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A full day of everything Thursday was so full of activities that I was too tired when we got back to the hotel to write about it. So I'm writing about Thursday on Friday morning before we take a train to Tiajong Seminary In the morning we went to the Taiwan Seminary where James, one of our Young Life connections, and YiPing went over our presentations. We had to make changes according to the way we worded some of our material. Particularly Dan, who is presenting on the Bible study that we do had to make some changes. We call our Bible study with kids "campaigners," with the idea that we are campaigning (presenting his candidacy) for Christ. There wasn't an accurate way to translate it. James and YiPing told us they changed it to "Presenting the Way." We attended a chapel at the seminary and it was fun to see their worship. They had skits and songs and everybody was joyful:unlike some worship services we see in the states where nothing is joyful. Lunch After the meeting at the seminary we met with two men, Moses and Adam. Moses is a businessman who has three children that live in the United States. He has a heart for kids and TJ said he hopes Moses will be one of the first financial supporters when it comes time to have a full-time staff member here. Adam is a board member of the Glory Foundation, which used to be the organization Young Life was under here in Taiwan. We ate at a buffet that was amazing. It had anything you can imagine for Asian food. The sushi was amazing. I had some soup that I added way too many peppers to and it literally burned my mouth. I think TJ was a little disappointed that he didn't get to have more of a conversation with Moses but we will get more time later this week. Gondola After lunch we went to YiPing's office and met with JoAnna, who did summer staff at Lost Canyon last summer. After meeting her we went on a gondola ride through the mountains that was beautiful. After the gondola ride we walked down a twisting road that went through the countryside. We watched the sun set over Taipei during the walk and it was a beautiful sight. JoAnna taught us the word biejang (sp?), which mean's "idiot." We wanted to know what they would call us if we were being silly (Dan and I were trying to buses that drove by us to honk by using the trucker signal and we thought they probably thought we were "idiots")
Night market YiPing left us and we were joined by Daphne and Stacy, who were seminary students, and Jodi and LiPe, who were high school students. Jodi is going to be summer staff this summer. It was a little awkward to have five young women showing us around. It's not something we would do if we were touring the U.S. The night market is more of what I imagined Taiwan to be like. Thousands of people going from shop to shop. The shops had lots of American shirts, jeans and undergarmets. There were also many food vendors. At several points we walked by food vendors and smelled a rotten, pungent odor. Well come to find out it was coming from a food called "stinky tofu." Jennifer and I watched a show on the Discovery channel where a guy tried stinky tofu and pretty much gagged. The girls told us that it is really good and we should try it. I wasn't real excited about the idea but Todd said he'd do it and I agreed (it's not like I'll be to Taiwan again in the near future). The stink is definitely worse than the taste, but the longer it stays in your mouth and throat the worse it gets. The girls really enjoyed watching us choke it down. I had to chase it with some fried chicken that was probably the best tasting food of the night. We finished with ice cream that had beans in it. Not my favorite for sure. The ice cream we had with YiPing was much better. We are about to leave for TeiChung and we can't miss our train so I'll stop writing now. More later, including some pictures from Thursday.