off to China. . .

I'm really excited because today I will fly to China to visit some friends there for two weeks! I have been looking forward to this day for so long and now it has finally arrived.

I'll be visiting three good friends I met at ESLI in Canada. They are students at TWU but are home in China for the summer.
Introducing. . . Robbie. . . Larry. . .

and Disong. . .

Rock food

Check out these dishes! They are all made from rocks. Very cool! Some look more real than others. . . "fresh" fish . . .liver. . . fried rice. . . a slab of pork . . . lunch box special . . .

Puppets

Our church had an OMF missionary as our guest speaker at yesterday's service. One of the things she talked about was her vision to create Taiwanese-style puppets and use them to tell Bible stories. I think it's a cool idea, since puppets are an important part of Taiwanese culture and are still quite popular with Taiwanese working class adults. Here are some pictures I took of puppets on display at a local museum.

taipei 101

I finally made it to Taipei, home of the world's tallest building . . . Taipei 101! It made me feel really dizzy looking up at it from ground level. Yah, it's pretty tall.

the cutest kids on earth

I just have to throw in a couple pictures of my adorable neice and nephew whom I miss so much!

Matthew. . . Kayla. . .

Lene's Visit

My friend, Lene, from back home in Langley, came to visit me here in Taiwan for two weeks. It was great to see her again and show her around Kaohsiung. So here are a bunch of pictures from the two weeks she was here... (note: all these pictures are from Lene's camera... she was the official photographer while she was here)

Ok, this picture makes me laugh and feel terrible at the same time. Lene is waiting with the guards/police at the domestic airport in Kaohsiung, waiting for me to come pick her up like I promised... and waiting... and waiting... with one big problem: I got the date of her arrival mixed up. I hadn't expected her to arrive until two days later. :-0 So she had to wait for one hour with these policemen before I finally came to pick her up. Sorry Lene!

The morning after Lene arrived, she joined me for my last Chinese class of the semester. I hope to return to my Chinese studies in the Fall, but I really needed to take a break for this semester. Cheng Ching Lake: a must-see for tourists to Kaohsiung...
Introducing Vincet and Joyce. They were two of my students at ESLI but are now back in Taiwan and are getting married next month! They are both so nice and it was great to meet up with them again (they live in Taichung but were in Kaohsiung for the weekend).


This is the little ferry we took to ChiChin Island by Kaohsiung harbour. The island is really tiny but it's fun to see.On the ferry...A view of the ocean on ChiChin Island. On the beach. Though some people swim here, it really isn't nice water at all because it is right by the harbour. If you want nice water you need to travel south a couple hours to Kenting, a tourist hotspot.

At a sushi restaurant in FengShan district... Here's Janice and I with the dentist after she had just finished working on our teeth. Actually, she didn't take long at all. She just looked at my teeth and said, "Your teeth are beautiful... you just have one cavity..." then she filled the cavity. It took her about 3 minutes and then I was done. Amazing! And the best part was the price. Since I have a health care card (sponsored through my school) the whole visit only cost about $10 CAD.Have coffee/tea with some other ladies from church...eating lunch at IKEA...
Lene met Dynasty in a sports store (while I was teaching) and he offered to show us around. So here we are at the British Consolute (another tourist attraction). I don't know all the history but it is an interesting place to visit. There's an old prison there too. As you can see, the ceilings in the cells are pretty low. I caught them! haha

For the last weekend Lene was here, we took a trip to Chiayi (a city farther north of Kaohsiung) with a few others from church. It was a sort of "visioning trip" with the purpose of finding out more about the spiritual needs of the Taiwanese. An OMF missionary from Chiayi showed us around and gave us a very insightful tour of a Matzu temple. It was very interesting but very sad to see these people praying and offering insence to gods made of stone. a huge idol of the goddess Matzu...

sharing and praying for the working class Taiwanese. . . Lene and I got enjoyed a dinner of hotpot and BBQed lamb at the night market with OMF missionary David Eastwood...the night market in Chiayi (it wasn't busy at all that night because it had been raining a lot throughout the day) a Taiwanese favorite: "Squid on a stick"...
A Taiwanese church on Sunday morning . . .fellowship and food after the service. . . this is a real lisenced Nike factory in Taichung. . . the owner (below, holding his son) runs the factory out of his house and employs nearly 20 women to sew the material The English church in Chiayi. . . yes, it was small. . . the six of us who were visiting from Kaohsiung more than doubled the attendence