Video Post #1: A Short Ride through the City

Today has been a great day so far.
 
On our second attempt (the website failed to explain certain document requirements pertaining to one's living situation) we successfully applied for (should receive it in about a week) my resident alien certification which is proof of my residency in Taiwan and will let me re-enter the country if I leave, open a bank account, etc. We also ate at a Chinese-Korean restaurant run by some friends from church and I shot some video with my new local cellphone as my coworker drove us back.

I even got a peek at the sun this afternoon as it made a very brief appearance through the clouds which have covered the sky since my arrival. It also hasn't rained at all today, the first dry day since I arrived. Hope it stays dry tomorrow as well, during our student outreach trip to a riverside area north of Taipei.

Doesn't look like much, but after two weeks of nearly continual rain,
there might as well have been trumpets

Anyway, to the main point of today's entry:
I wanted to give those of who you have never been to Taiwan a street's-eye view of the area around where I live. It's not like the richer, more metropolitan Taipei City further north, nor is it the beautiful countryside with mountains and rice paddies, but it looks like where many Taiwanese live and work. It's winter here and a comparatively bad air quality day, so the sky is a bit bleaker than in most pics of Taiwan you'll see, and it's not freezing but quite chilly with the north wind blowing.

I've visited Taiwan enough times that it was a fairly normal ride for me; I already can't look at Taiwan through the eyes of a stranger. But some of you can, and that's where, as the future short-term team coordinator for TEAM in Taiwan, I need your help:

What stands out to you in these videos? 
What seems unusual or different? 
Leave me a comment about it! 

Two notes:
1. Sorry for the clarity. YouTube's encoding degraded the video quality, which was quite good before. I might be looking for a new video upload site for future videos.

2. You may want to turn the sound down a little on the first video and a lot on the second one. These are my first experiments with driving videos so I'll try to do something for wind noise on future ones. If anyone has helpful suggestions on that topic I'd appreciate that feedback.




(PS: I had to shrink the embedded video to keep blogger from messing up the post formatting for mobile phone viewers. For everyone else, follow the link at the top of each video to get a non-pint-sized video)

First Week in Taiwan

Well, I got back to Taiwan a week and one hour or so ago.

Probably the strangest thing about being back here is that it doesn't feel weird at all. I kept waiting for the realization to "hit," and it hasn't. It feels very normal to be on the metro, eating Taiwanese food and speaking Mandarin to people at church, etc. "You finally made it back, welcome" is the greeting I have been getting. I like to call Taiwan my second home, and it really does feel like that in many ways.


That's not to say that I haven't been working hard on the adjustment process. Working more in Chinese than in English for more than just a day or two is new, though I'm grateful for the ability to do it at all. On a different level, suddenly losing at least 1/3 of my daily calorie intake (Not for lack of people feeding me! The food just has fewer calories) and 2/3 of my caffeine intake (voluntarily, trying to kick my coffee sort-of-addiction) has thrown a few headaches my way as well, but as they say, pain is weakness leaving the body (unless you really broke something, then you might want to see a doctor). I also have 6 flights of stairs with no elevator to the place I'm staying, so I suspect I will quickly lose all the extra fat that people at church today pointed out I had gained while living in America. (It's a Chinese culture thing, pointing out the obvious about your appearance, whether positive or negative. Personally I consider it motivational, but I also advised my friends to never do this to any girls who visit Taiwan)

Anyway, on to the fun stuff. My first week in Taiwan (not exactly in order):

1. Moving in
Got settled in to my semi-temporary living quarters (a little apartment upstairs from the Taiwanese couple I'm working with)

2. Just Got Here Stuff

Picked up a metro card and acquired a Taiwan cellphone and local number.

Your transportation pass to the greater Taipei area...

3. Picked a Chinese name to use long-term. 

Like most Chinese names in Taiwan it's three characters long. The family name character (which comes first) sounds a little like my English family name, and the two other characters are each 1/2 of the words "world" and "victorious return," symbolizing Christ's victorious return to this earth at the end of this age. The middle character has extra meaning to me personally, in that the top part is the symbol for "field" and the bottom part looks like an arrow pointing up into it, an invitation to enter the field and join the harvest (a la Matthew 9). (If you're reading this and are connected with me on Facebook, my Chinese name is listed along with my English name now, so you can see it there)

4. Legal Stuff

Got pictures made and received documents necessary for applying for my alien residence card permit (Doing that tomorrow, Lord willing)

5. Meetings

Met with two of TEAM's senior missionaries (meaning that they've been here a long time, not that they're old~) in Taiwan, both of whom I've known for years. We're all excited about the possibilities of the church in Taiwan in the next decade; there's a strong sense that an era of mission in Taiwan (for TEAM at least) has ended and a new one is beginning, and it's one in which we might see God do more than has happened in Taiwan for many years, not only through TEAM but in all of the body of Christ in Taiwan.

6. Ministry

On Monday I attended a weekly prayer group with some Taiwanese brothers and sisters who have been faithfully praying for this area and the church plant for years.
Tuesday I met with one of the senior missionaries here for lunch, then that evening with some other missionaries that are part of our church-plant team. This is a cross-organizational, cross-cultural group of people, and I imagine we'll see many more like it around Taiwan as old barriers break down.
(Wednesday is kind of blurry, I'm pretty sure I did something important but that was around the time the jetlag was wearing off.)
Thursday we went to a local elementary school where my Taiwanese coworkers have been teaching English classes on a volunteer basis as an outreach method to both the kids and their parents, as well as other people at the school; as a native English speaker I'll be assisting with those classes as well.

Tues: Last week was the explanation of the Christmas story, this week they learned to do Joy to the World on handbells

Friday I met with another senior missionary, and later that day is when we went through the moderately lengthy and signature-heavy process involving my passport and another US ID that is apparently necessary for a foreigner to get his own phone number here.
Saturday the weather was especially bad (chilly, raw, and raining) so I mostly spent it downstairs with the Taiwanese family I'm working with, as my own apartment is a bit drafty.

It's been damp, cloudy, and cold since I got here, and I haven't seen the sun or my greatly-missed Taiwan blue sky since I arrived. That's pretty common for winter in northern Taiwan, where there is also no central heating, so we hunker down and drink hot beverages and soup and carry umbrellas around as a rule. It doesn't get below about 48F here as a rule, but 48F with 85% humidity, rain, and a cold wind can feel quite cold. I'll miss it in about 6 months when it's 92F with 85% humidity (and no central AC either)...

However- gloomy, SADS-inducing weather can't get me down when we had 3 baptisms during the Christmas morning service at church this Sunday! 3 baptisms in a small church in Taiwan is a significant event. I didn't know the people who were baptized this time, but I was there 5 years ago when the guy in the middle of that first picture below got baptized. Praise God for His work.

About to be baptized

The church decorated for Christmas, with choir

Stay tuned for news from our outreach Christmas party on Tuesday, in which we try to fit about 30 people into a small apartment...

Wider Pond: Crossed

Well, I'm here. After struggling for weeks/months over why I was continually delayed at every step, the relief of finally arriving in Taiwan is indescribable. It hasn't really "clicked" in some senses that I've finally moved to Taiwan, but the realization is slowly dawning on me as familiar smells and sights present themselves.
(Sounds, too: As I write this I hear the melancholy strains of Fur Elise from an ice-cream-truck-style speaker wafting through heavy rain. It's the neighborhood garbage truck - the music is the signal to bring your trash down)

It's a good time to be arriving too; the specific ministry activities I'll be participating in have just gotten started, but haven't been running long, so I'm joining them at the perfect time. Also, Christmas is one of our special outreach opportunities, and I've made it here in time to participate. Doubtless this and a host of other unknown reasons were factors in God's schedule for my arrival time.

The trip itself was an eventful one; the day before I left included finishing packing my luggage, designating some things to be sent in boxes later, mailing packages, getting cash to convert over, visiting my grandparents, dinnering with some old friends, losing my wallet which apparently leapt from my pocket and into the road while visiting my grandparents, driving back to my grandparent's/uncle's house and finding said wallet with the help of my family, attending the opening midnight showing of the second Hobbit movie with my siblings as a last fun outing (Tolkien is a big deal in my family), leaving it 30min later than planned due to technical difficulties with the film, rushing home and throwing everything into our family's car and driving straight to the Nashville airport for a 7AM flight to Los Angeles. (For free, due to the generosity of someone who gifted me with the necessary air miles.)
In LA I was picked up by the friend of a sister of a friend and visited Community Christian Alliance Church in Northridge to share my testimony and Taiwan plans with a Chinese fellowship there. After a great time of fellowship and sharing I got a few hours of sleep at the church's guest house then left the next morning for LAX to fly to Taiwan.

Hello LA.. If you squint just right, behind that tall palm tree you can see the Hollywood sign

A very tired me eating some very good Indonesian Hakka Chinese food

CCAC Friday Night Chinese Fellowship

Kringla (sweet bread snacks, a family recipe from the Scandinavian side) my mom made to take with me, and Ecuadorian chocolate from a South American missions trip from which a Chinese pastor of the church I visited in LA had recently returned. These are the snacks I had when I got to Taiwan... reality can truly be more interesting than fiction.

The trans-pacific flight was as per usual (no sleep at all), but I had a good conversation with a Japanese exchange student from Chiba who'd been studying in Arlington, Texas (not far from my seminary in Dallas). After arriving in Japan there was a nearly two-hour delay out of Narita airport, where I made the most of getting temporarily stuck with some curry tonkatsu and successfully avoided the temptation of the green tea kit kats. I do owe Narita a slight apology, as I'd been complaining about the lack of good restaurant options, but that has been addressed over the past couple of years. (Where I ate was not really one of those good options, in terms of quality of food, but it was a cheaper one)

Major fail for the in-flight tracking app. We still had an hour left.
(And were not veering off course towards the Philippines)

Tonkatsu with curry sauce. It's basically a deep-fried porkchop with savory gravy,
so I have no idea why these aren't more popular in the South...

Finally I arrived at Taoyuan airport and was picked up by a long-time Taiwanese friend and coworker, and after waiting for an hour for a bus with seats available, we arrived at his home around 2:30AM Monday morning, or noon on Sunday for US central time.
That may have sounded like more than one day, and that's because it all took place over about 72 hours. It seemed like one long, blurred-together day, though, or maybe one and a half, since the only sleep I got was those few hours at the church guest house. Haven't had that little sleep over 4 days since seminary finals week!

Today I slept in a little, then joined a prayer meeting at the home of my Taiwanese coworker's family. We spent a while lifting up the ministries surrounding the church plant, the people currently attending them, and the area we hope to reach: 6 neighborhoods with no church. (And in Taiwan a neighborhood is not a cul-de-sac...)

A bit of the neighborhood I live in now, via streetview.

I made a little excursion in the rain to get some toiletries later, but was foiled in my plan to use my Mandarin flawlessly when presented with a question I didn't understand, that was apparently asking if I had preferred customer status. Thankfully I did understand the question when it was repeated more simply: do you have a card with us? (I'm looking forward to those Mandarin classes... I'm tired of the gaps in my conversational abilities and it's high time I learned to read at the newspaper level)

Anyway, so that's how I got to Taiwan this time. I won't be doing "and then I, and then I" posts very often, but just wanted to do an update on getting here.