Friends | Taiwaneers

Familial Thoughts

Dec 132008

I’ve been thinking about my second family lately. The Pippers took me in and let me live in their basement in exchange for a little babysitting during my year-long, unpaid, internship with Student Statesmanship Institute (SSI). They welcomed me back to sleep on the hide-a-way several times after that whenever I was in town and let me stay back in my old room for another 6 months right before I was married last year. Without a doubt they are a huge part of my life and I miss them.

Dennis is in fact a big reason why this site exists. He, along with Robbia, gave the taiwaneers.com domain to Emily and I as a wedding gift and has been webmastering and hosting this site on his server since it started. A great guy who I always enjoyed talking with, sitting around the kitchen table sipping beer and making wisecracks while the kids were swimming or bouncing on the trampolene. The camping I got to go along with the Pippers on is still with me. Higgins lake with the empty campground, and Luddington! Great times that I wish I could do over.

Robbia was our connection to summer jobs this past summer which was incredibly wonderful, taking the pressure of finding the dough-re-me for the plane tickets off of our shoulders. I cannot forget how her and Dennis included me in the MSU workers/friends cliqe parties, not to mention her own contributions to the beer sipping and wisecracks around the table. I loved those parties, which seems strange to me now since everyone was either married with kids or the kids themselves, and I was the 20 year-old guy who tagged along with the Pippers. For some reason those parties made me feel like I had a group. I was away from home but it was okay because I had a group. I haven’t even mentioned the food. The mushrooms Robbia can make are out of this world (did I mention Dennis’ homemade beef jerky?)….I’ll leave out the entire list of food that I miss from the Pippers because it would just be too long. The kind of hospitality Robbia and Dennis have is amazing. They basically had me over to dinner about a month into my internship, and towards the end of the meal Robbia asked me when I wanted to move in. A few days later I did and I’m so glad.

Abi, when I first met her was only eight years old. Now she’s a beautiful, talented, young lady who can razzle dazzle you with a piano and can make anything from cookies to dinner. She’s a fantastic young woman who loves God and seems to have limitless potential.

Noah, the former six year old now hockey/baseball/everything player, is someone you better not ‘let win’ when it comes to the basketball hoop in the drive way because now he really will beat you! He is definitely special to me. In my own family I’m the younger brother and now I finally have someone that I’m bigger than!!! He’s a great guy.

Emma, that four year old who was so crabby that first night at dinner, having just woke up from a nap, is now so grown up. She is basically a FIREBALL. I never used to understand it when I was younger and adults would describe certain people as FIREBALLS but now I do and Emma is one of them. She such a cool person and doesn’t let being the youngest in the family get in the way of anything.

If I listed out all the ways the Pippers have given to me (like helping at my wedding, giving me shelter, giving me sage counsel when I was hung up on Emily, taking me camping….) we’d be here forever.

I miss them and wish them a Merry Christmas!

PS- Some of you may wonder if this post reflects a bad relationship with my own family. On the contrary, I believe my incredibly good relationship with my natural family has made creating relationships like this one with the Pippers even better and I doubt my natural family will feel hurt or diminished by this post.

A Sunday Afternoon

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Mar 302008

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.