Home

As of Monday, Phil and I will have been home for 1 month. We are still in awe of things found in the US that we could not find in Taiwan. (Think sweet desserts that don't include red beans) We also have eaten hot pot once, found bubble tea (Boba if you are in California) and already visited a few Asian markets so that we think we are still in Taiwan at times. There are things that I miss, such as cheap hot pot, the teas, the fruit stands and the daily confusion found in the inability to speak Chinese. There also have been some changes as well:

• I have a job. I am teaching freshman course at a high school in the area. These include Algebra 1 and Algebra 2.
• Phil and I went to Texas where we ate Chuy's 3 times and El Gallo 2 times. hmmmm
• We are trying to decide where to live. There are a few things we need to figure out first.
• Phil's car works and we are working on getting mine on the road. (The tree hitting it wasn't as bad as we thought)

Phil and I had a blast in Taiwan and are glad that we took the opportunity to do this. We also saw God in so many ways. Here are some of the ways we saw Him:

• A man was possessed by a demon and we heard the demons come out of him. The people who were there said that the only thing that got the demons out were the words, "In Jesus' name."
• We saw God in the Chinese Language. If you want more information on this, look at the following videos. God of the Ancient Chinese
• I had to teach Biology this past year and I saw Him in all of the things I taught. While the Biology book taught Evolution, it did not disqualify Creationism. Instead it said there is no way to prove God exists without having Him in the original equation. (You can also argue the opposite as well) I get Evolution and I can see how it is the only explanation there is if you do not believe in God. Because I believe in God, I see how this world came about without the holes created by evolution. See these videos for more info.
• In the people we came in contact with on a daily basis.
• In our students.
  

I am glad that we had this opportunity. Before we left, we passed out Steps to Christ in Chinese to several people who we came in contact with on a daily basis. (Tea lady in Yuchih, Fruit stand people, the lady who cut Phil's hair) If you could pray that these seeds grow, that would be amazing.

I also want to thank everyone for their prayers and support this past year. All I can say is Thanks.

Video

When my parents were here, we went to Taroko Gorge, which has many cliffs and suspension bridges that are quite scary. We had to cross one and here is an amazing video from that experience. If you listen very closely at about 4 or 5 seconds in you can hear my mom screaming. Pretty amazing.

From VideosSpringBreak

Parents and Taiwan

My parents were able to visit me and here is proof that they actually came!

Outside the National Palace Museum. My mom got really good elbowing her way around to see things. She's pretty much Taiwanese.

Taking down the flag at the Chang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. Pretty neat shot.

This is either the national theater or the concert hall. One of our students will be playing there this coming Wednesday. We would go if Taipei wasn't 3 hours away and we didn't have classes early the next morning.

At the temple for a dog.

Looking out from Yeliu Geopark.

My mom and I at Yeliu. I feel like Wolverine or whoever that guy is.

I finally got a picture of this. My battery died the first time we came when I went to get a shot.

Another look at Yeliu.

Phil and I had not actually visited a Hot Springs until my parents came. Here is the picture of the bath in our room. It turns out that there actually is a cold for this bath, but we did not figure that out until the next morning. We filled the bath all the way and then realized that we were going to give ourselves third degree burns if we got into the water. We decided to wait about 1/2 hour. When that didn't work, we began adding cold water from the shower nearby. That took another 1/2 hour. By the time we actually got into the water, it was nice. We still felt like it was sitting in a bath at home with rusty nails.

I have a great video for this suspension bridge. As soon as I figure out how to post it, it will be up. Oh, this is at Taroko Gorge.

The parents.

We decided to drive over Hehuanshan to get to our school, which stands for Snow Mountain. The drive was incredible, but we will never do it again. We made my mom carsick by driving this road. Oh and the last hour was terrifying. You can see the road we just drove on in the distance:

This is what the last 1 hour looked like, except you can't see the massive drop off to the right and left:

A better view of the road. We don't want to find out if the guard rail will hold us. In fact, we had to back up at one point because in most parts the road is only 1 lane and a large truck was coming the other way. Oh and like driving in Taiwan, they do pass you if they can.

The temple at Sun Moon Lake. We live 5 minutes from here.

We were really sad when my parents left, but were excited when we could make:

And tonite, we get chili!

First Impressions of Taiwan

My parents are coming this Thursday evening around 9:30 pm and I am absolutely excited about it! I want my parents to know what to expect, so here are some of our first pictures we took when we arrived in Taiwan.



These are the view from the airplane before the flight attendant told us to put our cameras away. Actually, he yelled something like "No cell phones. No MP3 players. No cameras..."

Not as exciting as Thailand's streets, at least color wise, but this is Taipei.

Typical (ugly) apartment building in Taipei.

A view of 2 parking lots. One is for cars (Top lot) and the bottom is for, you guessed it, scooters.

If you have spent a day with Phil, you know he likes original (gross) drinks. Here is an example.


We were hungry after getting fed multiple times on our way over from the states, so we were excited to find crackers with sea weed on them and, yep you guessed it, Ramen noodles in our hotel room. We were hoping that the picture on the front looked like chicken. Who knows...

We also can not wait for my parents to come so we can impress them with our amazing Chinese skills. We actually have been asking our students how to say a lot of things so my parents will think that we are fluent in Mandarin after only learning it for one year. (I can communicate on a pre-toddler level, at the moment, but that is only if I can use some English words. Just don't tell my parents.)

KTV

In November, we had a retreat with several different organizations in Taiwan. While there, our director rented a bus to take us to some tourist attractions in the area. The bus had one additional feature. It was a karaoke bus. Yeah! Here is a video of Phil, singing. Enjoy!

Pictures

I think that this may be the last of the blogs we do about our trip to Malaysia and the Philippines. Currently, Phil and I are really busy trying to get things together for an accreditation meeting happening on Monday for our school. Nothing to be scared about because it is our first meeting and our first year operating. We are just really busy. Phil and I got to go to Hong Kong last weekend because, well, Phil couldn't really stay in Taiwan any longer. He had to go early to get another visa and I joined him Friday afternoon. I would post pictures of our trip, but Phil took all the pictures and they are with him currently. We did go here, but these are not our pictures. Instead, enjoy more pictures of our Chinese New Year Trip. :)

World's Largest Flower. That is a large fly on the petal. This is about 3/4 of a meter across.

I am pretty confidant that the baby is the newest addition to the reserve.

Just so you can see who else was around.

We had the opportunity to go to Mount Kinabalu National Park, where you can hike to the tallest peak in the area. It was pretty neat to go to and the above picture was taken leaving our hotel. Those are clouds. The following pictures are the view of Mount Kinabalu from our hotel room. We would have climbed the mountain, but it takes 2 days and, well, you really need to be in shape, so we decided to just hike below the summit. (Walking for half a mile a day the week before does not define "being in shape",



This is the visitor center and the next few pictures are from our walk through the park. Also, you can see how messy it really was. It was really amazing!

Amazing!

More wildlife!

Here is some more wildlife from our trip. At some point we will actually begin posting about some things that we have been doing more recently...

While the orangutan was very exciting to see, we could also see it if we wanted to go to Indonesia. There is another primate that we can only see in Borneo. Because of this, we decided to splurge and headed to the proboscis monkey reserve located in the palm tree plantations surrounding Sandakan in Borneo. It was incredible and I am extremely glad we got to see these rare primates. While there, I got this video of an oriental pied hornbill.



And why we actually went:




There is one dominate male (The largest in the family) and he has a harem of women. This is one of the families.

Here are some pictures so you can see the proboscis monkey more clearly.

Orang utans

We had an awesome opportunity in near Sandakan, Malaysia in Borneo. We got to go to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation center! It was amazing and I am really glad we decided to drive 5 hours to see it! We got to see many different wildlife while we were there and in fact, I am confident we got to see this new orangutan. Here are some videos:

After visiting the cute tarsiers, we decided to go on a boat trip. No, I take that back. Our taxi driver decided that we should go on a boat trip. We were unsure if we really wanted to do it. In fact, it seemed really touristy but we decided to go ahead because it might actually surprise us. It turned out that we actually enjoyed it. We got to eat a meal on the boat and go up and down a river in the Philippines. At the end of the river, there was a waterfall. The food was not that good, but there was a guy playing a guitar and it was relaxing. Overall a very good trip. The above picture is us waiting to board the boat and the next 3 pictures are us waiting for our food and the waterfall at the end.



We had specifically told our taxi driver that we wanted to go to a Tarsier Sanctuary and then head to the Chocolate Hills so that we could take some nice pictures of the Chocolate Hills while the sun set. We actually told him multiple times what we wanted. Instead, he again did his own thing and we ended up here, at the Chocolate Hills early in the afternoon. (And we never making it to the Tarsier Sanctuary.) Oh well, the pictures at least turned out.




Our taxi driver, on his own itinerary took us to a beach near the city we were staying at. Again, more his idea then ours, but it was a nice beach, so we weren't complaining.