We moved on from Korea and arrived...in Taiwan!! We have spent almost no money so far. Jordan's friends have taken us to dinner, driven us around, and even invited us into their homes!

Yesterday we arrived at the bus station in Taichung after a long bus ride from the Taipei airport. We waited for Jordan's friend, Christopher Lyao, to pick us up. Jordan made us stand on an island in the middle of the intersection so that he could see us more easily. I didn't see that we needed to go to the middle of the road for people to see us. Let me just say that I think half the city of Taichung has stared at us for at least 15 seconds.

Taiwan honestly seems very dirty on the outside. There are places in the city where very rich people live, but everyone else's houses/apartments remind me of the ghetto in NYC. In reality though, the outsides of buildings are just different, and the layout of businesses and homes is foreign to me. They get a ton of rain and so there are a lot of rust stains everywhere that I think contribute to the look. I suppose it is hard as well to fit 22 million people into an area 1/3 the size of Utah, with everyone living on the edges of the island.

I think that I just need to adjust my thinking because Taiwan is wonderful in a way that is totally different from the US. I've never met kinder people who are so eager to please in whatever way they can. Church today was fun--Jordan translated for me in Sacrament Meeting, but then he went to bear his testimony and I was clueless, but I'm sure it was a great testimony!! I went to RS with the sister missionaries; they are amazing! One of them came out the same time as Amy, and she could speak and comprehend way more Chinese than I could imagine someone learning in only 3 months in the MTC and 3 weeks in Taiwan. The church building was just built recently and it is really beautiful. There are palm trees in the front, and the whole place is very nice and clean, as one could expect with a LDS meetinghouse. After RS ended there was cake for the whole ward to celebrate a baby blessing. A member told me that if a girl is born there is cake, and if a boy is born they have rice. Mom and Dad--you should have lived in Taiwan because everyone would have loved having cake all the time!! :)

So on to the food...first of all, I really love Taiwanese baked goods. The cake we had today was more of a dense pound cake, and it was sooo delicious. Yesterday we had a real Chinese meal with Christopher Lyao and a member who Jordan baptised. There were honestly more than 15 dishes on the lazy susan that we ate through. Seriously...we filled the lazy susan up with new dishes more than 3 times. My favorites were an eggplant dish with fish sauce and tofu and a type of roll that you dip into a sweet sauce. The best way to describe the roll is that it is similar to the kind you get at Chinese buffets, but without the sugar and more dense, and of course much tastier. The sauce was similar to sweetened condensed milk. Other dishes I liked included crispy strips of taro, whitefish with the bones on it (just a fish laying there...), cauliflower in a milk sauce, bean sprouts, and a hot garlic cabbage dip. I didn't enjoy the fried shrimp with mayonnaise dribbled all over it, or the many meat dishes we had...lamb, pork, beef, etc.

Today as I walked out of our hotel room with a Nature Valley granola bar in my mouth, we realized that breakfast is included in our stay. I grabbed a croissant and filled my water bottle up with mango juice, but we saw many more interesting breakfast foods...I will update on that after we try it tomorrow!

After Church today we had 36 potstickers for $3. The member who took us to lunch also bought us sweet and spicy soup with coagulated blood. I avoided that part after I tricked Jordan into telling me what it really was after telling me it was red tofu.

Christopher Lyao then took us on a car ride to see some African crocodiles...it was just a crocodile farm on the side of the road. After that we drove up to a very large Buddhist temple. I felt like I needed to cut off my hair and sing Mulan songs about becoming a man and going to fight the Hans...haha. Jordan went to the very top of the temple and rang a bell. He used a 7 ft long log to pound it, if that tells you how loud it was. We found out he wasn't supposed to do that after a monk ran up and yelled at him in Chinese. He pretended like he didn't understand, so they will probably just talk about the idiot Americans who visited today.

We went to a member's house for dinner and had some more delicious food. This included spiced beef, mini corn and snap peas, Chinese cabbage, scrambled egg patties with onion, pork with green onions and garlic, pineapple, and watermelon. After dinner we went to a night market and walked around providing everyone with a spectacle for the night.

It's hard to be stared at when it has been a long day and you don't feel that you look your best...you start to think that it's because something looks wrong about you. So we came home and are now about to finally go to bed!

PS jet lag was never a problem. Jordan somehow timed our flights perfectly, and I only felt tired last night after 7pm. We woke up at 2 am this morning, but went back to sleep with no trouble at all. Hallelujah!

We are also staying at the nicest hotel in Taichung on our last night in the city...check it out! http://taichung-en.hotelone.com.tw/