Quiz results more witnessing and a trip to Costco

Today we went to class, we got the quiz results back I got a 86 Hannah got a 96. As I expected I messed up the most on the listening and writing portion. Next we went to our electives which were different since the change in our schedule. The class experience for me was essentially the same just with different class mates and there are 4 other witnesses in my class. Hannah has a different teacher and she now has 3 other witnesses in her class as opposed to being the only one.

It was neat one of the guys that we met at orientation is in my class. He commented today to me that he thought it was cool how the witnesses are. He said as soon as we meet each other its like we found an old friend. Hannah also got to witness today too, here is Hannah to explain.

It was really neat. After I sat down a sister I had just briefly met before, came in and sat with me. She pointed out two other witnesses in our class I had not met before. They are both brothers from Japan. Our teacher is a little scary, very similar to Hefenfen, but nicer. :) She wanted us to introduce ourselves to each other in Chinese but didnt want us to use basic vocabulary that we would have learned in level one. I was paired with a young guy from Okinawa Japan. He was very shy, so I started with asking him why he was learning Chinese. He explained that in his hometown there are many Chinese and Taiwanese people, and we wanted to be able to communicate in a business setting. He then asked me why I came to taiwan and was learning. I explained that I was one of Jehovah's Witnesses and in my city in America there are many Chinese that want to learn the Bible. He asked why I didnt got to China, and I got to explain in my broken Chinese, China's hostility toward Christianity. I told him how we meet many Chinese people that come to America to work that want to study the Bible, and I want to help them learn in their own language. After a little bit the teacher asked each one of us to relay what our partner had said. The very first person she asked had been paired with one of the brothers, and he told the class he had talked about his religion. Our teacher immediately turned to the brother and asked in Chinese, are you a witness? When the other sister and I smiled she turned to us as well and we told her we were also witnesses. The teacher then proceeded to explain to our class how Witnesses preach and teach people about their God. She is very familiar with Jehovah's people and seems very comfortable with us. All of our partners gave a witness for us to the class. It was really neat! It was a blessing to get switched into this class.
In one of our practice sentences she gave us, we were suppose to use the structure: (object) is both (adj) and (adj). The only thing that came to mind was,"My husband is both handsome and intelligent." So I said it to the class when it was my turn. The teacher laughed and loved it. But she was shocked that I was already married. After class she asked me if I was really married and then asked me how old I am. She about fell over when I said we were married when I was 19. She could only say. "You are so brave!" I laughed and told her," Wo de Zhangfu shi wo de zui hao peng you." (My husband is my best friend). She replied,"Well, yeah, my husband is MY best friend too. But I didnt get married until I was 27!" Phil walked in right then so I introduced him. She giggled at us and said,"There is your husband, both handsome and intelligent." She was tickled. I love that I have a teacher with a sense of humor!

I think I am going to like this class. :)    Now back to Phil.


After getting home we realized we needed to get food so we headed to Costco. A note however when your only form of transportation is a small scooter and there are two of you that need to be on it, it is a good idea to shop light. We stocked up on food and since Costco doesn't have bags and everything is huge we had to get creative with the packing. We stuffed both of our backpacks, I had to wear mine in front of me so Hannah could get on the bike, the front basket was full as was the storage under the seat, Hannah was holding on to both a big thing of Mr. Clean and a package of meat  while I had a large box of Frozen waffles in the space for my feet on the scooter. After a few blocks it started raining :P fortunately Costco is only about 7 min from the house.

Our Partially loaded scooter after a Costco visit.

Once Home I changed and met Brother Gao downstairs for service we worked in his territory some parts that were more spread out and more difficult to work with a larger group. It was rainy and cold but still a very enjoyable experience. We got to talk to quite a few people sharing the good news and inviting them to our meetings.

Once home it was time for Homework Character practice :)

Oh and this wasn't from Costco but another store that we get food from we thought these were funny but after taking pictures an employee came up and told us no cameras. I guess maybe they don't want any evidence :)

Chicken part Area

Chicken Cube

That's it for today.
Love Phil and Hannah

Beginning Week 2 of classes CHARACTERS

Yesterday evening (Sunday) we helped a brother move in to his new apartment about a block from us. This brother has been here in Taiwan for 9 years and is fluent in Chinese but after graduating from BSSB he was assigned to an English congregation near by in Taichung. He got a really nice little studio apartment and unlike most of the places here he didn't have to do a thorough cleaning before moving in. This was because the previous tenant was just kicked out for not paying either his rent or electric bill. The apartment was just  re done so it looks very nice. The only down side was that it was night and the electricity to the apartment wasn't turned on yet. So we stumbled around and put things where ever we could find a spot then the brother lit some candles and went to get some food for everyone.

A candle lit move

When he returned we enjoyed some interesting new food and some familiar things. Including fries both regular and sweet potato, deep fried chicken chunks, deep fried fish guts ( I didn't try that) and a few other things. We also enjoyed some tea Hannah had a really good passion fruit tea that was like an Icee, I had a lemon tea that was also really good.

Today (Monday) We had our first quiz in our main class. It had three parts, First the teacher said a word and we had to circle it from an option of 4 different words, some where the same word with only the tone making the difference. Second she said two words and we had to write down what she said in PinYin with the correct tone. Last we had Three questions written in PinYin that we had to write our answer in PinYin. The questions were "Ni Jiao shenme mingzi?" -What is your name. "Ni jia you ji ge ren?" -How many people in your family? and "Ni xi huan shenme dong wu" - What animals do you like?

After the quiz we started with characters. Today was not an intense study of them just a introduction to them. She started by showing us some of the ancient characters from Jia gu wen or "oracle bone script" where they carved their writing on to turtle shells or deer skulls. From there she showed the progression of how it changed as time went on to what we have today. Looking at some of the old characters they made sense and I could understand why they used them but with most as it progressed I couldn't see the relation any more.

After going over that and explaining that not all characters look like what they are describing but some do. she told us that you can sometimes guess the meaning of a character you don't know by noticing part of it that you do know like if a character has 人 or 亻(another form of ren which means people)  then that character probably has to do with people in some way like 們 (men used to make it plural like 我們 women = us, 他們 tamen = them, 你們 nimen = all of you). so since men has the radical for ren (  亻) then you can guess that it is talking about people. Confused yet? Yeah me too :)

After class we thought we had our electives so I headed to He Fenfen's class and Hannah stayed in the same room since she has Lin Weiling for her elective as well. When I got to class He Fenfen said that she had me down for Tuesday, Thursday but that if I wanted she could switch me to Monday, Wednesday. I said yes because I wanted to have the same schedule as Hannah. So we started class and a few minutes later there is a knock on the door it is Hannah and Lin Weiling telling me I am in the wrong class. apparently they switched us both to Tuesday, Thursday since Hannah was also in the wrong class. Funny side story: Hannah was a little nervous to interrupt He Fenfen's class and she asked Lin Weiling if she thought she should. Lin Weiling kinda shrunk back and said "Oooh... He Fenfen?" like she was scared of her too.

Since we no longer had class we headed home. We ran a few errands and then about 5:30 we went to the hall to meet the brother to pick up our new scooter :) Well that is about it for now until next time.
Love Phil and Hannah.

Stinky Tofu, Water, and a Scooter

After the mid week meeting (Friday) there is a tradition of sorts to go out for stinky tofu. This week we had enough energy to go. They described this place's stinky tofu as not as stinky as most places. They serve it fried and with different dressings including hot sauce and garlic sauce. I think how I would describe it is: not horrible but not good either. Here is a picture of it:

We also ordered dumplings which were different from what we are used too. Its funny we went into this expecting Chinese food which was dumb they don't have Chinese food they have Taiwanese Food. There were two kinds of dumplings both traditional and spicy I didn't particularly care for either. Hannah liked the traditional but they are very different from what she is used to to.

 

I think we will keep going but really more for the association than the food. But they did say that it is an acquired taste and that by the 3rd time you will like it. Personally unless something has really changed in my brain by coming over here I don't think it will happen I don't really acquire taste for things :)

Today (Saturday) we went to get some drinking water. since the pipes are not safe to drink from here you can either boil it or buy it from these dispensers around town that look like gas pumps but actually it is filtered water. Filling a 5 gallon jug will run you about 20nt or $0.68 USD

 

Then we went to look at scooters. We met Justin at the Kingdom Hall, from there we met another couple at a 7-11 who we then followed to a different scooter shop. The scooter shop is owned by a bible study. There we had 2 choices in 50cc one was 12000nt with a discounted price of 11000nt the other was 10000nt. After riding both we decided that the one for 10000nt rode smoother. When it was all said and done she gave it to us for 11000nt including the registration required insurance, additional insurance, a basket and fixing the odometer. So that works out to be about: $378.65 USD. From our first venture out we were thinking we would have to spend 500USD before all the registration and insurance. We will get to pick up our scooter at 5pm on Monday. Also the couple was really nice and let us use their residence card. (basically in order to own a scooter in Taiwan you have to be a resident if you are not you have to find someone who is willing to let you use their's if you get in an accident or get a ticket it will go to them.)

Us with the bible study who sold us our scooter

 Our new bike

  

Drive to school

Well I know a lot of you have been wondering about transportation here in Taiwan. So since today was pretty uneventful I can take the time to show you. Here in Taichung you have several options including: Bus, Taxi, Car or scooter. With an international license that you get from AAA for $15 and your drivers license you can drive either a car or a scooter up to 50cc. If you have a motorcycle license then you can drive any size scooter or motorcycle. Here the easiest and more important cheapest option is a scooter. Driving a car is rather difficult mostly because of the lack of parking for cars where as scooters basically can park where ever you can find a place sidewalk included. Those who do drive cars end up illegally double parking a lot.

While it looks and sounds pretty scary people here are very used to scooters everywhere so in a way I think it is actually safer to drive a scooter here than it is back home.

Also while we Skyping, Cindy saw Hannah's helmet and thought it was super cute and told us to post a picture of it. So here it is:

Here is a video I took from the back of the scooter while Hannah drove to school this morning:

Today I had my elective class 103 practicing listening and speaking. Hannah did not have her elective today so she went and read by a nice garden/pond that is located on campus. Here are some pics of the campus now that I have gotten to explore it a little more.

To the far left in this picture you get a glimpse of my favorite spot on campus. There is a raised area with an awning that overlooks the pond. I like to sit with my back to one of those poles right next to the water and read. There are hundreds of fish that are easy to see since the water is very clear. Its beautiful! -Hannah

well that is all for today. until next time.
Love Phil and Hannah

Day 3 Feng Jia & Scooter Problems

Today was our 3rd day of classes and my first day in the elective class I will actually be in. The Teacher is He Fenfen (yes the scary teacher Hannah had) she is a good teacher just um well I think the nice word is INTENSE. The fact that I am in the level one class helps too, I'm with many students that don't speak at all. She handed out packets with 4 pages with sample sentences that we went over. The first page was introducing yourself and saying you are a student at FengJia, you like to drink coffee or you don't like this or that. Once we had gone over the sheet she had each student get up in front of the class and introduce themselves and say a few things about themselves. She kept telling them say more, say more! After a few prayers and a lot of nervous thinking I knew that I wanted to give at least a small witness. So I realized with my little Chinese I knew how to say "Wo shi Yehehua jianzheng ren. Wo shi shengjing laoshi." that is: I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses. I am a bible teacher. After I said a few things and my 2 sentences of a witness the teacher translated for the class "Bible teacher".

I was really happy that I understood most of the class and was even able to help another brother in my class who was having a hard time. After class I met a nice couple who attend the XiTun congregation. I was able to piece together a few simple things to say, and then I headed to the book store on campus to meet Hannah.

After class, I got a message from Brian who said that the starter was the problem with the scooter and that it could be fixed by 5 and it would be pretty cheap. We were really happy, then we headed to the store and then home for a nap. about 6 we went to get the scooter when we arrived the mechanic said that it was ready but that it had ran out of oil and blown a gasket. We were shocked and asked how we were supposed to know when to put oil in. He said when the light comes on, we said the light never came on, to which he said its old probably broken. I asked if it would still work he said yeah just will be loud and if you have problems then you need to take a break. 

So we started it up and it sounds AWFUL! But it is running. We head home pick up the scooter we had borrowed from Brian and Sioux and went to return it. As I drove, at every stop light the engine died but it started right up when I needed to go, so I was thinking ok we can live with this it is loud and stops at lights but it runs. After arriving at Brian and Sioux's we went into a store next to their apartment to get a few things we needed. The stress was really starting to get to Hannah; she said a prayer to Jehovah asking him for help to get through it. She turned around and what did she see Orange Milanos cookies (for those of you who don't know this is Hannah's FAVORITE comfort food that she has had a really hard time finding back home). Jehovah answers prayers in ways we don't always expect :). When Brian and Sioux came down we told them what was happening and returned their key. Brian called mechanic who basically told him "well they ran it out of oil it’s going to have problems". 

We said our thanks and good byes and got on our scooter to head home. But while crossing an intersection less than a block away it died in the middle of the street and wouldn't start. Hannah had to jump off and I had to walk it across the street. After waiting a few minutes we tried it again... nothing. So we called Brian again and he kindly offered for us to borrow their scooter again. 

Although things can be stressful Jehovah takes such good care of his people. In no other organization could you even dream of the generosity, hospitality, kindness and love that is shown among God's people. We constantly thank Jehovah for our friends. Well that is all for today. Hopefully tomorrow will be less eventful :)

Love Phil and Hannah

Day 2 @ Feng Jia

Today was our second day of classes and our first day with electives. We woke up a little late this morning I think we are getting used to the time difference which is great now that we actually need to get up early :P. We made it to class with about a minute to spare. Today in 101 we started learning Zhu Yin and practiced tones. A little over halfway through our class Hannah walked in and sat down. Because she doesn't know characters her teacher decided to make an example of her and kick her down to 101 so she maybe in my class now. Hannah was really sad and disappointed, especially since she was able to understand everything her teacher was saying.

(Brief explanation from Hannah) I knew going into it that it was going to be very hard to keep up since the lessons we read in class are only in Characters. I was really excited about class though, because I could keep up with her when she taught the lesson, yet still felt like it was a challenge. The down side of attending a university is that they don't care if you are learning the language to preach and want to focus on the spoken language. It was really humiliating at first. It was completely out of the blue. She started the day with going over new vocab,  which I participated in the entire time. We were scheduled to have a test over 10 new characters today, which I was prepared for. She came to my desk during a break before we did any work on characters or the test, and asked me to write characters for her. Before I could she told me she didn't think I could stay in level two. She just said, "I like you, but you have to know characters. This is FengJia." I couldn't believe it. I should have seen it coming. Being in level two starts you in lesson 8 of the book. A student is required to know all the characters from the last 7 lessons. (Which is well over 200 main characters) To catch up I would have to learn all of those while learning the new ones in our current lesson.
I asked her when I should switch to 101 and she said now. I thought she meant after class, but she meant right now in the middle of class. My teacher laughed to the class while I packed up my books and said, "Well I already killed one student. Study hard, or I will send you to level one too." She took me to the office to see which class to switch me into. The whole time I couldn't stop thinking about how hard we worked to get here. How our friends had helped us so much to come here, just so we could study the language. I felt like I was already failing. That this was a huge set back. Standing in the middle of the office, my nose suddenly started bleeding from the stress. Like the previous display wasn't enough humiliation.
When I sat in on 101 it was almost painful how elementary it was. It is perfect for someone just learning the language, but I was at that level 4 years ago when I took Chinese in High School.

Oh well. We knew not everything was going to be perfect. I will use my time in class to really study so I can be sure to advance to level 2 next quarter. I knew this was going to be a humbling experience coming to Taiwan. I just didn't think it was going to happen on my 2nd day of class.
Now back to Phil...

I think my teacher is much nicer. After our main class ended we went to look at the board for our elective classes I was planning on taking 103 which is practicing listening and speaking. Hannah is going to take 203 which is the second level of practicing listening and speaking. Since there are so many students there are actually going to be 2 classes of 103 but they have not gotten it all assigned yet. The electives are 2 days a week there was not a 103 class today this week but next week there will be. Because we want to have the same schedule I went ahead and sat in on the 203 class today. It was kinda scary, but the teacher that I have for 101 is the same for 203. She was so kind and paid special attention helping me since I was very lost for most of it. When it first started she had us go around the room and say our name and where we were from, I thought hey I can do that maybe I can do 203 with Hannah. That was the end of that thought :)

Next she handed us a bingo sheet each square had a question to ask our class mates if they have the same answer as you they put their name on it and you get to circle that square. As if questions and answers are not hard enough, all of the questions are only in characters. The teacher first read through all of the questions but my little brain couldn't keep up and I didn't know what a lot of the words meant. Hannah helped me with a few, then the teacher came and helped me write out 4 of the questions and explained what they were asking. so I was able to get a few names put down.

LIN Weiling Our Teacher  for 101 and 203 

Our class room

After going over some more phrases and questions class was over. We were both starving so out of desperation we went to McDonald's. Where we discovered yet another universal truth... Where ever you go McDonald's will make you feel gross after you eat it :).

Lunch @ McDonald's

Trash can @ McDonald's Everything is recycled in Taiwan

Top of trash can

On our way home our scooter started acting up. We made it all the way home and then it just died and we couldn't get it to start again. I texted Brian Lee a brother in our congregation and he said he would come take a look at it for us. Its now at the shop, we will probably have to take the bus tomorrow.

Well that was our day hopefully we can get the scooter going. Hope you are all doing well 

Love Phil and Hannah


  

Saturday service

Well as with most things we managed to get confused again. We thought that service arrangements were suppose to be at the hall on Saturday at 8:45. So we arrived on time but no one was there. A bit discouraged and tired we decided that we would walk to the bank since we needed money for a visit to the scooter store anyways later in the day. When we returned there was still no one there so we decided to head home and email some of Hannah’s studies. As we were getting on the scooter, a brother arrived from the XiTun congregation (The other congregation that meets at the same hall as us) and then a few more. We were kind of hesitant since we are still nervous about driving to places especially when we don't know where we are going. But they were persistent and said that the territory was close enough that they just walk to it.

We walked to the territory and I Talked with a very nice unbaptised publisher Roger Chen. He only spoke a little English but between his English and my even smaller Chinese we were still able to talk. It was really nice he has the goal of baptism and regular pioneering.

When we arrived at the territory I was assigned to work with a Korean sister named Grace Lin. She was very kind and took several doors before I worked up the nerve to try. It was an apartment building with about 28 buzzers. When you press the buzzer it rings and then if you hear an answer you talk into the intercom which also has a camera so they can see you. I gave my very simple presentation to 3 people and 2 of them were very nice and told me I could leave the tract in their mail box. After lots of looking the sister and I finally found where the mail box was and put the tracts in the appropriate boxes.

Hannah Worked with Sabrina, a sister who lived in Canada for several years. Her English was very good, and since Hannah speaks Chinese well she didn't take it easy on her, she had her talking at every other door. Hannah placed mags with a nice man who said they could come back.

After service the group went to a Family Mart for break and we followed a sister back to the hall since we wanted to go home before returning to the hall to meet Justin who had volunteered to take us to the scooter shop. When we got to the hall however we realized that our helmets were still inside the hall, and the sister we were with didn't have a key. So we had to wait for the group to return. After retrieving our helmets Justin came and we rode in his car to the scooter shop. They had a lot of scooters, but most were 100cc and we can only drive a 50cc so that limited the selection quite a bit. He had one that he was going to let us try, but it wouldn't start, so not a good sign. We got his card and he said he would try to get some more ready for us to choose from. We headed home then for a nap.

Justin

About 5:45 we headed over to Brian and Sue Lee's new apartment for dinner. There we met Jackie another sister also from California. It was a very fun evening with lots of good stories and homemade chicken noodle soup. We also tried some new fruit called a custard apple? You eat it with a spoon and it is very sweet.

On our way Home Jackie showed us how to get to Carefour (kind of like a Target back home). Tim and Jamie had shown us it before but we didn't pay close enough attention to know how to get there. As it turns out it was really close to the hall.

Well that is about all I have to report for now sorry for getting a little behind with classes starting everything got really busy.

Until next time,

Love Phil and Hannah