Urban Minimalists

Our apartment has a pretty fantastic location. It's a 5-min walk from a small supermarket that has pretty much everything you'd need, and a 15-min walk from a couple 3-story hypermarkets (think: Super Walmart). We've needed a ton of household items these first few weeks, so we've made several hypermarket runs. Of course we could take a taxi. But why take a taxi when we can take backpacks? So we strap on our empty packs, shop around, and bring them back full... more than full actually, as you can see from the pictures. As you can imagine, a couple foreigners carrying fully-loaded backpacks down highly trafficed city streets tends to draw quite a bit of attention. But we figure we can always use the exercise... and the excuse to use our packs!

A Typical Friday Night

Each Friday night, Chip and Chels join the other members of the English Department from work and head to the the center of Taipei City. Once there we lead a worship service/Bible study for the local Taiwanese people. Typically we have around 400 show up. Pretty amazing. You wouldn't likely get 400 people to show up for a weekly church service held on Friday nights in the States, but here, people gravitate toward it. One of the reasons they are so eager to come out is so they can work on their English. People here live to improve their English skills, and since the service can meet that need, they show up ready to learn. For many of them, it's also a time to meet the teachers they see in the magazines and on the television shows our company produces. Ultimately, we allow God to use English as a forum to teach his Word. We help these people with language learning, and in the process teach them about the Bible.


Taiwan is primarily a Buddhist/Taoist/Ancestral worship nation. Many of the people we meet don't even know about the Christian faith. Our Friday night service serves to introduce them to what we believe. Chip had the chance to teach a Bible class last week, and Chels had the opportunity to teach a class just last night. We both enjoyed the challenges (working with a translator is tricky getting used to) and rewards of being able to reach out to people via teaching in a new culture. Both of us will now have the opportunity to teach Bible basics to non-believers on a regular basis. We're pretty excited about it...it's certainly the reason we came to Taiwan in the first place.

BING!

Western world, meet bing. This is Taiwan's pride and joy dessert. It's no Dairy Queen and it's certainly no Coldstone. It is, however, quite tasty. If you can get past it's strange and almost unsightly appearance, you may just find yourself enjoying this massive bowl of shaved ice ("bing" means "ice"). You may very well be trying to figure out what the heck is on this tasty treat...so here you go: That's ice topped with rice balls in both sweet potato and taro flavors, sweet red beans and sauce (found on everything sweet here), brown sugar jelly, and pearl balls (which are often found in tea). Yummy indeed. And did we mention that it's non-fat? Ah...the icing on the cake... er, ice.

Chinese Please!

Ah, learning a new language. As if it isn't challenging enough. Throw into that a language that is tonal and that doesn't have a written alphabet, and there's Chinese for you. Killer. The Chinese people are very proud of their language--and rightfully so. It's a beautifully complicated language that has perhaps the most artistic written characters out there. For a couple of foreigners like ourselves, learning this language quickly becomes a daunting task. We're currently taking a 3-month intensive course in the language. We're told that upon completion of our classes (that meets 3 nights a week) and with extra studying on our own each night, we should be able to converse in Chinese by November.

Since there isn't an alphabet to learn, we are learning the Mandarin Phonetic system (the book above is a children's book that we use--you can probably tell that the characters are very simplified from traditional Chinese characters). Essentially, these characters, when combined, show us how to pronounce words. Once we've memorized the sound of the word and its meaning, the added challenge comes in remembering which of the 5 tones to pronounce it in. Pretty tricky. In fact, at this point, it seems sometimes impossible. We're encouraged, however, by our coworkers who have only been here for a couple of years and who are speaking rather easily. We hope to follow in their footsteps soon!

Chelsea's Favorite Part of Life in Taiwan

Having a much-coveted first-floor apartment is certainly a blessing. And it also comes with its fair share of cursed little visitors. Pictures like this can be a little deceptive because they don't really give you an accurate perspective of how large these little suckers are. You can't really tell from the picture, but this one here was approximately the size of a small labrador. A flying labrador. As if scurrying around all over our kitchen cabinets isn't bad enough, yeah, they also fly.

Jumping Right In

These first couple weeks have been a lot of fun for us. It's been great getting to know our new coworkers and the way the organization does ministry. We love the people we work with--they're so nice and have given us such an incredibly warm welcome. We've had a chance to do a lot of different things already... and there's a heck of a lot more variety to come, we're sure. We've both done some writing for the magazines. (And actually, the magazine that's geared for advanced learners actually just won some huge national award for best educational magazine, so we feel pretty privileged.) And while Chip's already been recorded on a couple radio programs (which discuss some of the magazine articles), we've both been involved in reading/recording articles for the radio and various English tests for students. We've learned to keep our expression and inflection high and lively while reading at an extremely slow pace. It's harder than you'd think! We've also helped out a little bit with a new interactive website for English learners--some pretty breakthrough stuff in the EFL world. In the future, it looks like Chip's going to be teaching a couple EFL classes at a nearby university, and Chelsea's going to get some television time!

Taiwan: Take One

The months of planning and preparing for our move to Taiwan quickly came to a close when we boarded a plane in LA on August 7th. At that point, there was no turning back. Strangely enough, even while we were mid-flight over the Pacific, the new life that awaited us just hours away still seemed surreal. And although we've been here for a full two weeks now, it still seems surreal at times. As we stepped out of the airport in Taiwan and into the unbelievable humidity and started driving toward the bright city lights of Taipei, we began to realize that this would be the place we call home for the next 2 years.Exhausted with jet lag yet filled with the excitement of a new adventure, we awoke early Saturday morning to meet one of our coworkers and tour our neighborhood. Getting to know the area was a bit overwhelming, as everything was so large, urbanized, and in Chinese. The corn and bean fields of home were quickly replaced by tall buildings and crowded streets. The peace and quiet of the Midwest was suddenly gone and in its place the sounds of heavy traffic. And while this seemed far from what we know to be home, it felt strangely comfortable. It seemed somewhat normal. We felt content. It was as though God was confirming our presence here...perhaps he was just reminding us that it was his orchestration that got us here, and it would be his providence that continues to propel us forward for the next 2 years and beyond.

Sweet Sorrow

We said a lot of tearful goodbyes over the course of the days leading up to our departure on Aug 7th. Our parents took us to the airport in Indy where we were able to eat with a friend (Julia Leslie) and stay with an aunt (Chip's Aunt Marlyce) the night before. It was a challenge for all of us. Our families' tears have not at all taken away from our sense that our families are proud of us. Some even said things like, "Just because we're crying doesn't mean we're not proud of you! We're glad you're going... and we're sad to see you go... We'll miss you."

Missing someone is a strange suffering. The tears shed at goodbyes are of a unique sort of pain. Not a pain that distorts and confuses, but rather a pain that brings an incomparable clarity to realities deep within us. Not a pain that makes you want to grow numb, but rather a pain that makes you want to drink even more deeply of life--even to its dregs. While it is a pain that begins in sadness, it somehow manages always to end in an overwhelming gratitude.

It's in a difficult goodbye that we are most mindful of the depth and meaning of the relationship--our hearts looking through the many years of love and loyalty with perfect clarity. The tears speak of the thankfulness of having known such special people and having been shaped by them.

Finally here...

We have sooooooo much to share with you about our first weekend in Taiwan; however, until we get Internet service at our apartment later this week, we won't really have the time or the means to do so...

Here's a brief rundown:
-We're pretty much over jet-lag (it's Monday evening here, by the way...you're all still probably in bed back home and haven't even started your Monday!)
-We've been able to re-connect with friends Richard, Marlin, Kelly, and Isaac already!
-We started our new jobs at ORTV today and think we'll love it here!
-We have a great apartment and can't wait to have visitors! We'll post pics once we're a little more settled:)

Keep checking back for a real update! And take care in the States! We miss you guys!