We slept in and missed church today. After waking up I walked down to the OK Mart convenience store down the street with an umbrella to shield me from the light drizzle to buy some milk and orange juice. One of the little neighborhood boys ran to catch up with me on his way to the store as well in what looked like his pjs. I said hello and he laughed. On the way back I ran into two of the other little neighborhood boys crowding each other under their little umbrella who said hello.
Back at home I put on a pot of coffee, stuck two slices of homemade bread (Emily’s getting good) into the oven to toast, and got the pan hot for frying an egg. I’ve never been very good at keeping the egg together when frying but low and behold, after asking my wife for advice on how she does it so well, today I managed to fry a restaurant worthy sunny side-up egg for the top of her toast. Thats the way she likes it, a fried egg on top of a dry piece of toast.
Sticking butter on my own slice of toast, pouring orange juice for my wife and delivering her breakfast to her, I poured myself some coffee and settled onto our couch to read a little in Bob Dylan’s autobiography Chronicles volume one which I’m about two thirds through. Hearing the patter of the rain outside only added to the perfect beginning to the day.
After a half hour or more Emily and I put our books aside, turned to where we’ve been reading in the Bible, Revelations, and read around four chapters discussing as we went. I got out my guitar and music sheets and we sang some praise songs and prayed. Its so great to be able to have church in the intimacy of your own home with the woman you love and the Creator of all!
Yesterday was great too. By happen chance we ended up spending several hours at the apartment of Peter and Angela, an American guy and his Taiwanese wife, their 5-month old baby Amira, and two young assistant professors from Ming Chuan, Michael from Australia, and Graham from Scotland. It was great to spend some time with people more our age/place in life after so many hours in class with a bunch of versions of myself at eighteen.
I met Michael a few months back at a two day camp thing that Ming Chuan held for students who wanted to go. He was one of the workshop presenters and rode with us on the bus back home. We sat together and talked during the ride. His Ph.D is in film studies and he was fun to talk to. Anyways last week I saw him through the crowds at Ming Chuan’s 51st anniversary celebration and was able to wave a quick hello before having to keep moving to stick with Emily in the masses. I emailed him saying sorry for only giving a quick wave and he invited me and Emily to yesterday’s little get-together for some poker and good’ol hanging out. It couldn’t have turned out better. Peter, the American guy, is a third year student at Ming Chuan so my worries of being a student among a bunch of academics was replaced with genuine enjoyment for the level of conversation. Although it made me miss my brother, Marty, John, and the Liberty guys!
Tomorrow I have an Accounting quiz and one for Calculus on Tuesday. Wednesday through Friday we have spring break and are going to go with Megan down to visit our good friend Sandy in the middle of Taiwan. Sandy’s planned what seems to be a very fun trip and it’ll be great to see her again. If you remember she is the wonderful person who, with the help of her father, helped us find our apartment, picked us up from the airport when we arrived, took us on our shopping spree to outfit our crib, and in general has helped us with all those pesky details of life. We love her so much!
We’re going to have our first visitor from America in a few weeks too. Technically he’s just passing through but it better to say he’s visiting us doesn’t it. My friend has a layover in Taipei on his way to Indonesia to spend some time there. I’m eager to see him and spend a few hours with another guy from back home!
Well I guess that’ll do it for now.
Hey all,
I’ve posted four new albums on the pictures page – pics from Megan’s time in Taoyuan, trips and fun in March, and other random stuff. Oh-and, all the little tiny poor-quality videos I take on my digital camera are now accessible on Picasaweb, by going to the newly created “Mini-Videos” page and clicking on the picture there. It’s not much, but it’s what we have. I think they’re pretty neat, myself 
Our internet at the house is FINALLY working again, after I think three weeks of absence. It felt like even longer. Our house owner is such a great guy, bending over backwards to make this a good place to live, but when we have a problem it’s really hard to communicate correctly. He really has tried several times to make the internet work for the whole house, and it seemed to be working for everyone but us. Yesterday his son came, was able to speak English with us, and by switching some wires around (or something), we are now miraculously up and running again. hurrah!
Its already the middle of March. We’ve been here for over six months. We’ve been married for over seven! Thats crazy!
It seems like we just got here and already I’m having to start thinking about where we’ll live next year. I want to find an apartment in Banciao (pronounced “Bon-chee-owe”), which is a city in between Taipei and Taoyuan. The reason its attractive is because its on Taipei’s MRT (subway) line and also the train line! They’re both at the same station too so if we could find an inexpensive place within walking distance it would be dreamy…..the weirdness of adults getting dreamy over dumb stuff is slowly becoming less weird. By the way if you want to see pictures of what will hopefully become our new city and perhaps read some English that sort of makes sense but not really than visit http://www.banciao.gov.tw/bravo_en/index.php
The internet at our apartment has been horrible lately. The house owner has promised that better lines are coming. He’s such a nice guy I hate to be mad.
One of my professors sounds like a book-on-tape. He’s an older guy from Oklahoma who’s teaching the History of Modern China. Its sort of tell-tale of the football that China and Chinese related topics are here as on my course schedule the class was called “Special Topics on Modern China.” It also strikes me odd that here in Taiwan a westerner would be teaching this course. Strange.
There is no denying that I like Economics. I say this because even though the teacher isn’t that good I still enjoy the class.
Who wants to learn some Chinese? Emily will probably correct me and tell me I’m teaching you the wrong thing but here goes:
1 is “ee”
2 is “er”
3 is “sen”
4 is “seu”
5 is “ooh”
6 is “leeo”
7 is “Chee”
8 is “bah”
9 is “jho”
and 10 is “sheu”
There you go!
I’m guessing I may have more opportunities and time to post now. I’ve taken a job at my university working in the International College’s office as an English tutor. Basically what that means is I hang out in the office when I’m not in class and if students come by asking for help than I help them but other than that I can work on homework or surf the web or whatever. The pay stinks but its always nice to get money when you don’t really have to do anything for it. Its nice too because many students hang out in the office due to the layout of our new campus so its not like I’m isolated away in my little corner or anything.
Because of this I may be posting on here more to pass the time.
I’m also tutoring another guy now. Josh is fascinating and also lives in Taoyuan. He found my name on that tealit.com website that I’ve talked about before and we’ve met a few times now. His English is incredible and now he’s working on expanding his vocabulary and perfecting his accent and pronunciation. Such a difference from the kids at church there truly is a difference in enjoying teaching when the students are interested in being taught.
We’re now in the third week of classes. Monday mornings is a four hour Multimedia Application class, basically a computer class that one can sleep through and still pass. Monday afternoons I have class meeting for an hour and then Accounting class for two hours.
Well thats it for now. I just finished helping a few girls here in the office with their English Composition papers and now its time to get to class.
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