Well another busy week as usual it started with Hannah Subbing for one of the sisters who teaches English at a Cram school. But she will tell you more about that in another post. On Friday Hannah had a talk, this time as a house holder and in the second school. It started out interestingly, the sister gave Hannah the talk, hand written in characters which the majority of Hannah could not read. Hand written characters are so much harder to read than printed ones which are not easy to read to begin with. So Hannah went to her house and had her read the talk to her and she transcribed it into pinyin. Hannah stayed for several hours after they finished the talk. She a blast talking with the sister. (Who doesn't speak English) She was so happy she is able to communicate like that now. The talk went very well, it was the first time we had gone to the second school which was interesting because it is super small. There were a total of 9 people in the room and I had to stand ( I did say it was super small :) ). Here is their talk:
On Saturday (4-13-13) we had made plans to go see Ahshia and her family in Taipei. We were hoping to see Melanie, but she was in the hospital going through another round of radiation. She is doing well now, it she be the last of her treatments.
When we made the plans with Ahshia, we asked when we should come, they told us "Come early so we can do a lot of things." Hannah said "ok when should we come? is 8 am too early?". They said "No that is fine." So we went to the bus station and got our tickets we said we wanted to be there by 8 am and they told us we needed to be at the bus station about 4:50 am. After we bought our tickets, we talked to ahshia again and told them we would arrive at 8 AM and they all seemed confused, they asked "Why so early!?". Somewhere something was lost in translation.
The bus made really good time and didnt have as many stops though, so we ended up arriving a little after 7 am. We were disappointed. We were hoping to sleep as much as possible on the bus since we only had about 2.5 hours of sleep that night. We were ok though.
Poor Ahshia got very sick the night before and wasnt able to come, so her niece and nephew took us around Taipei.
Our First spot was the 101 building. Up until 2010 it was the tallest building in the world. It also currently has the world's fastest elevator. Even though it was cloudy we still got an amazing view of the city.
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| Pearson Jr. (Ashia's Great Nephew) |
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| MRT (taipei's Subway) |
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| Me & Pearson Riding the Bus |
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| Waiting to ride the Worlds fastest Elevator |
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| Only took 35 seconds to get from floor 5 to floor 89. Our ears popped several times |
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| In order to both compensate for wind and Earthquakes Buildings like this require a Damper. Basically it shifts the opposite way when the building moves in order to reduce the stress and keep everything balanced. They said when the earthquake hit a few weeks ago it moved 2cm. |
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| The Buildings mascots are called Damper babies . |
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| Pearson, Ruby, and Pearson Jr. |
After the 101 building we went to lunch at a famous dumpling place, it was delicious!
Then after a ride on the MRT we took the Maokong Gondola to the TaiPei Zoo.
We got to take one with a glass bottom.
The Zoo was really neat and even though we didn't stay very long we got to see a lot of animals.
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| Gray Wolf |
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| Very Fat Squirrel |
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| Red Panda |
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| Penguins |
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| Asian Black Bear |
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| Cougar |
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| He was so funny rolling around in the rocks, it reminded us of our Jack back home. |
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| Water Buffalo |
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| Horses |
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| Giant Panda |
We felt really privileged to get to see them, the Taipei zoo is one of only about 22 zoos in the world where you can see Giant Pandas.
The next day we got to visit the congregation in Taipei where Meiyin attends. The congregation was really friendly. After we got to eat with her and the speaker.
After lunch we went to the night market in Taipei to do some shopping and after Ahshia went to the doctor she was able to join us for some shopping and dinner.
After dinner we went to the bus station to head back home we arrived a little after 12.
Well that is all for now. Love Phil & Hannah
That building looks awesome, isn't that the tallest building in the world? The zoo looks like fun, we went to Turpintine Creek big cat animal rescue, in Eurika Springs Arkansas. We took lots of photos, we'll have to share with you when you come home. What kind of food do you miss most? I hope you have a welcome home party. We miss you both a lot!
ReplyDeleteSee ya soon, Jonathan & Shanda
It is a really cool building, and it was the tallest until 2010 until one was built in Dubai that surpassed it. We look forward to seeing you and your pictures! and as far as food goes there are a lot that I miss but Biscuits and gravy are at the top :) We miss you a lot too!
ReplyDeleteonly 44 days until we come home
Phil & Hannah