Taiwaneers

I know I know the title makes it sound like we’re announcing that we’re pregnant or something but thats not it.

Some friends of ours created a radio program as part of a midterm project. They asked to interview us on what its like to be married while in degree programs here in Taiwan.

For those of you who are interested you can now find this interview on the ABOUT US page. Many thanks to Kenton Chance for passing along the audio and for the excellent editing. In addition we want to thank him and his group, Curry, Yirone, and Michael, for allowing us to share it here.

About a week and a half ago Emily got an email from this British guy that had seen our ad on Tealit for the room our old roommate had vacated when she went back to France. He said that he wanted to take the room but that he hadn’t left the UK yet and would arrive on November 15th. Emily told him that if the room was still available on the 15th he could have it. However if someone took it before then tough bananas.

Well the past week and a half came and went with several people who came over to check out the room but none of them took it. On Saturday, Nov. 15th, true to his word our new British roommate Darren arrived from his home of Swindon!

Darren, from what I can tell, is ‘a roight proapa Brit’ish lad.’ A really nice guy and we’re, so far, excited by God’s gift of another good roommate. Right after he arrived he was eager to see his new neighborhood (much different then me after 16 hours in a plane who just wants to sleep) so Emily and I took him over to the Shida Night Market. We bought him some milk tea, he didn’t like it, and took him to a restaurant we like where he had some beef fried rice for dinner. He, like we were when we first arrived, was excited and energized by how much life there is here in Taipei. With 8 million people populating a small geographical space there are so many vehicles, pedestrians, shops, signs, everything. It was fun to watch him with his head on a swivel! It reminded me of how much fun it was to be new in Taiwan.

We then popped into a pub not far from our house and Darren was kind enough to buy Emily and I a drink. On the way back home we showed him our neighborhood grocery and helped him buy an MRT card so that he could continue exploring the city on Sunday while we were at church and doing homework.

Showing him just a tiny bit of Taipei and turning him loose reminded me of how much fun it would be to show people back home around here. If any of you wants to come for a visit please feel free!

Emily and I seem to be home here in Taiwan. I found an olympic-size swimming pool not far from our house that I can use for about $2.65 USD, we bought a few plants for our back porch, and signs of peace and contentment that come to us when we are in God’s plan seem to be springing up a lot lately!

We went to Ikea the other day and bought a few lamps. Emily got a little one for her desk and I found one of those cool, swivel/adjustable ones that engineers and architects always have mounted on their desks in the movies. Its awesome!!!….its also awesome that I find my lamp awesome. Emily also found a great deal on a dining room table on Tealit. We bought it from another foreigner who was leaving Taiwan.

Emily is really good at making our house a home, as cliche as that is. Me and the roommates are always marvelling at how the apartment has changed for the better as the weeks go by. On that note our roommate and friend, Sunny (the french girl), is leaving to head back to France next week. Hopefully we’ll be able to fill her room quickly with someone wonderful.

As you can see I got my booty in gear and started making movies for this blog. The Welcome to Freshman/Halloween Party one is up and I just added a new video. Drum roll please….you can now experience a Taiwan scooter ride from the comfort of your own home, just click over to the VIDEOS page. Don’t worry, the video camera can’t capture the fine details of the ride. You know what I mean…the danger danger Will Robinson. Its safe to watch even if you do fear death. If you want the full effect you’ll have to come for a real visit and then we’ll see what you can handle.

My management midterm came and went. I think I did okay and I’m definitely happy its over. Now I need to gear up this week for midterms in Classical Mythology, Law, Statistics, and an informative speech for speech class. I think I’m going to be okay. I got my stats quiz back and found that my studying paid off. I’m so happy to be in a math class where I feel like I understand something practical related to the subject and not just blind memorization of theorems that I have no idea why work. Thank goodness I don’t have to take Calc again!

Today Emily and I went to a small church called New Hope Christian Fellowship. I’ve linked them to our blog in the links section and we’ve mentioned it before. It was nice. They have bi-lingual services so someone says a sentence in one language (English or Chinese) and then its translated into the other language. If its a song they sing a verse in one, and then again in the other. They had some food after the service and we stayed for the first class in a twelve week Bible study on Ezekial that a dude who used to teach at some seminary in Pennsylvania is giving. It was good and I’m excited to go again!

Today, October 10, is the Republic of China’s (known these days as Taiwan) birthday, basically their Fourth of July. Language can be a funny thing: Every Taiwanese person and news article calls it Taiwan’s birthday while every westerner and news article calls it Taiwan’s Independence day. The hip slang for it is “Double Ten” or “Ten Ten”.

On October 10th, 1911, the Wuchang Uprising started the Xinhan Revolution that led to the end of the Qing dynasty (the last dynasty) and the establishment of the Republic of China (ROC). Here’s a few links if you want to read some more about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Ten_Day
 http://sinotour.com/news/160.html
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/enlarge/double-ten-day_pod_image.html

Being the patriot I am I decided to celebrate by sleeping in since there was no school. Then I spent most of the day reading in my book, Generation Kill, which I have become hooked on. Thank goodness for my studies’ sake the book has an end and I’m fast approaching it. The other parts of the day included Emily and I walking the streets in our neighborhood trying to find a good bargain for a bed and frame. We found one! Now we can trade in our two single matresses mushed together on the floor for a sophisticated queen matress on a wooden box platform. Its crazy how we’ve been too busy to take care of these type of things and we’ve already been here for a month. Now we can focus on buying desks.

Last night after playing basketball with some friends from school down the street at Shida’s (thats Chinese for the name of Emily’s school) courts we came back to our house for dinner. Emily made Ken (our Taiwanese roommate), Jamali (classmate from St. Vincent & the Grenadines), Jabu (classmate from Swaziland), and me this chicken and noodle dish with veggies. It was excellente and we also had some good conversations too.

Today David, the brother of Sunny (our other roommate from France) who has been living in her room with her for the past 6 weeks, left to head back to France.

Tomorrow I leave for the weekend to help with freshman camp which is this thing thats common in Taiwanese universities. Basically sophomores put together a ‘bonding experience’ camp for freshman. Wish me luck.

Love you all!

After playing video games to the point of boredom, watching more then two crappy movies on TV one of which was a Segal (need I say more) and getting to the point where I started to contemplate the existence of everything I decided that typhoon or not I needed to get out of our apartment. So where did I go? McDonald’s!

McDonald’s in Taiwan is quite the social Mecca. At the table behind me the guy who had been sleeping for a while has awoken and is reading his book again. However this won’t last long as he’s trying to read an English dictionary and has gone through this read a little sleep a lottle cycle for over an hour now. The table right next to me has four late-teen to early-twenty something guys playing some sort of card game but they are special cards, not like poker cards. Other tables have dates going on, groups talking, etc. Are there children? Yes, but they are the minority and there is definitely no play-places. Don’t worry; they do still have happy meals.

This semester is shaping up to be interesting. It’s hard to tell at this point, unlike last year with the presence of Calculus, which class will be the most demanding. My Statistics class appears to be easy to understand but because of that the teacher seems to move fast and I worry that she will be focused on forward motion and not enough on giving us practice. We are able to use calculators though, unlike Calculus, and I have gotten giddy in class punching in numbers and then pushing a button to get the answer! My Management class is being taught by a Taiwanese professor woman who is in her thirties probably and has the hugest curly hair I’ve ever seen on an Asian. She also whips out one of those hand-held fans in class while she teaching when she feels hot. You know the kind I mean: those little fans that people use while waiting in line at Cedar Point. My computer teacher is such a vast improvement over last year all I can think is I’m ecstatic that the four hours of that class every week won’t be a slow decline into depression over being alive and considering the Amish lifestyle. The Dean of MCU’s International College is my Public Speaking professor. So far I still haven’t made judgment on the class but I have noticed she is one of those ‘there is something positive about everyone’ people but at the same time emits a ‘if you screw around with me I’ll fail you’ tone……..confusing. My Intro to Law class has been the most fascinating so far. The professor is teaching us about Taiwanese law but it’s the basics of the basics which I would guess are pretty much the same anywhere. You know, the definitions of things like: a natural person, a juridical person, a juridical act, rights and obligations. Its fun and that’s not sarcasm!

One story I do have to share. Through a series of unfortunate events that are sorted and complicated the IC (International College) was pretty much going to force us sophomores here in Taipei to take a French class. I decided I didn’t want to do that and was willing to travel to the Taoyuan campus once a week for a different class instead. Well the class I am taking instead is called Classical Myth & the Arts. I went the first day and I was pretty much the only international student (at least going on looks which can be deceiving) in the room. The teacher wanted to know my nationality and when I told her she said the class would be too easy for me. Asking if I could take it anyways she agreed. However instead of actually attending class and using the hand-out that she prepared for the students to use as study material for the semester she and I have worked out an independent study plan for me using a real textbook. What I thought was going to be a blow-off class to give me enough credits to keep my full-time student status and therefore my scholarship has become something totally different. I’m really excited about it and so far have really enjoyed reading my textbook. I have to admit I am completely ignorant of Greek mythology which is basically what the class is on. I’ve only gotten through Creation so far but already I feel like I have so much more context with which to approach literary references and artwork including these themes.

The PE class this semester is at the top of the mountain (our campus is on the side of a mountain), the equivalent from the road as about 14 stories, on the track field at eight in the morning and so far we’ve been learning how to bat baseballs and softballs….you know you’re jealous. Lastly, my Psychology class which got scheduled last minute and started two weeks late. I think I’m really going to like it. Hopefully I’ll enjoy it for the content but most definitely because the professor is a flaming Taiwanese guy who is hysterical. I just laughed thinking about him.

In other news I am just about to finish C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity which has been wonderful. I feel like I’ve found a book I can recommend to Christians and non-Christians alike and I can do so with an authentic belief that it will benefit them. I have also been trying to capture video footage of our summer in the USA from our new (new to us) camcorder onto my laptop so I can put together something for taiwaneers.com. However I can’t seem to get the audio to go with the video and I’ve become frustrated. Hopefully it will work out!