Culture shock? (or coca cola, doritos and hip hop)

It's been a busy several days. My Candian friends left yesterday, which leaves me as the only non-proficient Mandarin speaker, and leaves me without my best translator. I'm getting by, though "ting bu dong" (I don't understand) is fast becoming my most common expression.

There are about 60 people from Taipei who have been here since yesterday. Most of them are doctors and they are giving all 90 some children physicals at once. They're checking hearing, vision, teeth, height, weight, blood pressure, ears, nose and throat. I was corraled and made to fill out a form and go to the first station (I think they're worried about me because I told them I had a stomach ache), but I escaped when I saw the computer was free in the office. :) It's very organized chaos all around the campus.
The night before last we had a going away party for Melody, Esther, Emily and Greg. The kids here are organized by houses- there are 2 girl houses and 5 (I think) boy houses. Each house did some sort of performance- singing or dancing. They were so cute. To end the show, we performed the same aborigianl dance I posted a photo of in my last post. We've been having some of the highschoolers teach us. I danced with the 3 girls and we recruited 3 guys to dance with Greg. We practiced for 3 or 4 nights before hand. It was so much fun! Everyone was cheering so hard by the end of our performance, even though I KNOW we made fools of ourselves (we hadn't practiced on the stage before and it's much smaller so we didn't really have ths space we needed, plus we started wrong- oh well- everyone loved it anyway). I had to laugh one night as we practiced though. The kids had come over to the guest house where we were living and we were all in the common room. We took a break from dancing, and sat around eating doritos, drinking coke and listening to hip-hop. I guess youth culture has some universals.

Today I'm feeling a little adrift without my foreign friends, but I feel like I'm beginning to adjust. Here's how I know. I finished a bowl of noodles using chopsticks faster that the native chopstick users at my table. When a little boy slapped me in the face, I thanked him- he was killing one of the annoying "wenzi" (mosquitos). I respond to jie jie. I had a real conversation in Mandarin (limited to where did you go? I went to buy tea. Where is Greg? I don't know. Did you go to school today? yes. How was it? It was good. but it was still a conversation.)

Ok, I'm off to church.

It FINALLY HAPPENED!!!

We got our referral for our son and daughter! We are so happy and excited. Kai-Wei will be 10 next month (he is the only boy in the playground picture) and Su-Ya is 7. Aren't they both so sweet?!

God is so good to us! We got our referral the SAME DAY Annie arrived in Taiwan! We took a while to post because we wanted time to review all the paperwork and officially accept the referral. Annie will get a chance to meet both of them when she gets to Taipei. This is really wonderful!!

We are praying that God has been preparing their hearts for this major change in their lives. We hope they will be excited and happy too. I'm thinking about what I can put in a little package for them and I'm just so nervous and excited about it!!

Sunday in Pictures

There is a group at the orphanage that perfomrms aboriginal dances. We travelled with them to Kaohsiung and here they are performing.


A view form the bus on the way to Kaohsiung.


The Sunday school service we taught in the morning


The kids reinacting our skit of the good Samritan

Well, I had a whole list of photos to upload, but it is taking forever, so perhaps I will upload a few more later.

Hello from Liu Kuei

Hello everyone!

I have arrived safely in Taiwan and am now at Christian Mountain Children's Home in Liu Kuei (pronounced leo gwey). Liu Kuei means six tortoises and it's called that because there are 6 tortoise shaped hills (all of which have tunnels through them).

The orphanage is very nice. The kids have been at school during the day, so we haven't spent a real lot fo time with them, but we did teach an English lesson last night and this morning. The kids are so funny. They like to joke around. Last nights lesson was "How old are you?" and one ten year old named Michael kept asking me and then laughing when I answered. I asked him how old he was and he wouldn't anser, so I asked, "are you 10?" and held up 10 fingers. He told me no, so I kept going down til I got to 1. He told me yes, he was 1. I told him "ni shi hen xiao (you are very little) Ni shi bao bao (you are a baby) and he just laughingly agreed.

Today Andy asked me why my eyes are blue. I told him in Chinese my parents also have blue eyes, and he said he didn't understand what I was saying. But Amy, who was right next to him did. I think he was just giving me a hard time.

There is a cute little baby girl here, the daughter of the cook. She does tricks. you can tell her to smile, cry, look angry, make cat, dog, fish and umm, maybe a lion noise. We are trying to teach her to do monkey now. She's so funny. I only know how to tell her to smile and cry, but she will. She loved playing peek-a-boo with me.

In about an hour we are going to leave for a rural church where we are going to teach a lesson. Melody (a Canadian born Chinese girl) is going to be our official translator since she is fluent in Mandarin. We're going to do a skit of the good Samaritan. Since I'm the obvious foreigner in the group, I get to be the good Samaritan. :)

Pray for our team (4 Canadians and myself) that we would continue to get enough rest and be a blessing to those around us!

~Annie

Mingtian (Tomorrow)

Tomorrow morning I leave for Taiwan! I'm flying out at 6am, and I'll arrive in Taipei on Thursday at 5pm, Taiwan time (Thursday 5am our time.) From the airport I am taking a train to Kaohsiung in the south of the country where I'll be met by someone from Christian Mountain Children's Home. (http://www.twcmch.org/history.htm). I will spend 2 weeks
volunteering there. From an e-mail from a social worker at the orphanage I heard about a team that is currently there, "They teach English, Songs, bible studies and gardening etc...I think by time you're arrival , we would like you to join their work, and to live with the team girls, for we don't have extra room and since they could speak both English and Chinese, so that might be easier for you to learn about our Home and kids. About your questions, here are the answers: We have 7 children age from 3-6, and 44 of elementary school, 28 of junior-high school."


After my 2 weeks at the orphanage, I will head back to Taipei where I will stay with Yvonne Sung and her 2 daughters. From Yvonne's e-mail, "After you are back from orphanage, 4-5 families will take turns to invite you joining their family activities and/or visit Taipei city spots (like National Palace Museum) during the daytime . Back to my house in the evening. Most of the families are Christians, they like to invite you to share/exchange experience with their family members about cross-culture information and languages."

I'm really looking forward to my experience. I should be able keep you updated while I'm there on some of the things I'm doing!

I have a few prayer requests to share.
1. Christian Mountain Children's Home has a choir that travels every year. This summer they are travelling to Shiang-Hai and Wen-Jou, China, as well as the US and Canada. Pray for safe travels for them and that God would belss many through their ministry.

2. Pray for opportunities for me to share God's heart for adoption with some of the families I meet. Culturally, adoption is not very well accepted in Taiwan, and there is a possibility I may be able to share at a church about why my fmaily is adopting. It would be very awesome if God would use me to open people's minds and hearts to orphans.

3. Pray for safe travels for me. I'm a little nervous as I've never travelled so far before.

Happy Father's Day!

I just wanted to take a few moments to say what an awesome Dad we have. He's always been the one you can ask anything and he'll probably know the answer. Even our cousins say, "Ask Uncle Dana". He took us to work with him and taught me to lay hardwood flooring. When I accidently stepped off a ladder and into a gallon of paint once, he didn't even get angry. He spent hours on the floor playing with us when we were little- "Mud" with Rebecca and I, Fisher Price people with Daniel. He singlehandedly provides for a family of 7, fixes all our computer problems, and cooks the meals when we camp. My Dad's a pretty amazing guy.

Happy Father's Day Daddy! I love you!



Today we also celbrated Jonathan's 12th birthday since we were all in different states or countries when he actually turned 12. I can't believe how big he's getting!



And just a few summer pictures, since our blog has been light on the photos.