For Whom the Gong Tolls (Only This Time Around We Are Accompanied By Music)

Hello everyone. I hope all of you are having a good winter. No I'm not trying to be sarcastic I really do hope for your happiness. The weather could be more pleasant here in Taiwan but we are getting by. I have been feeling a bit sick for a couple weeks now but I am slowly getting over it. The last few days have been surprisingly fun. I thought I was going to have a pretty lame post for a while and then some fun actually came up. I had some pretty cool days in the ministry and just like that it seems I have been here for about a month. I found out that Koreans really do like beer as much as Americans do. And I found out that my roommates know nothing of Ernest Hemingway. But hey, at least we all get along. I have a few pictures to share with all of you guys. Keep in mind that not a whole lot has happened this week a part from these last few days so I will be posting a picture or two to let you guys see the scenery that I got in service but that is about it. So here we go. Oh one more thing! Today will be a duel post day. After this one I will add on an extra segment seeing as how it has been about a month since I have been here. It will be a sort of Greatest Hits post. So now we are officially starting. Here we go!

Since not a whole lot had been going on at home I kind of decided to force myself outside and go in service. Even though it isn't really pleasant to be out  in service while it is raining you still can find at least a few interested people and meet a few new friends. Which, lucky for me and Dylan, happened to us because we went to the wrong service group on Thursday (I think). I really don't mind doing things like that for a number of reasons. First, it is kind of funny and it is great material for the blog. Second, no one really cares because we are newly arrived foreigners. And third, because some good always comes out of meeting new people in service.

As I mentioned previously our congregation  is huge. The two parts we have when put together have around 200 publishers and about 80 pioneers. Unfortunately for our elders there is only about 8 of them. So we all meet together on Friday for meeting and then we split in two for service and Sunday meeting. We had got a hold of the other service groups arrangements on accident and went into their territory in stead of ours. We still had a pretty good time. Since we were the odd balls me and Dylan were put together. We had some cool calls though. Dylan found a guys outside of his apartment and had a brief conversation with him and actually managed to read him a scripture. That was pretty cool because (especially for us foreigners) getting out that much in a conversation is a big confidence boost. After we finished up we talked to some sisters about Taiwan and what we all think of it. Our group was me, Dylan, a sister from Detroit who has been here for about 9 years named Irinka, a Taiwanese sister who's son and herself are very regular, and a new sister from Holland who speaks German as her main language with English as her second. Irinka was the groups main translator since she speaks great Chinese and is just use to translating for her friends. They some how got Dylan to tell his back story of how he came into the truth. They tried but did not prevail in getting my whole back story. And in a cool little turn of events I found out that Irinka, who is planning on heading over to a bigger land mass (wink) has some work she is trying to find a replacement for. So I kind of ever so gracefully (not) brought up that I was looking for work. Since I am a brother and I have a TESOL certificate she put me up at the top of her list for potential replacements. So I might have a job soon.

A lot of places in Taiwan are really gorgeous. Just not
this little beauty I found on Thursday. Oh well, at least
there are trees.

I was starting to feel pretty sick on Friday but I decided to go out in service anyway for Saturday service. I'm really glad I did. I worked with a friend I met when I  first got here. His name is Nikolai, he is from the Netherlands, he works as a research Chemist and has a lab. Not a laboratory but a Black Labrador Retriever. I'm kidding of course. I am a little jealous of the laboratory he has. He is a cool guy and he has a pretty warped sense of humor that is very so common in the Netherlands. I mean, Flight of the Concords did come out of that area. We get along pretty good and we love messing with all of the sisters who don't understand sarcasm. 

If I didn't go out that morning I totally would have forgotten about our pioneer meeting that afternoon. Since I technically am not a full fledged pioneer in this congregation yet I did wonder if I would be able to go to the meeting. But of course no one really cared. That was fortunate because I did enjoy the meeting quite a bit. I didn't really get all of the meeting but I think the first part was about keeping a close relationship with Jehovah and about how to handle meeting someone who doesn't speak Chinese as there first language. The second talk was more about keeping your life simple so you can make more time for the ministry. At least I think that was the main point of those two talks. The good thing about going over to a foreign country after you have been baptised for a couple of years is that you probably have heard just about every kind of outline a brother can give. So when you hear a brother give one of those talks in a foreign language you can get the over all outline of the talk by filling the parts you don't understand with your various memories of the subject matter.

After the pioneer meeting was done one of the missionaries invited the whole group (of about 80!) upstairs for a little party. As I mentioned before our group is huge. As I also mentioned before the missionary home is right on top of our kingdom hall. I had been over there once already to play ping pong. This time around though we all ate Domino's pizza. You read me right, Domino's pizza. Taiwan has one Domino's and it is... a bit weird. I was plenty happy to eat pizza but here are a list of some off the toppings; squid, pineapple (sorry Hawaiian style lovers this is weird to me), artichoke, fish, and a number of other things I just gave up trying to figure out. The afternoon got even more interesting when I found out that we were going to have a little talent show as well. One of the brothers had brought his guitar. This was of course met with thunderous applause from the sisters (chicks dig the guitar). One of the elders me and Dylan were talking to at the time asked us if we knew how to play the guitar. I was going to play it off like I didn't but before I could say anything Dylan blurted out, "He can. And he can play pretty good too." So because Taiwanese culture is all about making people squirm for cheep laughs the brother told me I was second to go. 

This obviously made me feel a little uncomfortable for a few reasons. One, I literally had close to 15 minutes to prepare. Two, there was a pretty big audience there. Three, most of the audience were sisters. And four, about 80 percent of all the sisters were close to my age. But I really had no way out of that situation so I just had to go with it. You know, in hindsight I could have faked a heart attack. Well, whatever. Because I had to make my daddy proud I felt I should play a Pearl Jam song. So I went with Yellow Ledbetter. 

If you can please try and imagine my awkward situation. The first act was a brother playing a Japanese finger picking song with two sisters backing him up with vocals. He played the guitar pretty well and had sisters singing for him. I had basically had myself, a guitar, and a cold sweat. Now after they had finished the brother that had some sort of agenda out against me told the host brother that there was a surprise addition to the line up, me! So the host delayed the party to call my white can up to the front of the room. So I awkwardly walked up there, took the guitar, realized it was tuned half a step down, took out my phone tuner, spent an awkward five minutes tuning the guitar, I then had the ask for a pick. The brother kindly went into the back room to look for a pick. When he was gone I realized that all the 19 to 23 year old girls were sitting right in front of me laughing and making faces. I felt like I was in some badly written Stephen King novel. I was waiting for the pigs blood to fall on my head at any time. Well the brother came back with the pick. I admit that I was pretty nervous, but I felt that I had the spirit of my rock and roll father making sure my fingers were hitting all the right notes. If any of you readers know my father you  will know that there are only a hand full of things he truly loves in this world. He of course has a deep love for Jehovah. He loves his family, a nice Jack and Coke, and he really loves (I mean more than me) Pearl Jam. So maybe it was the intense fear of him finding out I messed up one of his favorite songs in a missionary home. Truth  be told I didn't play the best version of the song ever, but I think I pulled it off. So now there are a load of East Asian witnesses in Taiwan who know who Pearl Jam is. Your welcome dad, please don't punch me. I'm only kidding, my dad doesn't beat me... much.

I also went out in service that night. I don't regret it because I did place quite a few magazines. But the next morning I was just beat. My sickness was starting to seriously affect me. I just barely made it through the meeting. This nice Korean couple invited me and my roommates over to their house for dinner. So I had to feel better before then. I solved this problem by taking a 5 hour nap. The nap did help a bit. But the Korean food helped even more. I did take some pictures of our food. Be warned, images may cause drooling.

Rice with seaweed seasoning. A spicy sour fish stew.
Oven roasted fish. Whole roasted fish. Various pickled vegetables.
And of course, my personal favorite, KIMCHI!

Korean food doesn't mess around. And Korean hosts don't mess around either. Southeast Asian cultures view it as a huge complement if you just gorge yourself with the food they just made. So I complemented the math out of them. I kind of skipped lunch because of my nap so I was really hungry. The Korean couple's Chinese last name is Ren (to pronounce it correctly the "R" sound needs to sound like you  are in the middle of a yawn). Ren jiemei (that is, sister Ren) seriously was stupefied that Americans could like Korean food as much as we did. After all, don't Americans just eat lots of greasy foods that make them fat. Well, yes... But we are different. 

The guys

The girls (Ren jiemei is working in the background).

After the meal Ren dixiong (that is, brother Ren) had us all play this traditional Korean game.

Here is the game board

We used these post things to score points.

Now the rules of this game were a bit tricky but I think I got the gist of them. Rule #1: Have at least one Korean on your team. Rule #2: Just be quite as they play the game for you. The goal seemed to be to roll these small wooden posts like dice and get points so you could move your markers to the finish line on the board. They tried to make it Bible themed, so if you got to the end of the board you go to paradise. If you fall one place short you go to Gehenna. If you land in Bethal you loose a turn. Why Bethal is a bad thing I don't know. But after we played two games the score was tied 1-1. So Ren dixiong said which ever team won the next round would have to buy the other team beer. I began to roll those sticks like nobodies business, I'm not sure why. But despite me mad stick rolling abilities my team still lost. But it wasn't a total loss. All of the Chinese sisters there didn't really like beer so I got theirs. I asked my hosts if many Korean people like beer. They said totally. In Korean draft beers are super popular. This is interesting to me. I have gathered that most of the Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese friends really don't have much of a taste for beer. This was a little disappointing for me because in American culture I now realize that beer is sort of a staple. When close friends come over to your house you make them food and serve them beer. When your friends help you move you buy them pizza and beer. When you want to spend some one on one time with a friend you go get a beer. Americans just like beer. And if you live in the mid west you like beer even more. But in Taiwan they really don't like beer that much. They usually get a bubble tea. So I thought it was kind of cool to find out that the Korean brothers and sisters share a little bit of culture with us Americans. Only they have way better food than we do. Koreans are cool. Compared to the other Asian friends here they do kind of stand out as being a bit different now that I think about it. They make a lot of eye contact where as the Japanese, Chinese, and Taiwanese do not. They also make a lot of physical contact which again the other cultures do not. When I put on my big coat the sisters thought it would be funny to hit my coat and see if I could feel anything. And as I was about to leave Ren jiemei grabbed my arm and said, "Hey, were did you get this coat?" So after I soiled myself I remembered a Taiwanese sister saying that the she was slightly afraid of the Korean sisters because they are a little bit intense. So I had a nice laugh to myself after I stopped crying. Yet another fun week. Oh and another thing; if I know my readers like I think I do, some of you are probably nerds and geeks. And if I know nerds and geeks like I know I do then some of you are Doctor Who fans. So for a bit of fun if you thought the last episode was amazing please post a comment saying "Thumbs up!" Or if you hated it post, "Thumbs down," and I will be sure to track you down. Thanks again everyone. See you next week. Same Bat-Time, same Bat-Place.