Hot Pot, The Mafia, and Spiders... Oh My!
It’s been an eventful week of food, traditions, and prepping for our camp.
Helllooooo all!
It’s been an eventful week of food, traditions, and preparation for the next week ahead.
Food + Friendship
This last week was full of food and friends… just the way it should always be! We were both excited to see people from our missionary service that we had met years ago.
Seeing my old mission companion, Sister Lin, was such a nice reminder of the depth of friendship. We lived together for 9 months in New York, spending 24 hours a day together. I learned so much from her then and continue to learn from her now! We haven’t seen each other for 7 years, and so much has changed - we both got married, we live on completely different sides of the world, I graduated college, she gave birth to her son, and we haven’t kept up more than a few pictures sent a few times a year marking big events. But getting together for dinner with Sister Lin showed me that true friendships can and will survive the twists and turns of life. Sister Lin is as kind and hilarious as ever.
As I mentioned earlier, Sister Lin now has a baby! At the restaurant, her son, almost two years old, was flinging himself across the seat every which way, dumping water on the ground, shoving heaping spoonfuls of rice in his mouth and craning his head to see the robot that would come through to pick up dishes. He was indifferent towards me but loved Jonny. Each time Jonny stood up to get more sauce or fruit, her son would look around confused and say, “Shu shu?” (“Uncle?”) Sister Lin would reach around him every 5-10 minutes to get a single bite of food for herself. I tried to intervene but he would cower away. At the end of the meal, I asked her, “Are you full?” And she said, “Uh… 80%”.
While her son was wrecking havoc in a way only an almost-two-year-old can, Sister Lin said, “Normally I would feel embarrassed by this, but because I’m with you, I just feel like it’s whatever.” That was the happiest thing to hear!
The Sea Goddess + The Mafia
We traveled to a small town called Dajia, the hometown of a man Jonny had met the last time he came to Taiwan, Elton. Jonny was connected to Elton through his friend’s dad, and we wanted to pay him a visit. He invited us to come to a festival he was in charge of. Knowing little else, we agreed and took an hour train to the town. On our way to the location, we began to hear thumping of drums and blaring of horns. We knew we were close.
Each year Dajia Mazu, a Taoist deity and goddess ruling the sea, makes the pilgrimage from city to city to recharge her spiritual energy and bring blessings of the sea to the people. What we were attending was the return ceremony, where Mazu came back to the city of Dajia, her home base. (More info here)
We met Elton at a room next to a warehouse. The room had a big shrine in the back, with gold and red details, big statues guarding each side, and a big spread of Chinese dishes and cut fruit as offerings to the goddess that was to come. Elton is lively, charismatic, and welcoming. He greeted us and introduced us to a few other people in the room.
“The most respectable man to come out of Taiwan,” he said, gesturing to an older Chinese man dressed in white. We smiled, bowed slightly, and said our hellos. Elton continued: “If you show a picture of this man to anyone in Taiwan, they will know who it is.”
“Wow,” we said, genuinely impressed, without quite knowing what to be impressed about.
Suddenly, like a strike of lighting, the room exploded with drums and horns. People came in all at once, a throng of people pushing Jonny and me into a small room, where we could see that this all was being broadcasted live on TV. Firecrackers popped and crackled outside in the sky. Cameramen craned their necks and lifted their big black cameras in the air to get a good shot. Eight men entered suddenly, surrounded by a crowd of people, carrying the sedan chair with Mazu on their shoulders. People pushed against each other trying to get a good view. They placed the deity on the altar. The horns blared louder than I thought possible. We all bowed repeatedly to the deity. Gongs clashed. Fireworks sounded off outside. And it was finished.
Afterward, after eating bowls of rice and stewed pork to celebrate Mazu’s return, we asked Elton who the man was whom we took a picture with. “Oh, him? He’s Taiwan’s top Mafia leader,” he said, “If anyone messes with you, just show them that photo.”
Into the Jungle
Starting Monday of next week, we will be out of the concrete jungle and into the ACTUAL JUNGLE.
We begin our first English camp next week. The director of the English learing camp wants to inspire the kids here to get outside more, so she created an outdoor English camp that we are running She found an abandoned school in the middle of the jungle high high up in the mountains of Taoyuan. The school hasn’t been used in over 20 years and it’s pretty beat up, but we are hoping to bring it back to life! This is the first year they have ever done something like this, so we have been assisting with the planning.
We met our group of camp leaders and we toured the campus together. They stuffed us into a tiny truck to show us some hiking trails. There were tall bamboo forests on either side of us, and we took turns flicking insects off of eachother. Speaking of bugs, there are also MASSIVE spiders at the school. We found one in all it’s glory in the middle of a web in a hallway. It’s going to be an interesting week this coming week! Stay tuned!
Thank you for reading! Here is a little photo dump of some other fun times this week. The time right now is exactly 1234 - which is probably a sign that it’s time for bed!
Love, Kimber