to complain in Chinese anyway. The immigration offices here are almost exactly like a giant DMV, complete with number dispensers, and jumbo sized 3 digit red LED number signs that blink your number above each station, rows of semi-comfortable chairs facing the giant LED number signs, and bored government officials behind each station. I pulled a number 724, the highest number blinking was 685, so I took a seat and started to watch a dramatic Taiwanese made-for-TV movie playing on the flat screen hanging from the ceiling slightly higher than the blinking red LED number signs. The movie was about a Taiwanese couple with a 4 year old little girl, they seemed to be having problems. The first part I saw was actually the end of the movie, that apparently was on some sort of repeating loop. The end involved a deep looking conversation between this man and woman in a car, then when they looked particularly stressed she got out of the car and walked away crying, he stayed in the car crying. That was the end of the movie. The rest of the movie was about living in a nice apartment in Taipei somewhere, smoking, being drunk, hitting the wife, and having personal puppet shows at lunch. I think the puppet show what supposed to be part of their happy stage in life. Taiwanese movies, made-for-TV, are pretty much the same as American movies made-for-TV. Once my number was called I sat down, he spoke Chinese, then switched to English, gave me form to fill out. I had to go back to my chair to fill it out, but I didn't have to repeat the take-a-number-and-wait process. We didn't talk much, but I kind of wonder if the 45 day extension was punishment for not having the form already filled out. I will almost certainly have to fly off of this island at least once before I leave. Which is actually kinda cool anyway, I was half hoping I'd "have to leave and come back" anyway. But now I'll have some time to think about where I want to go. (edit 311) Permalink

When I first got here I thought it was funny that every 7-11, though small, had a substantial selection of underwear. Now that I do laundry in this country, having to slowly air dry everything, I see that it's a good idea.
Today was another one of those days. In school my classmates were very disappointed in me for not knowing Mariah Carey's music, they asked me many times what country I was really from. So my advice: if you travel abroad you might want to brush up on your Mariah Carey. Also Britney Spears, but at least I recognized her picture, a girl actually had a Britney Spears music video on her cell phone. Also I'm not familiar with Korea's hottest movie stars, "why?" they ask me. And in case you're wondering, today we learned how to sing a short Chinese song, and how to say words for different types of music. It also may interest you that China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea each have there own versions of Twinkle Little Star. It's a popular song I guess.
This week we have the Circuit Overseer's visit. If I hadn't showed up at the book-study exactly when I did, about 2 minutes before it starts, I wouldn't have caught my book-studies hostess getting into a car to go to the hall. She jumped back out when she saw me and insisted that I get in, even though it was full. It was the first time I'd ridden in somebody's car here, it's kinda surreal. It was a nice car, very new, a shiny black Toyota whatever with leather seats. Of course I got to sit in front while 4 people crammed in back. It might sound strange, but it felt soo good to put on that seat belt and feel the security of having airbags. I was very grateful they gave me a ride, otherwise I'd have been over 30 minutes late.
I noticed two things about riding in this car. One: I'm not sure I'd even want to drive here, there are scooters, bikes, and people all over the road and I'd probably hit one. Two: You can't really drive that fast with all the people, scooters, and bikes all around you. He took a much different and indirect route that I would've taken on my bike, I think he was trying to avoid the areas crowded with people, scooters and bikes all over the road.
So there I was at the Ministry School, all nice and prepared with my English and PinYin Revelation books. And yes I had been told about the visit, but I had forgotten, not surprising since any reminders would have been in Chinese. But even though we were 10 minutes late, I was there and I was glad. Also adding to my embarrassment, I have to comment on this, before the meeting I had chosen a wrinkled light blue shirt to wear, no jacket, but it was OK because I had an iron, and it worked well, nice and hot. But I have a theory about that kind of shirt, because I keep having this problem. They must have memory of their previous shape. I believe this, because no matter how pressed and nice it looks when I put it on, by the time I get to the meeting it looks like I tried stuffing it into my pocket on the way there, then pulled it out and put it on right before I went in. It probably has something to do with not having a dryer here, I can't pull it straight out and hang it up. But nobody seemed to notice and all was well and the people were merry.
Something else I'd like to share too. There is a very nice young brother in my congregation, Chen Dixiong, about 23 years old, he's a servant and is used a lot. He knows a few English words, he's trying to learn English, his goal is to read the Insight books. He's been talking about reading them for awhile, tonight a shipment came in and he got them. I hadn't realized that they don't have them in Chinese until he told me about his goal. It really made me appreciate how spoiled we are in English, can you imagine making it a goal to read something like the Insight books in Chinese? Many of the brothers here learn English and then use what they've learned to try doing research with the CD-ROM library, also not available in Chinese yet. I have a hard enough time understanding all the English in those publications myself, talk about motivation. (edit 312) Permalink

A few hours after school today, I crashed, I took an after school nap as I often do. Today it was especially long, about two hours. I woke up around 8:30, if memory serves, which it often doesn't when I'm groggy. Of course by this time it's already been dark for 2 hours. I was hungry, and I started to worry about food, I live life on the edge here: my fridge is empty. I tried to flatten my hair's new sleeping style into a more presentable awake style. I Checked my wallet for cash, fished through my "change jar" noticing a large accumulation of "pennies" or NT$1 coins. I pointed a frown of disapproval towards 7-11 with their unevenly numbered prices. I'm sure they profit somehow by pricing things that way, this annoys those of us who don't like to carry "pennies" or to count them all out to the cashiers when we're just trying to buy bottled water between classes. But I wasn't about to start wasting mental energy on the 7-11 empire's questionable business practices, I was hungry!
I slipped slipped on my sandals and made a mental note to clean the little vestibule where we keep our shoes, umbrellas, a sink, and a broken hot plate. Annoyed with myself knowing that I had no intention of cleaning the vestibule today, I stumbled down the stairs in that efficient, but clumsy way that I always go down stairs, shooting out into the alley like a man who knows where is going. Once I rounded the corner and made it to the end of the alley, where it meets the sidewalk, I stopped. I stop here a lot, because at this point I have to make a choice, right or left. Today right was dumplings, and left was stinky tofu, first I looked around for a second, there are always people milling around. I wondered if they wondered at the foreigner standing in the Alley holding his chin. I didn't waste much more time, I decided dumplings would be more healthful since they are stuffed with vegetables, plus I could get a bowl of soup too.
I weaved and dogged around Chinese women and outstretched car mirrors along the narrow sidewalk leading east, towards the dumplings. I'm not sure why but it seems like there are always old women and little girls on this particular sidewalk. I eyed a big basket of gleaming Washington apples sitting in front of the Satanic temple on my block, they looked delicious, but that place gives me the creeps.
The dumpling place is always two short blocks away, but I always think it should be one. Once I carefully crossed the street, two blocks away, I started to realize how late it was. I don't think I'd been there this late before, and sure enough, at the same moment I came within view of it I saw the outside light go off.
I kept walking by so as to pass it and peak in, just in case, but all I saw were employees putting things away while the one male employee watched TV. They all have TVs.
"That's OK I thought. Now I get to eat stinky tofu!" So I allowed myself to fantasize about stinky tofu as I made my way around the tiny triangular block of shops, reversing my original direction and putting me on a direct course for stinky tofu heaven.
On my little walk there I gazed into shop windows, absentmindedly made prolonged and awkward eye contact with a woman crossing the street I was crossing, and then with a woman rolling down her standard issue "store front roll-up door." Looking in through another shop window I couldn't help noticing for the third time tonight, someone sleeping on the job, this time it was an older lady sleeping on a flattened hair-salon chair. You don't see that often in the States, but then again I think those people are working 16 hour days working for themselves, so they probably don't feel too guilty about it, and she had no customers anyway. I thought about these things as I made my way casually, without school bags, or a coat, or anything else to weigh down my evening stroll through the humid room temperature outside air of Taipei.
The loveliness of the calm velvety evening air was barely disturbed even by the huge pile of dog poo that I expertly avoided, yes I'm used to it now. But my evening of "nice weather" cliches could not last forever, soon the stink of stinky tofu filled my nostrils and I was no longer thinking of the velvety evening air, now I was salivating for stinky tofu.
The stinky tofu cook greeted me before I even got there, an advantage to being a conspicuous foreigner. I didn't even have to tell him what I wanted, he knew, but I told him I wanted two. Then I think he corrected the measure word I had used and started to prepare for me the addiction that he had addicted me to.
I didn't have to wait long, it's like he knew I was coming. To make a long story short, it wasn't many minutes until I was sitting on my bedroom floor poking holes in stinky tofu squares to let in more sauce. (edit 313) Permalink

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

I don't have a whole lot to say about today, but tonight, after class and meeting, as Pu Dixiong was leaving I grabbed my bag and told him I was walking with him. He lives almost due west, and I live north west, so we walk almost all the way to his place then I turn north and walk the rest of the way home by myself. It's kind of a funny thing to be able to walk with someone on their way home, something you can't do if you drive. I think it's something we car encapsulated Americans miss and we don't even know it.
Anyway, on our way home, he asked me if wanted to get something to drink at a store we were passing by. Of course I did, I love to eat and drink. In the store he got a big jar of Kimchi, and some strawberry milk. I'm not sure why I didn't get some Kimchi, a recent craving, because if it was good enough for him, a Korean, it's probably good enough for me. After he took the last strawberry milk I wasn't sure what to get, so I picked something that had pictures of wheat on it. I'd surprise myself.
As we walked leisurely through the moonlit alleys Pu Dixiong asked me about my wheat picture covered drink, if it was "hao he" (good). I lied and said it was OK, and offered it to him. He took a sip and made a face, agreeing with me that it was not OK. Then he offered me a sip of his, but I turned him down telling him, truthfully, that if I drank his that I wouldn't want to drink mine anymore. Then he told me that his was sweet and asked me how to say "sweet" in English. I told him "Sweet", then I mentioned that you could refer to a person as sweet if you wanted to. Then, as he sometimes does, he started asking if he could say certain things to girls in English. This usually amuses me because he likes to memorize phrases. Tonight he asked me if he could say "We are two birds." Which at first I didn't understand if I was hearing him correctly, or if he was talking to me, I didn't know yet that he wanted to say it to a girl. Then, after some chatter, I realized he was trying to say "We are two lovebirds." Which is still a pretty funny thing to say to a girl, but I told him that he could go ahead and say it, but he'd need to say "lovebirds" instead of just "birds." But I think he might actually have more success with just saying "birds" if she could figure out what he was trying to say. Eventually we ended up at a pretty busy street corner, with cars and people, where we were going to part ways. But we stood there for a few minutes yelling above the traffic noise to each other finishing our conversation. I'm sure any passers-by would have thought our subject of conversation was odd or amusing, I know I did.
As I turned around, parting ways from him, I was still laughing, and I wanted to repeat the things he had said and laugh out loud it was so funny, but I was suddenly aware that I was walking alone now and might appear crazy. It occurred to me that I could whip out my cell phone and pretend I was talking to someone and laughing. But I decided against that, because then I'd actually BE crazy. (edit 315) Permalink

Usually when I sit down to write in this thing, after I've turned my fan to "medium" with the reciprocate knob in the "on" position, I have no idea what I'm going to write. And today Danielle asked me if I was going to write about them in my 'blog.' It doesn't say 'blog' anywhere here does it? Who says this is a 'blog?'
It was a good question though, today after morning service I became a tourist again and hung out with Chris and Danielle, Carol, Thaddeus, and Jack, the last two having met them just today. So I guess you could say today was exciting, I got to see things, big things, that I hadn't seen before.
I saw much more of the Taipei Main Station than I even knew existed, it is very big, kind of like Grand Central Station in New York but not quite as big I think. The 'basement' is the MRT (subway) station that I've seen many times, but if you keep going up and up you end up in a huge train station that reaches far beyond the MRT system of Tapei.
Then I saw Taipei 101. I'd seen it already, but this time I went to the top. It's very big, the tallest building in the world, or so they say.
Then I saw Taipei itself from Taipei 101, also very big, so big that you need to pay 10 kuai to use those coin operated binoculars to look at it all. The 10 kuai is used to cover maintenance and a monthly calibration of the optics so that anyone with crossed eyes can see comfortably through it. Maybe I'm the one with crossed eyes, or maybe my eyes are too close together I don't know.
Then, encouraged by Thaddeus's enthusiasm, we all went to see the "damper baby," and it's really labeled that somewhere, but you can just call it the "damper." The damper is a big heavy steel ball suspended from the 91st floor that dampens the swaying of Taipei 101 from wind. Click here to see a diagram. I guess there are three of them in this building. We saw the biggest one, 5.5 meters across, which is the biggest in the world. So it too was a big thing I saw today.
I also want to comment on the elevator, it's the worlds fastest elevator, it climbs all the way to 89th floor in 37 seconds, and we were shocked that it was 37 seconds, it felt like 10 seconds and we hardly felt it move. Although your ears pop a couple times on the way down. This was not very big, that I could see, but I'm sure if I got to gaze up the elevator shaft I'd be impressed at how "big" it was. Also the service people seemed to think the elevator was bigger than it is, they crammed so many of us into that elevator, I've never been in one so tightly packed.
After we came back down, checking to see if anything floated in the elevator on the way down, we met up with Erika who had already been up twice, and Jack who was saving the experience to share with his soon-to-be fiance who is currently in Japan. As we were meeting them I heard my name, and turned around, and there were Eric and Anita, waving at me from the security line for the elevator that we had just exited. In a city of 8 million people what are the odds of running into somebody by chance? Probably pretty high if you're a tourist and you're at Taipei 101. But I really didn't get to talk to them because they were on the other side of a security line, I suppose I could have made a scene trying to get to them, gotten stunned by a stun gun then deported back to America, but I decided to talk to Anita later on my cell phone instead.
After that it's all a blur. I only remember bits and pieces: I remember Carol standing without any handrail support on the MRT, like it was nothing. I tried it, but I'm nowhere near as natural as she is. I remember that I talked on my cell phone in the MRT, they have some sort of cell service down there. Then I remember a conversation between the six of us about being stared at because we're foreign looking, Chris and I like it, but nobody else does. Chris said it makes him feel famous, I'm with him there, I like it. I think maybe Chris and I have in common growing up in places where we didn't stand out it any particular way by how we looked. I'll have to see what Danielle thinks about that, she'll have something to say.
After Taipei 101 we debated what we wanted to do next and decided to go back to Carol, Jessica, and Erika's place for their wine and cheese party. The party was, as many things I've described today, big, at least for the small space it was in. I met several people, from Korea, Canada, Taiwan, Finland/Estonia, England, and South Africa, and I saw some familiar faces too. I got to drink wine, eat cheese, settle a "which olive is more salty" dispute, speak Chinese, speak English, and hear lots of interesting stories and learn lots about living in Taiwan from some of the long-time foreigners.
Danielle told me that she wasn't sure if she wanted to tell me that she read my so-called 'blog' because it might make me self conscious and filter things out. And I told her that I already do filter things out. I can't remember if she asked me what I filter, but here is an example.
My room-mate's name is Fan Tien. Carol got me in contact with him and he kindly took me in, we split costs, as room-mates do. People often ask me "how's your room-mate/" I often say "Oh good, great, nice guy." This is an entirely honest answer, Fan Tien is a very nice guy, puts up with my strange living habits, gives me rides on his scooter, offers to take me places, helps me find service groups, hooks me up with Bethel trips, sometimes we go out for Stinky tofu together, beer, regular food, he's given me Chinese pronunciation CDs, he gave me his old cell phone, the list goes on. He's just a nice guy, always helping out, and always friendly, and he gets it, I like him. But... But... when I come home, or one of my room-mates come home, I like there to be a little reception: "Hi Fan Tien, I'm home." "Hi Marc." or "Hi Marc, I'm home." "Hi Fan Tien." That's a need I have in a living together relationship, nothing fancy, it doesn't have to be every single time I come home or he comes home. Just an acknowledgment of entry into the apartment, house, or whatever. I'm not mad, I'm not upset, I don't feel like I'm being treated unfairly, I'm just saying there's a little bit of emptiness for me, something missing, when I come home. But I don't tell people that when they ask me "how's your room-mate?" I filter it. So there, there's a little unfiltered 'blogging' for ya. (edit 316) Permalink

I hardly ever upload pictures. Here's one from last week, the week that it took me an hour to find the service group, then 10 minutes after I found them we went on a break. This is me and Pu Dixiong.

Across from us was Han Dixiong and his wife. My face was supposed to look more dumb, less disgusted, sorry I need to practice more in front of the mirror. In the back you'll notice a trophy we received for being there or something, I didn't understand it.

This is me and some of the guys eating dinner after a meeting.

This was taken yesterday, it's Chris and Danielle on the 89th floor of Taipei 101. They pose very well as they proved throughout the rest of the day.

Me and Pu Dixiong in service yesterday, looking at an especially large intercom panel.

This is me in the Night market a few weeks ago. As you can see I'm putting out the vibe.

This was a few weeks ago, the day I first met up with Eric and Anita.

(edit 317) Permalink

Reminiscing today on my way back home, I sat in a powder blue seat, leaning out towards the center of the car so I could see all the way down the at least 150 feet of train as it flexed and curved around bends and up and down the gradual dips and slopes in the track. When I first got here I was a little disappointed in the fewness of lines as compared to the New York subway, and the presence of human drivers instead of the completely automated system like I dreamed of, but the MRT still manages to bring me pleasure when I ride it. I smiled when all the vertical handrails lined up for a second then unaligned making a cool moving geometric pattern, then I became self conscious of my childish behavior and slid back towards the window. Not as much to watch by the window, other than the dark walls of the tunnel zipping by. But if you look down at the right angle you can see little evenly spaced red lights ticking by every 5 seconds.

I thought back to where I had been tonight, Sushi Express, I'd really stuffed myself pretty well I thought, I could even feel the pressure in my stomach telling me that I was very full. Sitting there, eating Sushi, watching little orange plates slowly pass by. Each one covered with a little transparent dome to seal the sushi inside away from dozens of human faces that would eye it, the hands that would reach for it then pull back when they saw something better coming down the line. I cleared 12 plates tonight, I had plenty of room around me to stack them, to pick one piece from this one or that one, a little ginger to cleanse the pallet, then another piece of fish or broccoli, like my own personal buffet. I was sitting near the glass door, so people could see me as they walked by on the sidewalk, when I had first arrived I was seated across from another white guy with a goatee about my age, with only the little sushi conveyor belt and a little divider between us so I could just see his eyes and the top of his head. Us white guys never acknowledge each other here in Taipei, and he left after about 10 minutes anyway.

At the next MRT stop a young family with an energetic 4 year old boy walked on. The train wasn't very full at this hour, almost everyone was sitting. I wondered if the family was going to take the two "Old People Seats" in front of me, since they are also reserved for mothers with small children. I saw them look at it, then I wondered if mom would put the boy in the seat closest to me, my seat was against the wall at a right angle to the end "Old People Seat" so that my knees came close to touching the side of it. A few times when I've been in similar situations, moms put the kids closest to me, but the kids never like sitting that close to a stranger as strange as me, they always start crawling up on their mothers until the mom moves them somewhere else. I always think this is funny because I remember being that little kid, plus the kid, where ever he is sitting ends up staring at me so I can make faces at him. This mom, however, took the seat closest to me, but the little boy quickly bounced out of the seat and went to go stand in the center clinging to the vertical bar. Then the dad sits in the seat next to me, sealing me in so that I'll have to step over his and her legs to get off the train. But instead of feeling trapped I feel like I'm temporarily part of their little family, I'm waiting for the little kid to starting eying me. The mom says something to the little boy who is clinging to the pole, I used to like the idea of standing on a moving vehicle when I was little too. Then I hear the mom start to count in Chinese: Yi... Er.... San.... the boy is in his seat. I can't help chuckling to myself, mom's all over the world do the counting thing I guess. I had no idea until now. As I watched this little parenting scene I could still feel the pressure in my tummy from the Sushi I had scarfed down.

As I ate my sushi, the sushi chef towards the center of the restaurant started yelling something in Chinese through his mask to the cashier behind me. I realized after a second that I might be able to understand a little bit of what he was saying if I listened. No not much. I think I did hear "I'm going to" in there, but nothing else. Hearing him yell across the restaurant reminded me of eating with Pu Dixiong after service a few weeks ago.

At a little "food shop" as they're called, where I ordered beef noodle soup, the guy in the front at the register really liked to yell things to the people in the back. At first I didn't notice, since it's not uncommon here to hear yelling, but after a bit I laughed a little and tried to ask Pu Dixiong if they yelled in restaurants in Korea. He thought about it for a second and said no not really, not like that. Then he asked me if I wanted KeLa (Cola), since having something to drink is a rarity here, I said "Oh yes", even though I don't' really like Cola. He came back with two half height cans of Coca Cola Classic, I laughed a little at this too, not having seen many half height cans of Coke before. Actually it seemed like a good idea, I never want the whole thing anyway. I looked up at a poster on the wall by our table, it had a picture of a coke can in the middle. Around it in a circle of different kinds of food, a circular array of meals you might find in Taiwan. Pu Dixiong saw me staring at it, and pointed to one of the Chinese words and said in English "Marriage" indicating that the poster was telling people that Coke goes good with different kinds of food. I instantly saw the reason that this poster existed, you'd never see a poster like it in America, telling you that Coke can go with food. In Taipei most of the "food shops" and restaurants I've been to don't serve drinks by default, I think a lot of them serve soup afterwards, but not always. Just think how much money Coke isn't making here, there are probably tens of thousands of these food shops in this city alone, what if all of them asked "do you want a coke with that?"

But I certainly didn't want a coke with my Sushi, I made myself another cup of tea. Sushi Express has little hot water spouts and little boxes of tea bags at each stool position on the long sushi bar that snakes around the length of the sushi conveyor belt. "What brilliance!" I thought, "Sushi and technological innovation all combined into one experience!" Maybe I love sushi too much. I thought about what Chinese words I could use to tell the employees that I was done and wanted to pay now. I stacked my little orange plates and counted them. But before I had a chance to try out my Chinese a teenage bus boy asked me if I was done in Chinese, so all I got to say was "Dui" (Correct). Then, as he counted my plates, I said at half volume in Chinese, "Me want pay." But he didn't seem to notice as he went to ring it up on the register. But that's OK, I learned a measure word for Sushi tonight, it was the same one that I learned for Stinky Tofu. "Fen" which I guess means "a set of something."

On the subway the little boy had already given me a good stare, and I gave one back at him. I noticed he had a small but deep dimple on his lower right cheek, which he flashed when he tried to tickle his mom, the tickle didn't work. So he tried again a few minutes later, this time I think he got a smile, but mom's aren't that ticklish I guess. I noticed my stop was coming up, I leaned forward, but I didn't want to leave my little family of three quite yet, after giving me another stare he tried tickling his mom again. OK now I wondered if I was going to have to crawl over dad's legs to get out, but once I stood up mom and dad noticed the 31 year old American son they didn't know they had and pivoted their hips to the side to give me an opening to get out, like a little gate made of legs.

When I "alighted the train," to coin the term used by that familiar English speaking female voice of the MRT system, I looked around at my home MRT station. I always have to look around me to figure out which way to go next, there are 9 exits, five at the north end, and four at the south end, sometimes I've ended up at the wrong end. Both ends look the same and I can't ever seem to see the exit numbers from the bottom level. But today I remembered which direction my train had come from, the south, and so I walked south. Tonight I knew where I was going, like a natural, like I've been living here for a few months. Someday I'll be able to stand without holding the handrails, like a surfer, an MRT surfer. (edit 318) Permalink

Today was not a day for reminiscing on the MRT and eating sushi. Today I did something new, as I often do here. Today I bought food at a buffet. There are so many buffets here. I'm normally opposed to buffets back home, but here there is an advantage, I can see the food that I want, or that I don't want, otherwise there's a certain element of surprise.
The choice of buffets was easy. I live almost on top of a buffet, technically I live on a food shop next to a food shop next to a buffet, (that's two food shops over) but they are very small and narrow, also, since I'm being so technical, this buffet is the first place I see when I walk out of the downstairs door. Every time I leave the apartment I glance over through the opened back door of the kitchen of this same buffet, the cook at first would look at me, but now she's used to me. And as I turn right, into the alley, I walk along at least 3 or 4 side windows looking at Taiwanese people eating and reading Chinese newspapers as they sit in this Taiwanese buffet. So it's about time I tried it.
I loitered around at the edge of the alley, mentally preparing myself, and as I'm loitering an old man on a bike eyes me as he comes towards me. I think he's going to turn into my alley, he does, so I flatten myself against the alley wall as he passes me, and he parks his bicycle then walks back past me, back onto the sidewalk and into the buffet.
In I go. Going in takes two small steps, or one big one from the sidewalk. To my left is about 20 or so stainless steel bins of food with two shop keepers behind them dishing the food into little paper food trays. The shop keepers are pretty ancient looking, and ancient Taiwanese people usually seem to be under five feet tall for some reason, I don't know but I've heard something about diet has made younger people taller here. One of the ancient shop keepers, a woman, says something to me in accented Chinese that I don't understand at all, maybe it wasn't Chinese, she pointed to a box on my right, then went back to wherever she had been. To my right is a stack of trays, and a stack of boxes with flaps. I go for the flapped boxes, these appear to be "take out" boxes, that sounds like a good idea.
OK, it looks like the woman behind the buffet counter is dishing out the food, though she's dishing it into a row of 6 take-out boxes, must be a big order. There are about 3 other customers at the buffet counter, and I see one dishing food out of a nearby bin. Not all the bins have utensils for scooping the food out. OK, I'm a little confused if there is supposed to be some sort of method here, but I think I can blunder through it. The lady behind the counter seems to be asking me if I want something that's she's pointing to, it looks good, vegetables of some sort, so I hand her my box and she scoops some in. She hands it back and I use some tongs to get myself something else closer to my side. About half the food I want, and half I don't want. Today I didn't want an entire fish, at least not that big, so I get the little tiny fish mixed with peanuts instead, serving myself. I notice an 8 inch pink squid being plopped onto somebody's tray. I love squid, but I'm pretty sure this one has all of it's guts inside, I don't like guts, I think... Maybe next time I'll try the squid. It ends up costing 100 kuai, $3. The fast moving ancient little man at the end of the buffet closes my little box with a rubber band, sliding in chop sticks under the rubber band, and he puts a little paper bowl of rice in a small bag, puts it all in a bigger bag, doing all this with quick efficiency. How can you eat at this buffet without noticing the efficiency? All of this without computerized equipment and cash registers, just a little tray of money and stacks of bags and chop sticks where you pay.
Within seconds I'm smiling and around the corner with my pretty little buffet bag (it has cartoons on the box if you look at it). In less than a minute I'm on the second floor in my room, sitting on the floor using my little green plastic three legged stool as a dinner table. I get back up and microwave some water for green tea. It's kind of exciting to eat at home for some reason, half my meals are not eaten here, plus this is "buffet food," half of which I've never had.
I liked most of it, but what I thought was some sort of tofu turned out to be some sort of pork fat squares with a tiny bit of meat on them, and skin too, I think I ate a pig nipple. I ended up only eating half of the translucent pork fat, which isn't really too bad if you kinda mixed up with other stuff, I don't understand why Taiwanese people aren't fatter though. The vegetables were shaped like green onions, they were great, little fishes with peanuts were good. The chicken was not too bad, I am still not used to all the bones being left in though. The way they served the chicken appears to be almost the entire chicken, gutted and beheaded, and then sliced into small chopstick-able portions, bones and all, like chicken cross sections. So one piece was mostly bones and cartilage, but the other 4 pieces where mostly meat. As I ate the chicken, maneuvering around the little bones, I remembered about a month ago being at someones house for dinner. I had a similar problem with a little piece of meat and bone, in a soup. It took me 10 minutes to eat it, even though it was small, and this little 5 year old girl says after awhile in English "What is he doing!" Of course her mom scolds her and I just smiled at her instead of trying to explain that "I don't know how to eat meat with bones in it." Which might seem absurd to her. But me, I'm still new at this.
(edit 319) Permalink

At this very moment I'm sitting on a train. The seat next to me is empty, across the isle there is a Taiwanese man reading a book, the train is over half empty. The train is very peaceful, smooth ride, a little wobbly, and well lit. Just as I was typing this the train conductor walked through and stamped everybody's tickets. I guess mine was OK with him so I hope that means I'm on the right train. I'm glad I brought my laptop, so I can have my little web entry all typed up and ready, I have 42 minutes of battery life to type it in.
This morning I woke up at 5:15, took a shower, ate a banana and a purple lump of sticky rice that I bought last night, threw a bible, notebook, Watchtower, and this laptop into my backpack, and shot out the door like I usually do. Today was English special assembly day in Taizhong, it's a tad over two hours away so I had to get up early. I met up with a brother named Chris 5 minutes later at my home MRT station, Guting, exit 2. I was five minutes late, he was 7 minutes late, it was 6:07am. We had 38 minutes to get to the bus station and on the right bus. Without making the story any more complic

...OK that was way less than 42 minutes, my battery died. It's getting old. Now I'm using an old fashioned pencil and notepad.
Chris and I made it to the assembly with 30 minutes to spare. I'm glad Chris was there with his superior Chinese and experience or I'm not sure I would have found it, it was held in an elementary school's multi-purpose room, we had to walk across a brick red running track to in the front door. I wasn't in very far when I met an old Taiwanese man with gold teeth and a cute little baby perched on top of his big pot belly. I feel like he is worthy of being described, very friendly, quite a character. This man knew Chris from the English congregation, he spoke very loud and he stood below my chin, which isn't very high, his arms and hands were twice as thick as mine. I remember them because he waved them around and gestured with them like the Italians do in movies. The baby was not even a year old I think, so the man pointed to Chris and the baby looked at him, but then she looked at me and she showed me her two little front teeth, the only teeth she had and pointed her tiny little finger at me smiling and laughing. Why is that you feel so special when a little baby points and laughs at you? Nothing feels better. I attributed her laughing at me by my new lack of hair, I buzzed it down to 6mm yesterday, I imagine in the heat I looked very pink too.
It really is amazing to hear talks given in your mother tongue. I didn't realize how much I'd missed hearing English talks. Now I can appreciate more why we want people to learn the truth in their mother tongue. There were about 300 Filipino brothers and 100 others from various English speaking countries, many of whom are not actually in the English field here, but in Chinese like me. There were 7 people baptized, all 7 were Filipino sisters, the majority of the territory is Filipino, I've heard that they actually speak about 3 other languages, but they usually know a lot of English and there aren't enough of them yet to have meetings in their different mother languages so they get by with English. In the program each speaker had a different accent, some I'm not sure where some were from. Of course at the end we were all surprised, I was almost shocked, to hear the new meeting arrangement, which you've all heard by now. That's a big change.
Chris and I realized we had extra time when we first got there, so we both snuck out in search of food. Taizhong has far less foreigners than Taipei, so we were pointed at a lot, especially by kids, Chris (Coppens) is right, it feels like you're famous, I like it.
After the assembly I hopped on the back of Chris's scooter. (Chris Coppens, not the same Chris that I came with) His wife's helmet was too small for my huge noggin so I got to wear his slightly bigger one, and he wore hers, it has a pretty butterfly on it. We zipped off to TGI Friday's so we could eat American food like the Americans that we are. So the first time I've ever been to TGI Fridays was in Taiwan, Chris thought that was pretty funny. Funny to have a new American experience in a foreign country. TGI Fridays of Tizhong is probably just like any where, even an English menu, and the waitresses spoke a bit of English for us. The other customers were Taiwanese and out having "American Food" on a Sunday night. Which is still a funny concept to me.
After that I hopped on the back of Chris's scooter again and we zipped off to Jack's house. Jack was already there, he had driven the girls in his car, and when we got there he was singing away and playing his guitar, and singing rather well I'd say. Jack is Taiwanese and knows quite a few songs in English and in Chinese. For the rest of the evening we got to hear Jack, then Chris play and sing, Carol played, sang, and even danced a little with the guitar. Jessica cheered our performers on and encouraged them to keep singing, while Erika sang along and cried. She blamed it on allergies to a cat that I never saw. After each performance Danielle probed the performer's psyche, asking each of them if they felt any embarrassment or shyness. I think we know our three performers better because of her skillful questioning.
And after that, we made a quick stop to Chris and Danielle's place, then Jack took the 3 girls and I to the train and bus station where I got the train that this very "web entry" was written on. And as an after-note: I got to Taipei at 12:15, thinking that the MRT was probably closed already, but it wasn't, I ran, and I caught it, the last MRT train as the doors were closing. I am an MRT catcher now, just a little bit cooler than I was the day before. (edit 320) Permalink

Today after school I took a nap, slept 30 minutes too long, then woke up to read some disturbing news from Austria. While I was reading this my new friend Chris called me and asked me if I want to hang with him and some sister at a coffee shop and maybe get something to eat. Nope, I had to study, plus I was a still a little groggy from my nap and disturbed by the news I had just read.
But a few minutes after his call I found myself pacing the sidewalk outside a little food shop where I wanted to eat, turns out I'm hungry. "Wait a sec, why eat alone when I can associate with my brothers?" So I called him. No answer. Then I called him again a few minutes later, while I was calling him he was calling me back from the first call so I had to call him a third time. Don't you hate that? At any rate I asked him if I could change my mind. Of course, meet him at Guaning station he said, exit 4. OK, that's just two MRT stations away. Within 5 minutes I was on the MRT, sitting in a chair, a rare thing, on my way to Guaning, or whatever it's called. He wasn't there when I got there, but I called him and he came out of a Starbucks right around the corner, that I still couldn't see. As we were going in we met the sister that he was meeting, a sister that I had met the first day I came to Taiwan. Of course I couldn't quite remember her name, so she reminded me Yukari, she remembered mine, but tonight Chris gave her a new name in English anyway, Jen or Jennifer. Even though she already had an English name, Liz, and a Japanese and Chinese names. I asked Chris if it was legal to just randomly give people names whenever you felt like it. He said his randomly given Chinese name was on his official Visa paperwork, so I guess so.
Throughout the next 3 hours or so, over empty coffee cups, and my empty cheese cake plate, we talked about many things. The purpose of this meeting was to exchange American and Japanese music I guess, each of them had mixed CDs for each other. Jennifer, as I will never call her, has very good English, she lived in Canada for awhile, she told us many things we never knew about Japan. A country and language that Chris is especially interested in. Like for an example, tattoos are not popular in Japan, if you have one you are not allowed in the public baths and spas, you are associated with some sort of Mafia. Liz and I extracted as much as we could out of Chris about his girl back home and his plans, which was fun and sweet to hear his cute little story. Then we talked about hugging, cultural hugging, Japanese don't hug their friends of either gender. Yukari does but she's been a little bit westernized as they say, and even though we talked about it, none of us got any hugs tonight. American men don't usually hug or touch each other we told her, but they are more likely to touch and hug women than each other, and women hug and touch each other we told her.
We also talked about phone witnessing and the different responses in Japan, the States, and Taiwan, there is certainly a common thread throughout the world with some small differences.
After midnight a Starbucks employee came up the stairs and told us, and some other people there, something I didn't understand in Chinese, but we figured it was time to go. Lot's of places have an upstairs here, like MacDonalds, KFC, Starbucks.
Stepping out onto the sidewalk reminded me that I was in Taipei again, Starbucks is air conditioned, so it's warm and humid and pretty smelly once you step outside, thrusting you back to reality. Sometimes you can forget you're in a warm smelly city somewhere in Asia.
Chris and I decided to walk home instead of taking the MRT a mere two stops, maybe only a mile, and we both live in the same area. We waved good-bye to Jen, who had kept us so entertained with her inside knowledge of Japanese culture, she walked back into some alley to get her scooter. Chris and I walked for a few blocks chatting about Japan, Liz, and Taiwan. Then a scooter with a tall masked woman pulls up in front of us, I wondered why she was looking at us. It was Yukari with one of those Taiwanese face covering masks on. She told us we were walking south, the wrong way, she had wondered why she hadn't seen us from the road and then realized that she had pointed us in the wrong direction.
Hahah, we laughed thanked her and about-faced, waving goodbye to Jen again and making excuses to each other why we hadn't known we were going the wrong way in a place that we both should have known. Buildings all look the same, internal compass doesn't work here, MRT turns you around, perfectly understandable. Then Chris commented on the Graffiti that you see here, everywhere in the world, Graffiti everywhere, it used to mean something he told me. I asked rhetorically: "Who does it? Why? Why?" While we pondered these deep questions of life, it started to rain. I had considered bringing my umbrella, but decided against it. Oh well, the rain was kinda warm anyway.
Of course no social evening hanging out with your buddies is complete without having talked about girls, so we talked about girls in the rain until we came to Chris's turn, shook hands the parted ways.
I still had about 6 blocks to go, some covered, but most not, I ran, then I walked, I didn't want to slip and hurt myself on the dark empty streets alone. From now on I'm going to to take that umbrella with me. Or maybe not. (edit 321) Permalink

I just got back from Fuzhong, where I met Eric and Anita, we met at exit 3, then we waited for brother from their hall. Coming up from the MRT platform to exit 3 is kind of like going to the top of a very tall building, I rode I think 3 escalators that where at least 3 stories high, one more like 6, then I climbed about 3 stories worth of stairs and finally came out to see Eric and Anita waiting for me. When I got to ground level I think I had risen about 15-20 stories. The MRT is very deep in Fuzhong, I commented on this to Eric and Anita and they said they were thinking the same thing. So I'm not crazy. Their friend after a few minutes pulled up in his shiny black car, pretty exciting to get to ride in a car for us foreigners, and usually cars are really nice here if people have them, so we hopped in. Then he drove us to "Global Mall" where we met his wife and two kids at a "Ceschwan" restaurant. It's a pretty fancy place, we got our own little booth, which is almost like a little room.

What I'll remember about the booth the most, if I remember a booth for some reason, will be the long tubular pillow that went all the way around the U-shaped booth. It was very comfortable to lean back into, but also the kids, 6 and 8, towards the end of the meal got a little restless and tried to lay lengthwise across it, balancing themselves on it, or they'd slide under it and hide from each other.

Frankly I'm a little jealous that they got to do that and I didn't, I'm too heavy and big for the pillow to have been as much fun for me.
The food was, of course, different than any ceschwan food I've ever had, which judging my my inability to spell cezwan, sichuan, cezhuan in English, doesn't mean too much, since I haven't ever had much of it. It's spicy. But the highlight of the meal was the boiled stinky tofu. Not prepared the same as the stinky tofu I usually eat, which is crispy and fried, and I must say, I like it my way better, boiled tofu is extra stinky, and has a stronger taste. During the meal I leaned back and said to Anita, "Can you imagine parents trying to make their kids eat this stuff?" Sure enough, we got to witness it ourselves a few minutes after I said it, our new friends made their 8 year old son eat some. He seemed OK afterwards though.
Of course the brother, Paul or Yang, who drove us there insisted on treating us tonight, the brothers here are very generous and it's very rude to refuse.
Afterwards Yang Dixiong drove us back to the MRT station where we all met. And we said good-bye and thank you to Brother Yang.
Eric and Anita then decided to treat me to... I forgot what it was called, ice-something, shaved ice with all kinds of hard to describe sweet type things. I think it's kind of funny, they have, at this food shop, a numbered picture menu on the counter close to the customer so you can touch it and point to exactly what you want in your little ice bowl. But of the about 24 colorful pictures I saw, I recognized zero, I had no idea what anything was, I'd ever seen any of it before. I can only describe it all as colorful beans and puddings. Not the same as the pudding I've already had here, but similar.
Eric expertly pointed to numbers 5-12, he'd been here a few times before, he knew what he wanted. Anita though, only pointed to 6 and 22, 2 items (I don't remember the numbers exactly, just where they were on the picture menu). Anita turns to me and says to order what I want. As if I have any idea. I laughed at her scornfully and turned to the Laoban (shopkeeper) and said "Yi Yang" (The same) and pointed to Anita. Works every time.
Well my ice-something was good, strange at first, but then just plain good, and conversation with Eric and Anita is always good and interesting too. As we were finishing our icy deserts it was about 9:30 and I had already learned new information about reconnecting a vas deferens. Anita works at some sort of medical clinic. So Anita and Eric walked me back to the MRT, which was good because I hadn't been paying any attention to where I was as usual. We turned through a narrow alley, jumped over a little wall into a park, someone had made a little step out of loose bricks to make the jumping easier, this was Eric's short cut I think. As we neared the MRT entrances we could still see 20 or 30 women doing some sort of choreographed dance in the middle of a closed off street to music coming from a little pink boom box. We said our good-byes and good-to-see-yas, and I hopped onto the escalator sinking down deep into the earth under Taipei County where the MRT trains would carry me home as Eric and Anita walked off in the direction of their apartment. (edit 322) Permalink

Today was was a pretty good day, I didn't wake up to terribly late as I usually do so I had time to go for a tiny little 15 minute walk, then I ate lunch, a real lunch with vegetables and pot stickers, then I walked back, took a shower, studied and went to school.
At school it was just me and one other student, the first time we've only had two students. During the last period the teacher decided to put the book away and just talk about whatever, in Chinese of course. She asked us about various mundane things, and wrote many new words for us on the board so we could say what we needed to say. But then the other student Zhèng Zhèn Jīng asks me what my favorite book of the bible is, she's Catholic and likes to read the bible. So I thought for a second, and said Genesis. "Why?" they asked, "lot's of stories" I said. Then the teacher asked me to tell one of the stories, I guess having only two students is kinda cool for sometimes. Zhèng Zhèn Jīng says, in English "Joseph!" OK, that's an easy one, so to make a long story short I started with Joseph's brother's hating him and selling him and ended, when the class-over song started to play on the intercom, with the Pharaoh (king) having a dream. I really wonder how much the teacher really understood from my limited vocabulary, but it was kinda cool because I got to mention how Joseph didn't have a law yet but that he knew not to commit adultery, and how God told him the dreams. So it was kinda fun, and probably the longest time I've ever spoken Chinese without stopping. Apparently the teacher, younger than me, had only heard a little bit of the story before.
But that was not the end of my day. When I got home from school I wanted to go to the new Ironman movie, but I knew that I should probably go in service instead, I made the right choice and went in service.
Finding the service spot is always a little tricky, but today, I was only a few minutes late. I took a pedestrian bridge over some sort of parade, walked past a huge "flower pot auction" building, interesting, turned left, within a minute I saw a park, just like on the map. Within minutes of the "flower pot auction" building, which is about 3 times the size of Costco for some reason, I was walking into a lovely park waving to my brothers and sisters.
Evening service today started at 6:30, right after the sun goes down. I was paired with an older sister who's Chinese I can never understand, also she didn't seem to want me to take any doors, I'd knock, the person would open the door, I'd step forward open my mouth and then she'd take over from behind me. I had to exercise patience with her, but despite my frustration I was able to place a set of magazines with a nice lady, and my service partner was very helpful with this.
Half-way through the service captain brother usually shuffles the service partners and I was put with another sister, the mother of the two boys that I had been talking to all night, telling them that I was in fact Superman, not an American but a Kryptonian, and yes, I can fly. They got a kick out of it, and so did I, One is 11 and the other 8 I think. They asked me questions about my super powers the rest of the night.
We only had a half hour left, so the service captain points us, me and about 5 other sisters into a dark alley. Something we'd never do back in America. The alley is about 15 feet wide and goes back for hundreds of feet with no light, turning off into who-knows-where. So it's dark, very dark, but after a couple minutes we got to the end of it and now we were behind a bunch of tall apartment buildings. Behind these buildings there is a big hill, and a forest, basically we're at the edge of a big patch of jungle, or a jungle hill with a few buildings climbing partly up the side of it, and I can hear the sound from it, it sounds just like a jungle is supposed to sound.
Along the edge of this "jungle hill" is a little narrow street that climbs up the hill a little bit then back down, running parallel with the backs of those big apartment buildings. Of course it's a little extra dark, and "exciting" as I was thinking at the time. There a many funny looking little houses and buildings packed unevenly and tightly together. There is even a weird little "tunnel" type part of the street, not a natural tunnel but someone has built a building, a single story, over the top of the narrow street, so it's even darker than the alley. I felt like I was on the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride in Disneyland, minus the boat. I don't think there was anyone home inside the tunnel part of the street, but beyond it there were some pretty nasty sounding dogs. The sisters were kinda scared of the dogs so I scouted ahead to see if there were any doors to knock on, but I didn't see any, and it turns out the sisters weren't that scared, and probably knew there weren't any doors.
After we came back from our "Pirates of the Caribbean" walk, we stood at the end of the alley waiting for everyone else to get back, the sisters sitting on scooters parked there (It's OK to use any random parked scooter as a seat if you want here, they always sit on them.)
Eventually the two boys came back from some fork in the alley they had been working with someone. And this is where the magic of the evening climaxed. The oldest boy had his hands cupped, he had something alive in there. His mom made him show her, she looked in his cupped hands and said something excited. So I was curious now, I stepped in to look, he opened his hands and at first I thought it was a little Cockroach, but it wasn't, it had a little red spot on it's back. It looked pretty ordinary, though I had never seen one, I wondered why his mom had seemed so excited. They tried explaining it to me... ah, a firefly. I'd never seen one before. And sure enough, it's little light started blinking. Then he let it go, and my evening was sealed with magical wonder.
Of course on my way home I celebrated by buying myself a beer and a bag of stinky tofu. (edit 323) Permalink

Was today a simple day? Today for afternoon service I was only able to figure out that the group was meeting on "Roosevelt Road Section 5" which is about a half mile long of densely populated city. On the schedule after the street section it said something like "district big area front" which could be anything, I was not able to find anything official looking on the map. But I certainly didn't have anything better to do, so I got dressed, plugged in my not-iPod and walked off to the subway to get a train to "Roosevelt Road Section 5." Sure enough when I got there, it was pretty hopeless looking, but like I said I had nothing better to do.
Well, I had only walked about 6 blocks or so, wondering when i was going to run out of "Roosevelt Road Section 5," looking down all the cross streets, looking for nicely dressed people loitering somewhere in "front" of something. Then I saw an official looking government-like building that was on a side street, I happened to be on a pedestrian bridge so I could see a little farther.
It was the best lead I had, and liked I said I had nothing better to do. So to make a story (that is suddenly seeming to be uninteresting) short, when I got to the front sidewalk of this big government-like building, I didn't see anyone. But then I glanced to the side and walking away from me down another street, were my brothers and sisters. And by the way, today was the hottest yet, and the air was dead still.
Just a few minutes ago I got back from that new movie Ironman, it was fun, a pleasant diversion you could say. But what's interesting about watching American movies, and most of them are American, is that they are sub-titled in Chinese, so I got to enjoy the movie in English. When the movie is over you start to walk out and remember that you're in a foreign country, like you'd forgotten during the movie. (edit 324) Permalink

On the way back from book-study tonight, swinging our umbrellas since it had stopped raining, Fan Tien and I walked home at a leisurely pace. As we strolled along I read one of the English signs out-loud, I can't seem to help reading signs out-loud. "Super Chicken" I said, I was about to say "Sounds kinda tough to eat." I thought that would be funny, but then I thought about it. Maybe he would have no idea what I was talking about. No idea that I was imagining a chicken from the planet Krypton who's powers came from our yellow sun, who's meat would be tough as steel. While I was contemplating this terrible joke of mine, he said "Nǐ yào chī ma?" Which is one of the very first sentences you learn in Chinese class. "Do you want to eat?" Referring to the Super Chicken stand.
Moments later we had crossed the street and were standing with a small throng of Chinese people on the sidewalk under signs still dripping from today's rain. I lazily allowed Fan Tien to order for me, I told him I wanted "Squid" and made a little pantomime of a squid swimming through the water with one hand, my fingers were the tentacles. He told me this was "Youye." As I was repeating "Youye" to myself I noticed the lone woman preparing our food behind the counter, I smiled because I saw a little leg sticking out of her side, and a little fist sticking out the other side. As she dashed around, back and forth, preparing orders for the 7 people standing on the sidewalk, the little leg swung back and forth as if it was dead, dead asleep. "I love this country" I thought to myself, "Here is a young mother with a three year old kid strapped to her back sleeping away as she works through the night." That kid can probably sleep through anything.
I see that a lot here, parents working away in various shops and restaurants with their little kids sitting in little chairs behind the counter doing their homework, drawing pictures, playing computer games, sometimes you'll see a couple of them playing with each other, probably having much more fun that they ever would at a day care. (edit 325) Permalink

Not having a kitchen means I get to eat out all the time. When I get hungry I don't have to labor in front of the fridge trying to decide what to eat, I grab my umbrella, check my wallet, put on my sandals and I'm off to dinner.
I have been choosing a place pretty close lately, even closer than the stinky tofu, I could probably yell my order to them out my bedroom window if I spoke better Chinese. Today I ordered the same thing that I ate the other 3 times I was there, two of the 4 things that I can even read on the menu, there are no pictures. I think I want to describe the ordering process: come in, sit down at an empty table, the menu-forms are at the table in a wire basket mounted on the wall all ready to go, a pen is there too, as well as a bunch of chop sticks, put your table number at the top of your form, draw a horizontal line for "one" next to the items you want, then take your form to the kitchen. Usually someone will pause whatever they're doing to take your form and glance at it. Then you go sit down and wait. They bring your food to you, when you're done eating you go back to the kitchen, which is always in the front of the shop so people can order directly from the kitchen while standing on the sidewalk, dining is in back, they usually know which table you are since you're only sitting a few feet away, hand them the money, they hand you change, then you leave, and they bus the table. There isn't much if any eye contact during any of these interchanges, everybody has "I'm busy eyes".
Tonight I ordered pork fried rice and a pile of a green leafy vegetables. Their pork fried rice has a cool taste to it, I like it.
Today I brought my little orange electronic dictionary, I bought it here, with a little white stylus I can write Chinese characters on it's little hard to read screen and it'll find them about 1 out of 3 times, I usually only look up the easy ones. Today, while I was waiting for my food and watching an amazing Discovery video about crazy looking sea horses, I pulled out another menu-form. This menu is a dense little thing with at least 50 items crammed onto it, I want to test my dictionary so I look up the character for pork. But instead I get "sheep." I've been eating sheep fried rice all this time, now I understand the funny taste. It's my new favorite.
After I got my sheep fried rice and green leafy vegetables, I was watching penguins on Discovery, minding my own business, when two American girls walk in and sit right next to the TV where I can't ignore them very well. "What is happening to this town?" I ask myself. "It's over-run with foreigners! There are three just in this restaurant alone." Maybe I need to pick a new restaurant. (edit 326) Permalink

(Pronounced "Sheen Dee-yen") Today after service, at about 5:15pm, I had to make a decision, what to do with the rest of my day. I wandered purposelessly to, Wanlong MRT station, the nearest station from the territory we worked. I knew I'd have to eat eventually so I was thinking about that. But on my way down the escalator, I looked at the MRT platform sign rising up towards me, "Taipei Main Station - Beitou" it said, yep that was the one back home... but wait... once off the escalator I walked a short distance along the platform, and hopped on the next descending escalator. I had just decided to go south, away from home, to Xindian, the end of the MRT line. I'd been meaning to check it out but I'd never had the time when I had thought to do it. But now I had the rest of the day.
Before long I was stepping off an MRT train onto the half sized "Xindian" platform, a station that I only knew by name, my friend Max lived somewhere near there, it is a station that the green and red MRT line is named after. Soon the name would be more than just a name to me, I'd have been there. The second train across the platform was there too, sitting there with it's doors still open, I realized it was going to go the same direction my train was going to go, the trains here don't keep going, they both stop, wait a few minutes and reverse back. I noticed, as I rode the escalator up that my train still sat there too with it's doors open, much longer than it did at "normal" stations, wow what a cool station.
At the top of the escalator I noticed several buses pulled up to the edges of the station. This station doubled as a bus station. Wow, what a cool station.
Xindian looks a lot like the rest of Taipei, it's a city that kinda melts into Taipei's south end, I think it's part of what's called "Taipei County." One difference I noticed though was big green hills climbing up behind just a few blocks of the busy city streets, a distinct edge of city and wilderness. Cool.
I decided to go in the direction that I had decided was South, I could see the sun shining on the hill in that direction. Sure enough, after about a mile of uphill sidewalk I was looking down at a wide winding blue-green river, the other side was mostly uninhabited jungle with a handful of scattered temples, buildings, and shacks. It's been awhile since I've seen much of anything but city and concrete, other than from a bus window while I was on my way to TaiZhong. I stood there, with busy traffic behind me and nature in front, for about a half hour, trying to take stitchable pictures with my little camera, I'll post them if I can ever get them to stitch, I don't think my little laptop has enough power though.
Less than an hour later I was a few miles down stream, I was afraid it was going to start raining so I'd reversed course but took a different route. I was walking with hundreds of Asian tourists across a wobbly suspended bridge, kinda of a modern/ancient fusion of technology, it seemed to be a rope bridge with wooden planks about 20 feet wide spanning hundreds of feet, swaying and wobbling very noticeably from the hundreds of people walking across it. It looked looked like it was a very popular place to visit, judging by the hundreds of people scattered all around, complete with dozens of food vendors, even a cotton candy vendor, the first one I've seen here.
Across the river, perched on the edge of a cliff that winds in and out along the edge of the river, is a little restaurant with pretty little lights lining the edges of it's white railing with tables and chairs outside in the open air. I might have to go eat there, it looks like a large scale of something you'd expect to see in Disneyland or something.
Not long after the sun had set I found myself sitting on another MRT train, in one of those wonderful powder blue seats, watching the woman sitting next to me play peek-a-boo with her little baby boy as he sat in his stroller. Each time she hid her face he'd reach out and grab her hands to pull them away. I think he knew where she was, but he still seemed to enjoy the game. I guess I did too.
(edit 327) Permalink

I've been watching the news on-line and I noticed there was an earth-quake in China today, thousands dead, horrible, I'm not sure what time it was due to the confusing time-zone thing (was NBC giving me the time here or Eastern Standard Time?), but I think I was in school at that time. According to the news the quake was felt here in Taipei too, well I didn't feel anything, I didn't hear about it until I read the news, so don't worry. It seems like the earth is falling apart lately, especially here in Asia, China, Myanmar. (edit 328) Permalink

OK, OK, I'm finally missing home. I've been lying here trying to sleep, I'm hungry, and all I can think about is all the food that I used to eat back home that I can't seem to find here. Olives, avocados, cheddar cheese, nachos, guacamole, pot roast. Before I went to bed I actually had a guacamole making fantasy where I made guacamole for the book-study treat night, of course, being a fantasy, everyone loved it. Guacamole is one of the few things I can make, along with pot roast, which never turns out as good as the "one time I made it" where it was really good. I think they have slow cookers here, so I could probably make that if I really wanted to, I'd just have to buy a slow cooker.
I realize a lot of my web entries on here are about food, sorry, I like food I guess. When I get back to the States I'll probably crave all the food that I ate over here, but until then I'll crave all the food over there.
I think tomorrow I'm going to try that Mexican restaurant that I heard is really bad. I could go for some bad Mexican food right about now. There aren't many Mexican restaurants here for some reason, I hear there's only one that's any good in all of Taiwan. I would think that having Mexican restaurants would be a priority over "Outback Steakhouse" and "TGI Friday's" Who eats American food anyway? They have Pizza Hut, MacDonald's and KFC, huge fancy places, but no Taco Bell even!
I'm not making my hunger go away, or helping my insomnia. Goodnight. (edit 329) Permalink

I don't know how well it will write out, but today was pretty funny, I spent most of my second period class giggling. It seems like I've mentioned this all before but...
Today we had only three students, me and the two Korean girls. We were learning how to compare things in Chinese. "I am taller than she is." and "Her husband is even taller yet." (One of the student's husband also goes to school here and is quite tall. So coming to Asia has not made me any taller.) But then one of the students says "Marc is prettier than me." And yes, she used the word "pretty" that you'd use for a girl. The teacher asks her what, "why, what do you mean," and "You can't say 'pretty'" when referring to a man. Of course, I'm just sitting there laughing, wondering what on earth she's talking about, anticipating something weird as usual from her.
I remember a rapid stream of Korean pointed at the other Korean girl, then some Chinese I didn't quite understand, but then she points to the bridge of her cute little nose and tells us that it's not nearly "long" enough. Of course I'm laughing again mostly because I think she has a cute little nose (not that I told her so), but to me it's a whole new thing to hear girls wishing that they had longer noses.
The girl with the cute little button nose takes a pencil and places it across her eyes showing us just how inadequate she thinks her bridge is. So then I laugh and place a pencil from my forehead down my nose, since it's almost a straight line, I remember girls in High School teasing me that I could do this. Then the story goes a little bit deeper.
The button nose girl then tells us, in Chinese with bits of English, that when she was a small girl her parents would tell her how wonderfully long her nose was going to be when she grew up, and how wrong they'd been. So then I tell them all that when I was a kid, us kids were a little concerned that we might inherit our dad's especially "long nose" (Sorry dad, don't worry they'd love your nose.) Then she said that she'd even considered plastic surgery, but not seriously. "Amazing" I'm thinking, "back home it's all reverse."
Then the teacher tells us that her mom used to tell her too that she'd have a nice long nose when she grew up, but that she didn't trust her mom so she'd pinch her nose a lot to make it longer. She was a strange child she told us. Yes, yes, we did that too, the Korean girls said. Meanwhile I'm looking at all their little noses thinking that they all have nice little noses.
So then the teacher puts her hand in front of her face and says, more towards me, that some "Easterners" have very flat faces, indicating flat with her hand laughing. Of course I laugh and put my hands up to my face making a point in front of my face and say, yes, and we Westerners have pointy faces, often with big pointy noses and features. We all laughed at this, at East meets West, at pointy faces meet flat faces, and how some people often wanted to be something in between. And as I laughed I wondered in the back of my head if I shouldn't just stay in this land where my prominent nose-bridge makes me beautiful. (Just kidding)
The next class period of the day wasn't nearly as fun or as complimentary to my exotic pointy face. We just talked about how to describe the weather in Chinese. (edit 330) Permalink