Wendell Barnes in Taiwan --Wednesday, July 15, 2009

I'm certainly not the most proficient blogger ever, since I wrote one this morning but then it did not post. I had written about our experiences in Taipei doing service and seeing the sights. Mark and Kevin and their families have truly pulled out all of the stops in planning our trip and especially showing off their home town. I told Mark and Kevin how true it is that we don't always visit the sites in our own home towns until someone comes to visit and you take them around, and they agreed. Today I had probably the most unique and memorable birthday of my life! We began the day at the National Palace Museum visiting all of the art antiquities there, including a large piece of jadeite carved into the shape of a bok choy cabbage and part of the Ching Dynasty collection. A restful morning in the beautiful modern museum housed in a gorgeous antique building. Then we went to Wang Steak for lunch and had a gourmet meal in a very nice modern downtown restaurant--all black glass and outstanding service and food. Following that we returned to the shopping mall near our hotel, shopped a bit and then 12 of the 14 of us went to see the latest Harry Potter that just came out today. After 25 minutes of Chinese commercials in which we tried to figure out what they were selling, the film finally started, and it was in English and captioned in Chinese. I noticed that the 99% Chinese audience could read the captions faster than they could be spoken in English, so sometimes the audience's laughter drowned out the punch line of what we were listening to! But it was still a cool experience. Then we took cabs to Mark's family's restaurant, where we had another of our endless course meals in a private dining room, followed by a delicious fancy strawberries in jello topped cake with so many sparkling candles on top that they caught on fire ( but no damage to the cake!), and poppers for everone that filled the air with tiny paper hearts, and a traditional Chinese cake in the shape of a giant peach, that when slit open, produced a large number of smaller peaches with a red bean sweet filling in them. The Huangs also gave me a beautiful titanium braclet for a birthday present and even paid for all of our cab rides back to the hotel. The hospitality here has been overwhelming and we are so grateful for all of our Taiwanese friends here.
The post I somehow deleted this morning also included the fact that several of the Taiwanese Dar students have been coming from nearby towns and neighborhoods to join us for some of our activities in Taipei. So far we have seen Jason Lui, Min Jin Liu, Erin Wu, Wesley Kuo, Ariel Tang, and incoming freshman Tim Huang, Mark's brother. Some of these have come and joined our group more than once, and they, Mark and Kevin have been so invaluable in translating for us when needed. However, it is very interesting to see how many Taiwanese people can get by with English--certainly a lot better than our Chinese! Taiwan has a national promotional motto "Touch Your Heart." It has and it will be difficult to leave all of the wonderful friends we have made on Friday. But because the country has touched our heart, we will take part of Taiwan and its people home with us.
WB