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