Terrific Time in Taipei!

Friday

Today I got up early, packed my bags, hopped on my scooter and headed to the HSR to go to Taipei!! Melon and I met Phoebe at her house and her sister drove us to the Train Station. We then took a train to the High Speed Rail (HSR) station. It is unbelievable to me that we can get from Tainan to Taipei (about a 4-5 hour drive) in 90 minutes on the HSR! When we got there, I made my way to where I was to meet Alicia and want to talk about a big hug!!! It was so great to see her!

We got me a MRT( kinda like the Subway) card and headed to her house. We ate a quick lunch and then headed to meet Caty Joyce, one of Alicia’s friends. After meeting her, we headed to Carrefore (Wal-Mart on Steroids) to get ingredients to bake cookies for an event that Alicia’s church was having the next day. After buying tons of flour and sugar…etc, we took a taxi back to the church. (We had to! No way were we carrying all that flour and sugar back to the church walking.) We then commenced to baking 400+ cookies. 3 hours later and 410 cookies (give or take a few), we were done! Alicia and I went to this little Indian restaurant and she introduced me to Pakistani food. We had some great conversation and finally took ourselves home! But then!! We went to my very first Taiwanese night market! It was so much fun! We took pictures and got cookies! I bought a headband! It was way too much fun! Very overwhelming though! So many people and so much noise. After a while, we took ourselves home and went to sleep!

Saturday was also a good day! We got up and went SHOPPING! I found a few cute tops which were so cheap by American standards! I love it! We ate Subway for lunch and then went to the Alpha event. Alpha is a 10(?) week program that teaches unbelievers about the Lord. They meet once a week and have dinner and a study (I think). Anyway the event was to raise money for Alpha and to have more people sign up to be in Alpha groups. There was a band (Transitions – attached is a link to their most famous song), games (let by the lovely Alicia), a bake sale and other various things for sale. It was fun!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XTBwvi0h2E

After the event, we went to this restaurant called Bongos to celebrate Kelly’s (one of the missionaries) graduation from Chinese school! Bongos is a cute restaurant that has Western food! I had chicken fingers and fries!!!! So yummy! It was such a fun gathering. There was so much diversity at one table. We had two of the band member’s wives who were from the UK (so awesome British accents), and people from Ohio, Brooklyn, Texas, Taiwan and of course lil ‘ol me from Bama. Despite all this diversity, we one thing in common: Jesus Christ and our desire to see him glorified! Which meant we got along GREAT! Except for when they spoke Chinese and I didn’t understand what was going on!

Sunday was an incredible day! We went to Alicia’s church. It was so good to be with the body, even if I couldn’t communicate with most of them. There were little earpiece things that you put in your ear and the sermon was translated into English! It was awesome, except I got a headache because of the two different voices in my head. After the sermon, we went to a kind of small group prayer service. It was so powerful praying with all these believers, especially hearing them pray in Chinese. It just shows me more and more that Christ is everywhere; he speaks every language and he cares about every person!

After church, Alicia, Caty and I went to MaryJanes and had… PIZZA! It was amazing. In America, we take things like Pizza for granted. I hope I never do again. After inhaling some amazing Pepperoni pizza, Alicia and I went to Starbucks and then to a bookstore and bought me a Chinese/English Bible. After that, I got on the MRT all by myself and went to the HSR station. I had some time to kill before I met Phoebe and Melon, so I sat and people watched and counted foreigners. There weren’t very many (lol).

We rode the HSR and the train home and then I rode my scooter home and collapsed! I was soooooooo tired.