It must be 8 am, I hear "Fur Elise"

The view from one side of the balcony.

OK..this stand in the day market was so gruesome..this dude cut chicken necks, dropped them in this vat, feathered, and gutted them right there. Ew! but so interesting..

The courtyard of our apartment complex. It's really pretty but this day was overcast.

Me and a giant guitar playing kiwi! This was a display outside a new shopping mall. SO FUNNY! It was even fuzzy like a kiwi.

The view from the other side of the balcony.

This is our recycling system. :)

This is our living room. Cute, isn't it?

Flat Sharon says goodbye to her Trusty Blue Escort...

So, life goes on! I've officially lived in Taiwan for one week and all is well. I've finally gotten over that awful cold so I am a lot more optomistic about Taiwan now. :) I spent a lot of time at Banner church last week due to a three-day conference that a professor from Regent University spoke at - a Dr. Bekker who spoke on Finding Intimacy with God: Biblical Discipline of Devotion and Transformation. It was very good and very well attended. Banner church is a rather large church and so they are also a "cell group" church so that each member can plug in somewhere and get to know the other church members (which is hard to do when the church is so large). I attended also the youth service on Saturday night, which was also VERY well attended and not just with youth - the worship was slightly louder but otherwise it was very similar to the Sunday morning service. It wasn't like the "youth group" gatherings that we have in the States where they play games the majority of the time. Sunday morning service was also good and Dr. Bekker spoke again as a guest speaker. Sunday evening I attended the English service which was much smaller in attendence but it was nice to finally sing songs in English. :) After that service I checked out a cell group that my roommate Amanda leads at our apartment and that was a great time. I got to meet some of the other young people in the church, most of which spoke English fairly well. Cell group meetings are like small Bible studies and the topic of discussion is generally the sermon or topic that was discussed in the Sunday morning or evening services. It was very good. I think I will check out another English cell group this coming Sunday and decide which one to attend regularly. I have to attend one on a weekend since once I start working I will not have weekday evenings free.

When I WASN'T at Banner church, here's what I did: 1.) I ate out a LOT last week - Grace, the ITPS lady who came with me (who is from Taiwan), was determined that I should try all the local Taiwanese fare in my first week! :) Or so it seemed. I tried...oh I don't recall the names of everything... a lot of noodle dishes, similar to our Top Ramen only way better; we had this sauteed Cabbage stuff that was out of this world good oooh I could eat it all day; seaweed stir fry stuff, all kinds of chicken dishes...most of it was pretty good, but by last Friday I was CRAVING pizza! I felt kind of guilty for wanting American food so badly so soon, but I subtely ordered a spaghetti dish at dinner that night and it was SO good. :) Grace gave me a "look" like "why you order American food at a Chinese restaraunt" kind of look, and made me try some of her seafood soupy thing which included a large Shrimp that was not deheaded or deshelled and still had its eyeballs on it. Anyway, the last few nights we have been cooking at home which has been really nice. They don't have Mexican restaraunts here (of course) so we cook Mexican at home (a lot, I'm discovering). I found out you can buy Mexican seasonings like chili powder and taco seasoning at the Costco (expensive but at least it's available). yay!

I have three roommates but Stephanie is in Canada right now so I haven't met her yet. Amanda is from New Zealand and she works part-time at a cram school (English school) and devotes the majority of her time to Banner church ministries. She is very involved with the English ministries. Katie Jo is from Colorado and is very close in age to me - about three months older - and she is here to study Chinese. She attends classes at the local University and also works part-time at a cram school. I'm so grateful for friendly fun roomates. So far I think we get along well and they both have fairly busy schedules so are in and out a lot. I will be fairly busy as well once I start teaching in August. We also have had a girl named Ching who is Amanda's friend from Maylasia staying at our house and she just found a job at an English school as well. She won't be living here but has been staying here over the past week. So I'm discovering that our apartment is kind of a social hub where cell groups, friends, etc. meet and hang out. It's kind of a welcome change to my hermit life that I had in Alaska. :)

Taiwan is pretty close to what I expected it to be! Busy & noisy, hot & humid, but so far I'm loving it! I LOVE the fact that I can walk out of my apartment and there is a coffee shop right next door, and I'm within walking distance of all kinds of cute little shops and cool places. Yesterday I walked to the Carrefour store, about a 5-7 minute walk down a really pretty cool tree-lined street. The Carrefour is like...a brighter, cleaner, cuter Asian Fred Meyers of sorts. It's a department store but with restaraunts inside too. Some of the prices are cheaper than similar items in the States and some are the same or higher. I guess it depends on where they have to import it from. There's also a supermarket about two minute walk down the same street from the house. The church is about a 15-20 minute walk. My school is further and I don't know how to get there yet. I've been there to do my paperwork for the ARC (Alien Resident Card) but I took a taxi so I don't know how to go on my own. I tried scooter riding in the basement the other day - WAY harder than I thought it would be! I think until I get used to it I'll be biking or taking a taxi. Or walking. :)

I'm REALLY glad I brought several knee-length skorts. It's so hot and the locals don't really wear shorts a lot, but jeans are WAY too hot. I don't really have pants that aren't jeans (or black) so I'm ending up wearing the skirts. The local girls wear a lot of skirts so I fit right in.

Let's see...what else happened over the last week....this is what happens when you have a blog that you don't update for a while then you forget all the cool things that happened. :) Anyway, everything is going fine and I finally am starting to feel comfortable here like I will be able to learn everything and figure out my way around. And the taxi station is right around the corner if I need to in a pinch have someone ELSE figure out where something is. :)

Here are three New Things I have learned over the past week about Taiwan:

1.) 8 am in the morning - Garbage Pickup - but oh no, not quite and subtle - they announce the truck's presence very loudly with a tinny version of "Fur Elise"! It's still kind of amusing to me but I anticipate it won't be amusing much longer.

2.) When you meet a new Taiwanese person, they often ask you how long you are going to be in Taiwan. At first I thought this was just a standard "making conversation" kind of question, but was later informed by my roommate that they ask this on purpose to discover how much effort they are going to put into a friendship with you! Like if you say, "oh I'm here on a year's contract", then the Taiwanese person will assume you are only going to be here a year, why put any effort into being your friend? On the other hand, if you indicate you might be here a long time or indefinitely, then they will be much more open to befriending you. So I've learned to reply "I'm here until God sends me elsewhere!" or "At least a couple of years, but maybe longer" and then the Taiwanese people are very friendly to me. :)

3.) Avoid the day market - although the fruits and vegetables are much fresher and generally cheaper, they also have little stalls where they keep live chickens and then slaughter them, boil them, de-feather them, gut them, and quarter them right there next to the vegetables. It disturbs me and I do not think I will be spending lots of time at the day market.

4.) Scooters are heavy a lot harder to drive than they look. Oh, that's four new things. oops.

Well tomorrow I am going to spend the day in Taipei at the Zoo with my boss and his family. This should be an interesting day as I am still a little bit conserved around my new boss but his wife is very sweet and they have two cute little girls. His wife Angel took me to the hospital on Friday to get my health check done for my ARC so I got to spend some time with her and she is very sweet.

Here are some prayer requests if you want to know how to pray for me; they are much the same I think as last time I posted prayer requests:

1.) Continue to pray for the youth camp next week. The youth are very excited about this and have put a lot of effort into the planning and preparation.

2.) Continue to pray for good memory for me! as I am still finding my way around and trying to pick up some basic Chinese.

3.) Pray about where the Lord wants me to serve in Banner church. There are many opportunities to plug in but finding one that will fit with my school schedule is the key.

4.) Pray they I will develop good lasting relationships with some of the local Taiwanese people. They are very friendly and open to building relationships.

Ok! Well this is a long post so I'll go for now. I am looking into getting a new camera soon since mine is having very many problems (which is why I don't have a whole lot of pictures - it only works about half the time), so hopefully I'll have lots more pictures soon. :)

Until next time! Zai Jian!