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Trip Start Mar 31, 2008 Trip End May 29, 2008 Next
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  Tucheng, Taiwan
Wednesday, April 2, 2008

  It's day two and the rain hasn't let up yet but they say the sun will be out soon (our first purchase in Taiwan was two umbrellas). The temperature is about 65 so nice and cool. We're wishing we had brought some fleece jackets with us instead of just raincoats.  We've been putting our raincoats to good use though. When we arrived we were told not to sleep too much during the day on our first day to help with jet-lag. So we unpacked everything and headed out on the town even though we were super tired and the bed was calling (more like screaming!) our names. Tucheng looks pretty much like any other city. Big buildings, alleyways and lots of cars and motocycles. It reminds us of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
  We walked about half a mile in every directions from the house. Took a few wrong turns, but eventually we found the MRT (subway), the Laundromat, a funky little tea house, tons of restaurants and of course 7-11s (they really are on every corner-literally). On one back street there is a fresh fruit and meat market that's pretty cool. We bought some water-fruit, which we've never had before, and a pineapple that is probably the best we've ever had - no joke! The meat was super fresh too, some of the chickens were still in their cages as we passed by, ready to be cut up for the highest bidder. Now that's what I call fresh!
  The home that we're staying in is really wonderful. It's a great size and I love the kitchen. There's an on-top-of-the-counter stove that consists of two giant gas burners. We'll be using a wok to cook everything. I love the idea of not using a bunch of different pans - it keeps things very simple which is wonderful. We have a bathroom right off our bedroom. It's a bit different from bathrooms back home because there is no separate shower/bathtub. The shower head and hose is attached to the sink and there is a drain in the middle of the floor. To wash up you stand in the middle of the completely tiled bathroom and when your done you just hose down the bathroom and mop up the excess water. We love it! So efficient and you never have to scrub a tub. We have also been allowed our own shelf in the fridge and a cabinet in the kitchen that our host has set aside for us to use if we go grocery shopping. She is so very very sweet. We've been able to communicate better than I thought with the use of our handy-dandy dictionary, sign language and digging into the dark recesses of our brains for every Chinese expression we have ever heard. Great practice, we just hope Rui Jin doesn't get too frustrated with us as we plug along.
  Rui Jin has a bible study every Wednesday morning and she asked Anita if she would like to sit in.  What a treat-Anita's first field service experience and she never had to leave the house!  The study went very well and she even understood part of the conversation. ;) Hopefully we will be able to go in door-to-door service this weekend. We'll be sure to let you know how that goes.
  We signed up for Chinese language classes today with our friend Ruth along to help us. She has been such a huge, huge help! I really don't know what we would have done without her. She picked us up at our house, brought us to her house to visit with the friends after afternoon bookstudy (everybody laughed super hard over Eric's giant feet), took us by bus and MRT to the school and helped us sign up for school. What a woman! Our first day of school is tomorrow 1-3PM. Starting next week we will be in group class everyday 1-3PM and private tutor class 3-5PM. Classes are month to month so about the 15th we will decide how much we want to be in class for May and sign up again.
  On the way back from signing up for school we stopped by one of the night markets in town. So much to see and eat! (We'll post pictures later-I need to buy a USB cable for my camera). We didn't get home until about 10:30PM so we're pretty whipped.
 That's all for now everybody! Sorry this is so wordy but there's just so much to share!! Our entries will get shorter as things become less new, we're sure.  Anyway, you can just skip over the boring parts, right? If you have any questions/comments please leave them for us. We really would love to hear from all of you.

Until next time!

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Hot towel	Tai Pei airport	Our room view 1	Our room view 2
Our room view 3	Our bathroom	Eric had to duck to get in the bathroom door	Rui Jin's apartment from front door
You can see our bedroom door as you walk in t	Entrance to kitchen	View of our building from across the street	View of street to left of doorway
view of street in front the house to left	View of street to right of doorway	View of street in front the house to right	Going on a walkabout on our first day
Scooters and buildings everywhere!	Street cleaner in front of our house	Dragon fruit at the day market by our house	Meeting the friends
Leaving Ai Zhu's house	On the way to school from Ai Zhu's	Our first taxi ride	Our first bus ride view 1
Our first bus ride view 2	MRT station	Food at the night market	Night market food view 2
The lights of Snake Street	Dessert soup	Lotus root	Sign at the night market
Taking the MRT home from our night on the tow   Comments!	MRT station

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