A lot has happened since the last post. Since then Emily and I have traveled back to Michigan for summer break, spent a few wonderful weeks with family and friends, and now are in Owensboro, Kentucky for a 4 and 1/2 week long visit with Emily’s grandparents and aunt.

God did provide a place for Emily and I to stay here in Kentucky. Janet, Emily’s grandparents’ former cleaning lady, generously offered to let us stay in the spare room of her house. She and her daughter are two of the sweetest, kindest people you’d ever want to meet and have been making us feel right at home.

Last week, on Sunday, Emily and I attended the First Presbyterian Church of Owensboro’s service. We had sent an email to a bunch of pastors here in Owensboro a few weeks before arriving asking for help in finding housing. The presbyterian pastor, Eric, had emailed us back and we wanted to go catch up with him. The congregants were extremely welcoming and it was really great to get a chance to find out that the pastor recognized us right when we walked in because he had seen pictures of us here on our blog.

Today, Emily and I went with her grandfather to his church, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Owensboro. It was very interesting and definitely got me thinking about stuff. It was quite different from any service I had ever been to before. One thing I really liked was that there was time for members of the congregation to get up and share their joys and struggles with everyone.

On the jobs front Jesus has provided as well. The first few days Emily and I were here in Owensboro we drove around and stopped in everywhere there was a currently hiring sign to fill out applications. We also went to the temporary employment agencies. After doing the latter we have both become huge fans of temp agencies. Tomorrow we both start work at Columbia Sportwear Company’s midwest distribution center, jobs we obtained from Jeff at Spartan Staffing…thank you Jeff! The other temp agency that found us work but that we ended up not taking was Peoplemark. Both agencies were great. There are definitely jobs to be had as we have only been here a week and a half and already are turning down jobs and interviews.

Last week we both got a workout at Packaging Unlimited. It’s one of those places that is a day-to-day thing. If you get there early enough you have a job that day. We arrived at 5:30am, got our names added to the list, and began our shift at 7:30am. Emily spent the day making boxes for peanut butter jars and I was stacking packages of Ragu onto pallets. No air conditioning and minimum wage made it a little different from the jobs we are accustomed to but I have to say I really enjoyed it. Working there forever would have been horrible but doing really hard work every so often is something I really get a lot out of. I liked it so much I went back for seconds the next day.

This new job has pretty good pay and is air conditioned as well. We are both very grateful and excited for tomorrow morning at 6am when we begin our first shift at Columbia!

Other than that we have been having a great time with Scott and Ruth, Emily’s grandparents, and Winnie, Emily’s Aunt. They have been wining and dining us at some of Owensboro’s best eateries. That reminds me, anyone in Owensboro, Kentucky should definitely give The Famous Bistro a try. Excellent food and great service.

Well I guess that’ll do it for now.

I am one, procrastinated step away from finishing my junior year of a Bachelor’s of Business Administration degree. I have spent over 2,160 hours in class with the same group of awesome classmates, hailing from all over the world. This core group of students has welcomed transfer students and said goodbye to others. We’ve sat through classes that ‘never ended’ and learned about the 2008 financial crisis more times than can be counted. We took finals that were worth 40% of the grade and finals that were worth 10%. We’ve had teachers with perfect English and teachers with ‘no’ English. And now I am realizing that we, classmates, have spent more time together than we have left before we part ways. In fact, some of my classmates are already finished with us and will be traveling to different countries next year as exchange students.

Here in Taiwan it is quite common for people to remain close to their high school, or even junior high school, classmates throughout their entire lives. Many of my Taiwanese classmates spend weekends throughout the year, going back to their home city to visit with a group of high school classmates that planned a get-together. A fifty plus year old Taiwanese man we know went on regular walks with one of his high school classmates up until his untimely death. While these are only two examples there are countless others.

I am understanding more and more why this is the case. Like my current university program, Taiwanese high school students spend every day and every class with the same group of students. It is bonding to say the least. Everyone knows exactly who the slackers are and who the hard workers are. Everyone knows who is getting into playing guitar and who is getting into partying. Everyone knows everything about everyone.

At first, I think it was pretty strange for us as foreigners. But I have to say that after three years of it I have really come to enjoy it. There are definitely the clicks and groups and all that. But at the same time there is definitely an overall togetherness amongst us. I am hopeful that this bond remains even after graduation. Next year won’t be the same with Gina and Jennifer and Ken and the rest of my classmates who will be exchange students away in their various locales.

While I disagree with educational philosophy and practices here in Taiwan in many regards, I have become a big fan of grouping students into classes that remain together throughout a program’s duration.

I read this recently and was really hit by it:

“how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. For the frontiers of knowledge are inevitably being pushed back further and further, which means that you only think of God as a stop-gap. He also is being pushed back further and further, and is in more or less continuous retreat. We should find God in what we do know, not in what we don’t; not in outstanding problems, but in those we have already solved. This is true not only for the relation between Christianity and science, but also for wider human problems such as guilt, suffering and death. It is possible nowadays to find answers to these problems which leave God right out of the picture. It just isn’t true to say that Christianity alone has the answers. In fact the Christian answers are no more conclusive or compelling than any of the others. Once more, God cannot be used as a stop-gap. We must not wait until we are at the end of our tether: he must be found at the centre of life: in life, and not only in death; in health and vigour, and not only in suffering; in activity, and not only in sin. The ground for this lies in the revelation of God in Christ. Christ is the centre of life, and in no sense did he come to answer our unsolved problems. From the centre of life certain questions are seen to be wholly irrelevant, and so are the answers commonly given to them…In Christ there are no Christian problems.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer, taken from his book Letters and Papers from Prison

Living in Taipei just got that much easier!

One of the things I crave, when I go to the States to visit, is Qdoba/Chipotle burritos. Those big, soft, stuffed full of goodness burritos were always something I wished I could have here in Asia. Sadly, the restaurants that serve burritos here in the Taipei area, yes there are a few, are expensive and pretty much not good. I might even go as far as to say their food is bu hao chi (不好吃), Chinese for bad tasting. This is of course exempting Eddy’s Cantina. However, Eddy’s is all the way up in Danshui so to go is quite a trek and not something that can be done spur of the moment; the way most of the trips Emily and I take to restaurants happen.

All this has changed however. Oola Mexican Grill has opened their doors just two MRT stops away from where we live! They’re logo is so similar to Qdoba’s part of me thinks they stole it right off of the Qdoba website. The burrito bar style is exactly the same, minus beans. The taste isn’t quite as good as Qdoba, but nonetheless it is the best Mexican food I’ve had in the city and I am far from complaining. Plus, they even have guacamole and very decent chips! And…drum roll please…the prices are very reasonable.

Please Taipei residents, please embrace this restaurant and don’t let it go out of business.

Where does a former Governor who lost his Presidential primary and now works in cable television go? Do you give up? … Taiwan! Seriously, I’m not joking.

Mike Huckabee came to Taiwan the other day. The London International Group brought the Guv to Taiwan to “promote his new book,” and besides the paying guests they invited a bunch of college students to fill up the rest of the room. I was one of those students. Gov. Huckabee gave a speech and even did a Q&A time. It was fun to see my classmates reaction to his ability to stay on message and not answer anything he didn’t want to.

First of all I want to know if the 6 plus security guys were secret service or private security? Were we Americans paying for all of them to pick through my backpack and raise eyebrows at my coffee thermos? What is a primary loser doing with secret service?

On another note, our cat has ringworm so Emily and I spent time today wiping everything down with bleach water. Isn’t life fun? It is a good thing Emily is around. She is the best at staying motivated to clean. The other three of us in the house are pretty laxidaisical in that whole area. I have such a wonderful wife. If she weren’t here, I probably wouldn’t do anything but just hope that the ringworm would go away. “The key,” I would tell myself, “is to pretend there is no ringworm. That way they’ll get bored with the lack of attention and find someone else’s cat to bother.” I’m good at conjuring up reasons why things do not need to be cleaned. Emily, on the other hand, was online for a few hours this morning, finding all this home-remedy information and then spear-headed the whole effort. Like I said before, I have a wonderful wife…can I get a holla?

My good friend, Benni, is back in Taiwan for the month after a year in California. He has come back to graduate and then flies home to Germany. I was lucky enough to grab lunch with him today and hopefully we’ll get a little more hang time before he heads out. I guess this is the downside to having friends and classmates from all over the world. When they go home it’s not just a few hours away, it’s several nations away.

Both Emily and I have been slow in realizing that we are just two weeks and change away from leaving for summer break. So stinking crazy! Thankfully God has provided a sub-letter/cat-sitter for our room and we are also trying to work on living and working arrangements for the summer with email. Dear Lord please make Your plan known.