I Wish I Knew Taiwanese (Or More Chinese For That Matter)

Hey it's Ben again!

Well...the floor is a lot better than the ones in BaoZhong; I woke up today and could feel my back. The puzzle pieces that we sleep on are basically as valuable as gold. There were a couple lot of cockroaches though so we slept without fear...really we did...trust me...none of us kept lifting our pillows to check beneath. 

At least the AC works...now that  is the sole reason we go into our sleeping room.

Anyways, we woke up (obviously) in the morning (but we actually woke up AFTER 7:00..... O.O...praise God for that rest.) The schedule is about exactly the same as Baozhong. There was morning worship, then devotionals. Afterwards we had some good ol' Taiwan breakfast: Eggrolls, Taiwan Burger, and Lou Bo Gao (radish cake).

Enjoy a post-breakfast picture 

The back of our heads look nice though, right...? 

 Then the Sunday Sermon began and it was like the Pentecost.....

The worship was mostly all in Taiwanese so....yeah.... Most of really just blankly stared at the slides and tried to read the simplified traditional Chinese. The sermon was also kind of hard to understand, so we just mulled over the same verse for about a good 80 minutes...that or we tried to force ourselves to stay awake.

Tired + Hot + Taiwanese + One Fan Only= Eyes drooping and heads dropping

On the brighter side....there were a lot of townspeople that joined in for the service and many had to sit/listen outside.

Lunch. We've been hitting the major Taiwanese cultural food here in Dongshi (sadly I cannot name any of the cuisines....) But luckily we have a picture of this random dude eating a chicken head.

Chicken head....no big deal. Eating it like candy.

 We had a chance for some much needed rest after lunch. I was about to sleep but then somehow (I forgot how....) I got convinced to walk to the town for some shaved ice. Strange though....there were noodles in the shaved ice...like spaghetti noodles. Then we traveled all the way across the street (which is a lot harder than doing so in America) to get some snacks at a family market.

Then we had some time set out for the Taiwan team to teach us some of their teaching material...which also happened to be what we learned in the last camp. So...it was basically a time for the Taiwan co-workers to practice teaching in front of a "class." We were very thrilled to learn the material again.

Trust me...really thrilled.

 The best moment of bonding probably happened when we were talking about a spider. So, basically a spider somehow appeared on Nathan's leg (magic) and we had to debate whether or not to kill it. Apparently Andrew thought the jumping spider ate mosquitoes....but still....it's a spider. Near the end, we actually had to call for votes but by then, Angel (not Devil <----will not make sense unless you saw Cinderella skit) Andrew came the spider's rescue and guided it to a safer place. And when I mean safer I mean it just bolted underneath the puzzle tiles. It's ok all spider-fearing people...I'll have you know that Nathan stomped all over the tiles (and all surrounding tiles) for good measure. We can sleep in peace.

Andrew's last name must be Garfield.

We ended the day with some more group bonding, accountability sessions and praying over the students. 

Prayer Request:

1. Should probably pray for Arthur....his stomach has been hurting for the past couple of days.

2. Timmy is our last survivor, pray that he remains mosquito-biteless.

3. Pray that all the mosquitoes within 2 miles radius of this Gospel Center die...or at least suffer.

4. There's still a rough barrier between us and the Taiwan coworkers so keep that in your prayers as well.

5. Pray that there are no monsoons or else we'd be screwed because all of our clothes are outside.

Didn't have boba milk tea today.

Well at least....not together.

A few extra prayer requests:
6. Pray for our co-worker, Erin. She has not been feeling well and took the entire afternoon and night to rest. Please pray for her health as she is the leader of the english lesson plans.
7. One of our other co-workers, Gary has been with us since BaoZhong, and after this he is going to be going to Japan for another bilingual camp. Please pray for his funds as he is still in need. Gary has been a very useful and helpful co-worker, doing a lot of the heavy lifting in translating from English to Chinese and Chinese to English.