July 12- last day

Here it is. The final blog entry reviewing my trip to Taiwan. I know it's been a long process, but this has been really helpful for me to relive the experience and relearn some of the things God taught me along the way. Thanks again to Becky and the kids for supporting me on the trip and to my dad for inviting me along an amazing journey. Well... that pretty much covers all my readers, on to the story!

I set my alarm for the ridiculous time of 5:30am on Sunday. I really didn't want to be up that early, but I wasn't sure exactly how long it would take to get to the airport and how long it would take to get through customs, so I figured I should err on the side of early rather than late. Oh, my departure time? 9:30am.

I got up and packed and walked out of the hotel by 6 and walked about 4 blocks to the bus station. They had buses leaving every 20 minutes to the airport. I happened to board a bus just as it was leaving, so that saved me 20 minutes at the station. I also wasn't sure how long the bus ride would be; my guess was about 1 and 1/2 hours, but it only took about 45 minutes. And there was almost no wait to go though ticketing, security, or customs. Yeah, I was seated at my terminal at about 7:45. I really wished I had my hour and a half of extra sleep, but it was better than being late. As the flight ahead of mine boarded I couldn't believe the number of people who ran up in the last 15 minutes.

I ended up flying back the same way I came to Asia. The flight from Taipei to Tokyo sat on the tarmac for quite a while before we left and there was a lengthy walk to my connecting flight so when I got to my gate I walked right on with only about 10 minutes to spare. I was a bit nervous because I didn't want to sit in a foreign airport and try to figure out the mess of getting home, but I would have liked a chance to check out Tokyo. Next time, I guess.

The flight back to Detroit was Loooong! The problem with a 12+ hour flight is that you try not to look at your watch for as long as possible, and then when you feel like you are almost home and you can't stand to be in your seat any longer you look to see that only 6 hours have gone by. It was tougher because I finished all the books I brought along and the movie they were showing were totally lame chick flicks... and we were only halfway home. I tried to sleep on the plane to help with the jet lag, but I wasn't tired much even though I didn't get much sleep the night before. We arrived a bit early in Detroit (about 45 minutes ahead of schedule) but only one set of the doors worked on our 747. Of course, I was seated near the back of the plane so it took FOREVER to get unloaded. Back on American soil, I got a ride home (it is so nice to live within 10 minutes of the airport) and then drove 3 and 1/2 hours to spend time with Becky and the kids at her parents place in Indiana. It was great to see them and get some huge hugs from all the kids and Becky.

And it only took about 3 days to get my body and brain back on Detroit time. Then I went led a youth trip to Washington, D.C. the following week. Whew!

It was an amazing adventure and I really hope to go back someday.

July 11

My last full day in Taiwan. It was bitter-sweet to think about that fact as I woke up that morning. It was Saturday and all there was on the agenda was for me to speak to some of the youth from the mountain villages and then Ben and I would return to Taipei. Dad, Foster, and Kelsey would stay in Taiwan until Monday and then spend a couple days in Hong Kong.

It was really cool to wake up and step out into the streets of the village of Tuban. It looked like something out of a movie or painting: the mist hanging low in these jungled, mountain peaks. It was breathtaking. I'm not a morning person, but I would enjoy mornings a whole lot more waking in that environment.

MeiMei prepared an amazing breakfast for us. The table was filled with assorted breakfast foods and fruits. MeiMei asked me if I wanted some mango juice and then picked up some fresh mangos off the table and dropped them in the blender. Wow, it was sooo good.

We decided that since we had plenty of time before I needed to speak that we would drive down the Taiwan coast and visit one of the popular local beaches. We didn't really have enough time to swim, but we thought it would be a cool last place to visit. We loaded up the van and... grind, revvvVVV! Matthew was stepping on the gas, but we weren't going anywhere. So we all stepped out as he kept shifting in and out of neutral all the while he starts rolling backwards down the sloped street. He eventually reached a point where he had to back into a wall/fence or else he has going to back off cliff. We started praying (and laughing) really hard and finally Matthew got it into first and rolled around town for a bit at 50,000 rpm to warm up the engine. It goes without saying that we were a bit unsure about getting into the van, but there was no other choice.

We ended up at a beautiful beach on the southern tip of the island. It was at this point that I really wished I had a swimsuit on because the coolness of the morning had faded and the water looked really refreshing. We followed up our brief visit to the beach with a stop at McDonalds. Oh man, I'm not a huge Mickey D's fan, but it tasted sooo good. I had a hard time going back to chinese food after that meal.

We were a little bit late arriving back at the first mountain village, so we had to walk in after the service had already started. Fortunately there was a group of four seminary students from England who were also there and they started off with a game, a few songs, and a short devotional. Having them start helped me to not feel as nervous and I shared with the students the lessons that they need to be active in teaching to their home churches. There were around 50 Paiwan students there, and we recognized some of them form the week of camp, so it was nice to feel like I could relate to them a bit. I had a great translator in Caleb, a native Taiwanese who is studying at Asbury seminary.

After I spoke, Caleb, Ben, and I headed back to Khaoshuing to take the high-speed train to Taipei. I ended up back at the YMCA hotel at around 11pm and ran into trouble.

They didn't accept the credit card that I had on me, I didn't have enough Taiwanese "new dollars", and the couldn't accept the American cash that I had on me. So I walked the downtown of Taipei all by myself from about 11pm to midnight looking (unsucessfully) for an ATM. I even had the desk clerk draw me a map to an all night money changer, but it was a dead end (and I know I followed the map correctly). I texted Becky for help and fortunately she happened to answer and was able to get me a different credit card # that I could actually use.

It was actually pretty cool to wander the streets alone. It's a really nice city and I'd love to go back someday.

With my hotel paid for all I had to do was go to bed for the last time in Taiwan.

July 10

Friday. The last day of camp. After a long Thursday I was glad to be done, but sad because our time was over. It was tough to connect with students because of the language barrier, but it was fun to be with them and it was sad that our time together was coming to an end.

We started Friday with one last service. Before the service, Dad had asked me to say one more thing during his 30 minute sending message, but fortunately he didn't call me forward. I just didn't have any idea of what to say other than "thank you".

The camp ended after the service; to send everyone out they did a really cool balloon drop. Then we took another hundred pictures and said our good-byes to the students. Then we (our team of 8) drove back into the mountains and "enjoyed" another beautiful/terrifying drive.

It was even scarier than last time because we had all our luggage with us (adding a couple hundred pounds to our rear end) and we got stuck behind a semi-truck hauling rebar. If you've ever seen a rebar truck before you know that the steel hangs several feet off the end of the truck. So we are winding back and forth, going up hill, with 8 people and our luggage, with cliffs on our left and the "trench of death" on our right, in the rain, and Pastor Matthew is tailgating the rebar truck like he's in a NASCAR race. Our windshield could not have been more than a few feet away from the truck on many occasions. I sat mildly terrified in the back seat of the van, but my Dad got a great look at it from the passenger seat. There were times when he was literally hanging on to his seatbelt with both hands as a nervous reaction to our proximity to the huge truck in front of us.

We made it to the mountain village that we had visited earlier in the week (wednesday) and dropped off some of our luggage to make the trip further into the mountains a little easier. After the drop off we drove across the bottom of the country to end up driving back up north along the coast along the pacific ocean. We turned off the highway and across a one lane bridge (but not a one way bridge) and headed up to Tuban. This is the village where Pastor Matthew recently accepted an appointment from the Taiwanese FM conference.

I need to take some time to comment on how Pastor Matthew, his wife MeiMei, and daughter Cindy were fantastic hosts during our week together. They are warm, friendly, inviting, energetic, charismatic, fun-loving, caring, Godly people. They live in a tiny 3 room apartment attached to the church (2 of the rooms are bedrooms) and have little of the comforts we are accustomed to here at home. Still, they offered us everything they had and were very generous, I really enjoyed being with them.

We arrived at the village late in the afternoon and had some time to walk around the community and meet the people. The mountain villages in Taiwan are small, poor towns inhabited by the aboriginal tribes of Taiwan. Tuban is home to people from the Paiwan tribe (the other major group is the Rukai). We met a young man named "Tennis" (with a T) who gave us a ride though the narrow winding streets on a scooter. It was fun to have a second motorcycle ride. The excitement made me really want one here at home. That night Dad gave another sermon, bringing his weekly total to 7 different messages in 6 days! It was amazing to listen to how God lead Dad's messages to be uniquely fitted to each congregation and audience; I know if it were me it would be really tempting to just give the same lesson 7 times, but Dad really poured out his heart and listened for what God wanted to say to each group.

That night I stayed up to prepare for the message that I would be delivering to a group of students the next day. I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted to do, but after listening to Dad all week the bar had been raised. Plus I knew with speaking through a translator I would need a better outline since I would be constantly pausing and I didn't want to lose my place. We went to bed that night on the floor in the apartment. It was a rough night not just because of the hard wood, but also the sweltering humidity. I was also excited because there was just one day left in Taiwan!

July 9

Let's pick up where we left off in Taiwan, shall we?

Thursday was the roughest day. There were definitely some fun and interesting moments, but it was a tough day emotionally.

Like Tuesday, the day began with my dad leading 2 back to back teaching sessions. In the first session I led the students in a battle of "we love Jesus yes we do, we love Jesus how 'bout you!". For those of you unfamiliar with this Christian arena competition, a group of people yell out that phrase and then point at another group/section on the word "you". Then that new group repeats and returns the phrase a little bit louder and a little bit worse. They caught on pretty well; we did it in English since I can't lead it in Chinese:)

The second session was all about encouraging the students to go out and make a difference. I shared stories about the things that the students I work with are doing in Dearborn to make a difference. It was really cool to stop and think about all the ways that these kids are involved in the church and community. Once again I led the band with "How Great is our God" as Dad led an altar call to pray for students who wanted to be blessed to take a new step of faith.

Dad "bringin' it"

Then we went out to lunch with the ministry leaders who put together the conference. We went to a Japanese restaurant. I had never been to a Japanese restaurant, but I'd already tried just about everything else, so why not, eh?

It was a really nice time to share with the leaders of the Free Methodist youth in Taiwan (most of them were youth pastors in the conference). Pastor Craig, who was the main speaker in the evening, shared with us that he has made it his mission to start 30 churches in his lifetime (he's currently started 5). The food was fun as well; the first first thing we had was sushimi... raw fish. I first tried Black Tuna sushimi, an expensive fish, which was actually not that bad. It wasn't slimy like I thought it would be. It was firm, moist, and flavourful, I'd probably eat more of it. Then I tried some swordfish sushimi, which was just ok. There was some other food that I tried but I can't remember as well a huge breaded shrimp that was pretty good. I has some wasabi on something... too much wasabi. HOT HOT HOT! One of the last things we had was a strange coffee- flavored jello. It looked just like regular jello, but it tasted like regular coffee.

That afternoon we just went back to our rooms to crash. We were all tired and needed a break from the constant travel, but sitting down gave me a lot of time to think about how much I missed my family. Becky took the kids with her to her parents house where she could have some help wrangling all 3 of them around. We couldn't talk on the phone because mine isn't enabled for international calls, plus it wouldn't do us much good anyways since there is only a tiny window to make those calls happen with the 12 hr time difference. We were able to chat on facebook a couple times and we sent a few texts, but I was really missing the kids and especially Becky.

Not only was I tired of being apart from family but I was getting tired to the food. I had been doing my best to try new things and stretch myself, but I just wanted "normal" food. The food issue was ever more difficult because as an honored guest I was offered everything first; it was getting hard for me to face plate after plate getting shoved in my face. I couldn't just refuse everything and sit unnoticed in the corner, and I wanted to be sensitive to the cultural differences and expectations as well. I don't want to be too negative about the experience, they were all great people trying to welcome me to their culture and some of the stuff I tried I liked, but I was getting tired.

But I had a chance to get out of my funk when we met up with a friend from when I grew up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (yes, that is a real place). I hadn't seen Melissa Wriston in about 15 years, but we both grew up in Lakeview FM church as kids. Melissa has lived in Taiwan for about 5 years teaching english and living as a light for God in Khaohsuing. It was crazy to think about catching up with her after so many years... on the other side of the world!

Thursday evening we attended the evening session eld by Pastor Craig. This was the first evening session we attended since Monday and it was similar in many respects (loud, charismatic worship; powerful preaching) but at the end of the sermon there was an invitation for the students to come forward an receive the Holy Spirit. I have been at services before where there was laying on of hands and people falling, or being "slain", in the Spirit, but only a couple of times. At least half of the 500 students came forward and I was sitting front row watching it all happen. I should include that I wasn't sitting next to anyone who could translate for me, so at the time I could only guess as to what was going on. I'm not about to begin a debate about the theological/doctrinal implications of those expereiences and whether or not God can work in that way, but it really pushed me out of my comfort zone.

Then the hammer dropped. All of the sudden I recognize that Pastor Craig just said my name. He called my (and my Dad and one other guy) up to the front. I had no clue what was going on. I tried to ask my dad what was going on, but we couldn't really talk about what was happening and I started getting really uncomfortable. Then students start coming forward and lining up to be prayed over. I finally got the information that these were students who wanted receive a special blessing as they felt called to go into ministry and it was up to us to pray for them. WAAAY out of my comfort zone! I did not want to be the next Benny Hinn and I wasn't sure what to do, it's not like I could back out. So I prayed a prayer for me and then went about laying hands on the students as they came to me. It was even stranger because I was praying for them in English with no translation, so they had no way to know what I was praying. I put my hand on their forehead like Pastor Craig had done, but I didn't push anyone. Some fell, some didn't. But I just didn't feel right about it, mostly due to just being thrown into the situation without being asked or warned.

After the service we took about 1000 pictures with various students and leaders. I'm sure there are a whole lot of facebook pictures of me out there that I'm totally unaware of.

Finally we [the 8 of us, plus Laura (the head honcho), Melissa, and a couple others) headed to a local night market. During our late night adventure they tried fish head soup and stinky tofu soup. I was in a bad mood at this point (I hate to admit) and didn't try any of it. However, Kelsey tried the stinky tofu soup and ate this cube of something. The something turned out to be congealed pigs blood! Gross!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!more exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!

What a way to end the day.

July 8

Wednesday at the conference is sports day. During the other days they have various team-building activities and workshops, but midweek they put all that aside and have a series of sporting competitions (we saw sprints and 3-on-3 basketball). When we woke up it was already overwhelmingly hot and muggy... I was very glad not to be participating (although, for the record, I would have totally came in last at every event).

We stayed around the campus for the morning, taking some time to mingle with the students. The conference was at what appeared to be a private school campus. The buildings were quite old, but they had everything we needed: dorms, auditoriums, a track, and basketball courts. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the campus; for all the video and pictures we took it seemed like there was so much more that we missed.

After a morning of mixing it up with the students we headed out to lunch where I ate some of the worst food during the trip (no offense to the lovely people of Taiwan:). I tried pigs ear (which had a light bacon flavor) and this is me trying stinky tofu:

It doesn't do it justice to see it in video form. Stinky tofu is called "Stinky Tofu" for one reason... it reeks!!! It's tofu fried in some devilish blend of spices and ingredients which combine to create a super nasty blend (similar to how your powers combine to create Captain Planet, only instead of enviro-powers he makes stuff smell and taste horrible). I barely got it down.

After narrowly surviving lunch we headed into the mountain county. The country of Taiwan is an island (duh) where the urban, metropolitan population lives along the flat coastlands. The center of the island is comprised of a ridge of mountains that divides the country north to south. The mountain range is beautifully covered by dense jungle forests like a living emerald canopy; fog would hang down like a fantasy landscape painting or digital dream. The mountains are where the native peoples of Taiwan live in tribal villages.

On our van ride we stopped along the way at a small village where we picked up about 20 boxes of fresh mangos. Pastor Matthew then sells those mangos to vendors in the city and passes the money back to the villagers. Microeconomics at work!

To reach the villages in the mountains it becomes necessary to leave the highways and drive up and down the local roads. That was an adventure! The roads are an endlessly labyrinthine trail that weaves through the volcanic hills; two lane roads barely wide enough to be labeled as two lanes. On one side, cliffs and bluffs that fall hundreds of feet; on the other side...well, a feature that we affectionately called the "ditch of death". Instead of a right hand shoulder, like we have on our roads, there was a 3 feet deep, 1.5 feet wide concrete walled trench. I assumed it was designed to carry the runoff which sweeps down the mountains, but all we could see was a hole that was seemingly designed to be the exact size to swallow a truck tire. our van tires. It was a frightening ride on more than one occasion.

That night we visited Tuban, a native Rukai village. My dad preached a fantastic sermon for the people there. It was funny having Dad preach in english, and then having Pastor Matthew translate into chinese, and then the pastor of the tribal church would translate the chinese into the Rukai dialect. Double translation ftw!!

Oh, and the Tuban church served us a native feast, which only means one thing... even crazier food!

I can't remember everything, but there was squid and a strange mushroom things (which I tried). And the number one, strangest thing I tried during the entire trip is featured here:

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Yeah, that's a fish. The whole fish and nothing but the fish. Head, scales, bones and all. It was cooked so it was crispy and crunchy. And I actually thought it wasn't that bad; I even ate another!! Then they told us it's an endangered species. Yummy:)

July 7; Tainan

Dad was the main speaker for two sessions on Tuesday and Thursday morning. One of the main reasons I went along was to help speak during these times to break up the rhythm since it could get pretty rough to speak to 500 students in back-to-back hour long sessions. During the first session I lead a tournament of "rock-paper-scissors" that we adapted to "comet-planet-star" to fit the theme. It went really well considering the size of the group and the language/translation barrier. Many of the students spoke simple english phrases, and there were a few who spoke english quite well (those tended to be the older students), but most students only knew "hello" and "bye bye".

During the second session I shared the story of Evan's birth (keeping the c-section description intriguingly detailed, yet age appropriate). I talked about the wonder and blessing that they are in my life... it's not hard to share that:) At the end of the second session I led the worship team with "How great is our God". It was another challenge to lead the worship team because only the keyboard player understood a word I said, but fortunately they were a really talented group.

After the morning sessions we went with Pastor Matthew, his wife Mei Mei, and their daughter Cindy to Tainan. I love those guys. Pastor Matthew is a Taiwanese FM pastor who has a really warm and captivating presence. They were a ton of fun and gave us the VIP treatment everywhere we went. So the eight of us (Dad, Foster, Kelsey, Ben, Matthew, Mei Mei, Cindy, and I) drove in their church minivan to the urban city of Tainan. Tainan is one of the oldest modern cities settled by the Europeans when they "discovered" Taiwan. There were some fantastic historical sites we can across including:

These beautiful statue/shrine/attractions.

I had a hard time capturing the scale, but these are several stories tall.

We were going to go to the Taiwan history museum, but for some strange reason it was closed so we went to the Taiwan Poetry Museum. Here I am, listening to a reading of Taiwanese poetry.

And it was at the poetry museum that we met John Wayne. The story of John Wayne is too long to fit in blog format, but ask me about him sometime.

Dad and his new friend, John Wayne.

Tuesday, July 7th also happened to be a ridiculously hot day. I didn't remember the actual temperature, but I'm pretty sure it was 1 billion degrees. And Taiwan is also EXTREMELY humid, it may technically be underwater. So we walked up and down the streets of Tainan nearly melting when we found a sparkling oasis in the form of an Iced Mango drink. I never really liked mango, but this was the beginning of a new and beautiful relationship.

Waiting for iced mango drink.

(not pictured, face-melting heat)

As we explored the streets of Tainan we also came across many food stands featuring native Taiwanese cuisine.

As identified by my friend, Justice Hung-

from left: pig faces(pig ears),duck wins,

duck necks with heads, and the bottom are duck lungs.

the things right dish are pig skin.

And I nearly forgot! Near the end of the day we walked past one restaurant that was filming a commercial and Dad was lingering trying to see what they were doing. Well, the director turns around and they asked him to take a sip of the drink and smile for the camera. Seriously, watch for Glenn Teal starring in a Taiwanese wine commercial. It was so funny to watch the whole thing unfold. Another great day!

July 6

Sorry it's taken me so long to fill in the rest of the blanks on my trip. It's been a busy couple of weeks. I hope to finish the outline of this trip before the memories start to fade away... so let's get back to bidnas:

Monday was the first day of camp. It actually was more of a conference than a camp, but I'll get into those details in a few paragraphs. We got up early in the morning (around 6:30 i think) because we had to find our way through the underground central rail depot in Taipei to the high speed train to Kaohsiung. Fortunately we had a guide in Pastor Dinh (from the previous post) and his son, Ben. Ben is a high school student who joined us for the week. He was born in Vietnam, but was raised in America, so he speaks English and Vietnamese, but very little Chinese. He came to Taiwan a few years ago when his Dad felt called to minister to the Vietnamese in Taipei. I think it meant alot to him to have some Christian Americans to relate to, and it was great for us make a new friend and have him along.

The high speed train was very cool. I've never been on a "fast" train before and it was definately a fun experience. You may be asking yourself, how fast did it go? close to 200mph. Oh Yeah!

We arrived in Kaohsiung and rode by car another hour to the campus. There were 5 of us in a tiny car with all our luggage, so I sat in the middle with my suitcase on my lap. I couldn't see anything but canvas for the entire ride.

As mentioned earlier, the "camp" was really a conference. For you Free Methodists, it was like IYC, just on a smaller scale. It was a conference for all the Southern Taiwan FM middle school and high school groups; a total of over 500 students!

The conference opened on Monday night with incredible and exciting worship led by Taiwanese college students a powerful sermon by Taiwanese Youth Pastor Craig (who was the main evening speaker).

Another great day!

July 4-5

I forgot to mention in my previous post that we decided to visit the Shilin night market late on Friday. Yes, we were still tired, but in a foreign country you never want to miss a chance to visit something exciting.

And we weren't disappointed. It was really cool. Vendors on every side, on every corner, using every inch of available space. I would say that a large majority of the stuff for sale was clothes: hats, shoes, jean, shirts, accessories. The next most common goods were food: corn on the cob, squid on a stick, duck hearts, pig ears, all kinds of other crazy foods, and mango. I've never really liked mango before, but after a week of amazingly fresh mango it's grown on me. It was loud, smelly, and crowded... Just my kind of place:)

Saturday was another sight seeing say, we went to the Taiwan National Museum and the Taipei 101. The national museum was amazing because it basically holds the national treasures of China (taken as many Chinese fled to Taiwan during the 1949 revolution). There are plenty of items that we got to see that are just too beautiful to describe [no photography allowed:(] My faves were the 30 meter long paintings and the unbelievably intricate ivory carvings.

The Taipei 101 is the tallest building in the world. The observation deck is at nearly 400 meters. The view was incredible. You could see for miles and miles. Here are a few pics:

After those amazing sights we crashed at the hotel for a bit and then I went to speak with a college group at one of the Free Methodist Churches in Taipei. It went pretty well. I wasn't as prepared as I would have liked and it was my first time speaking with a translator. Luckily the group was really friendly and they were excellent hosts. The highlight of that day was the ride I recieved back to the hotel. The streets of Taipei are crazy! Super crowded streets and thousands of motorcycles flying everywhere in between. My new friend Justice gave me a ride through the city streets on the back of his motorcycle and it was too fun. I hope to have the video up soon.

Late Saturday evening we welcomed Foster Chase and his daughter Kelsey to Taiwan. The Chase's attend my Dad's church and it was great to get to know them throughout the week.

Then Sunday morning, we Teal's went back to the same FM church where my dad preached (proached?? praught??) a great sermon. We ate lunch with the church and had tea at the Grand Hotel with our friend James. Then we met back up with Foster and Kelsey and attended a Vietnamese FM church which meets once a month in Taipei. That was an experience:)

I could tell Dad was quite a bit worn out from the day, but he gave a fantastic evangelistic sermon translated by Pastor Dinh. It was fun to listen to him translate. We all seemed to sense that he was helping my Dad out a bit, adding and explaining things in a better way. And that was a good thing, after the invitation about 10 people came up front to accept Christ in their lives. Whew! Praise God.

After the service was over Dad became a celebrity and became surrounded by the vietnamese people as they took picture after picture. Here's a couple of my faves:

Then we finished of the day with taking Foster and Kelsey for a visit to the Shilin night market.

And this is just the beginning:)

July 1-3: Taipei

I flew out of Detroit on a direct flight to Tokyo. Yes, you read correct, a direct flight from Detroit to Tokyo. I left Wednesday at 3:20pm and I arrived at 5pm on Thursday. Over 12 and a half hours on the plane plus you lose 12 hours with the time change. That will mess you up. That messed me up.

I met up with my dad in the Tokyo airport and after a 2 hour layover (just enough time to get through security) we had a 3 hour flight to Taipei. We arrived in Taipei late Thursday evening exactly 12 hours ahead of home. We were met at the airport by Jimmy Tsai and his friend Do-do. Do-do is a college student who's mother is a music teacher (his brother's name is Rey-rey. no kidding).

The flight wasn't too bad. I had an aisle seat and there wasn't anyone sitting in the seat next to me. So I had a bit of extra elbow room plus I could get up and stretch whenever I needed. I never got stir crazy, but your brain shuts down after about 6 hours.

When in Taipei we stayed at the YMCA hotel. It was nice and conveniently located right in the heart of downtown next to the MRT (subway system), bus depot, and high speed railway. We pretty much just spent friday recovering from jetlag, but I did have a food challenge on that first day.

As a reader of this blog, you probably know me well enough to know that I am a picky eater. I knew going into this cross-cultural experience that I would be challenged, but I hoped to have some time to ease myself into this new food experience. So when given a few restaurant options for lunch, I chose Italian, what I beleived to be a safe bet. What I didn't know is that the "Italian" served by Cafe Grazie is just chinese food on top of spaghetti. I really struggled with that meal (especially the lettuce wrap appetizer). It was especially difficult since, as an honored guest, we were offered all of the goodies first. yum.

more stories tomorrow:)