Aowanda

Hi everyone!

Here's your daily dose of Taiwanese news!

Thanksgiving Dinner
On Friday evening, the hospital celebrated American Thanksgiving with a huge party! Although America doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving till later this week, the hospital at Puli throw a huge feast the week before (I don't know why).Now when the Taiwanese throw a party, it HAS to involve superfluous amounts of food and music, so we arrived to find a giant pig being cooked on a spit. When I was a little boy I always wanted to go to a feast where they ate pig on a spit where the pig still looked like a pig (you know the ones where they put the apple in the pig's mouth?) cos I had seen it in medieval movies. Well we finally got our chance to eat the giant pig and they also had baskets and baskets of real fresh turkey!!! Yummo! It was like Christmas dinner one month early! We ate and ate and ate and then afterwards they hired a 4 piece brass band to play some classical music (NB: No violins, Steph and Ange!) which was really high quality... it sounded a lot better than the Parkes Shire Town Band! Then during the evening we were introduced to the Norwegian missionaries who founded Puli Christian Hospital 50 years ago. They were a lovely Christian couple who met here in Puli. He is a jack of all trades and she is a doctor and they have spent most of their lives here serving the people and telling them about God's love for them. All the people in Puli call them "Mother" and "Father" because of what they did for Puli, and the Taiwanese government gave them this special award because of the pioneering work they did amongst the aboriginal people here.

Aowanda
Wow! On Saturday, Helen and Jesse took us to Aowanda National Park along with 2 of their uni friends from med school (Daniel and Jack), a nurse named Amy and her 3 year old nephew (Jackie). We left really early and drove for hours till we reached this amazing national park. Aowanda is home to heaps of maple trees which cover the mountains, so it felt like we were in an American national park (from what I've seen of American national parks on TV). We walked up and up the mountain and I was awestruck by the majesty of the creation around us. I don't know how one can not believe in a Creator after seeing the beauty there! The mountains in Taiwan make the Blue Mountains in Australia look really really small! They were so huge and the air was so clear up there! I could have stayed up there all day! As we walked we stopped off at a log cabin kiosk and ate this bamboo rice (they shove rice into a hollowed bamboo shaft and then cook it - its really nice!) then continued up to the summit. At the top I felt like yodeling but thought it would be inappropriate and would only serve to have more people staring at me (as it is, little kids keeping pointing calling me an American in Mandarin - which we find really funny cos they don't know we can understand them).We had a great day and took lots of photos but we also got to chat to the resident doctors who so kindly took us with them. As we were walking along Helen stopped and prayed to a temple/shrine thingy and so Jade and Pete had a great conversation with her, asking her what she was doing and why. They then got to explain that they were Christian, but unfortunately I don't think it got any further. Keep praying that we might have opportunities to speak to them about Jesus!On the way back we stopped off at the 'highest' Starbucks Coffee shop in all of Asia (apparently it's famous for being so high up) and then we headed back in Amy's car.

Return of the Taichung
On Sunday morning we didn't go to church because one of our medical student mates from Sydney (Mark Woo) lives in Taichung and really really wanted to show us around (and he even swapped his day off to show us the city) so we went to Taichung for some sightseeing.
As per usual, the first stop off was for food! Mark took us to this HUGE buffet at this classy restaurant which was so amazing! We ate for almost 2 hours! Pete kept eating plate after plate pausing only briefly to see what else he could consume. The food was excellent and Mark's family were very hospitable and we felt very humbled again.
Then after lunch we went to see the 2 hospitals that Mark's father runs. The first one was a 200 bed community hospital which had a lot of patients on permanent ventilation. In Australia, we don't like to keep people on life support for very long and most people are content to 'turn-off' the machine after a certain time. But in Taiwan, the concept of turning off the life-support is abhorrent and so there are wards full of people in a semi-comatose state being kept alive by machines for years and years until their bodies give up. It was really sad to see all these people with no real hope stuck on these machines indefinitely. The second hospital we went to was a new psychiatric hospital in the city. Apparently Taiwan has a high rate of mental illness and psychotic episodes. But due to the stigma of mental illness in Taiwanese society, no one likes having an 'institution' so close to the city and so the hospital is very controversial. However, once looking inside, it appears that they treat their patients a lot better than we treat our psychiatric patients in Sydney.
After the tours of the hospitals, Mark and his mum and sister took us to the jewelry market cos Jade wanted to look at some stuff. It was really cool seeing all the people shopping and bartering and I managed to buy a painting and Mark's mum bargained with the lady to knock it down to 66% of the original price! How cool was that!
Then we headed off to the Taichung Night markets to do some serious retail therapy! Taiwan is famous for its cheap nite markets where you can buy almost anything! We walked for hours through the stalls and there's no easy way to describe it. Basically its about as crowded and noisy as the Parkes Show (or the Royal Easter Show) but it goes on and on for ages! And there's so many people crammed in to shop and music blaring and lights flashing and you have to hang on to all your belongings very tightly.I managed to buy this cool camouflage bandana for $2 AUS and a nice hat for $6 AUS. There was so much stuff there that I would 'like' to have bought, but I had to remind myself that I didn't 'need' a lot of what was there.Then after having eaten and walked and shopped till we dropped, we hopped on the bus and headed back to the quiet town on Puli.

Wushe
This morning Pete and I got shoved into a bus and packed off to a small mountain village called Wushe for the morning. We went with the gynecologist and his nurse and basically went to a small community medical centre that services the aboriginal people here. It was actually quite fun, cos no patients came so we just walked around and talked all morning then came home again. Apparently this week we have been assigned to go up to the mountain villages all week and tomorrow night I will stay the night up there. It's actually cold up there so maybe I will finally get to wear my beanie! Yay!

Anyway, I have more to write than time permits, but would love to hear what's happening back home and what you have been learning at church etc. (cos I don't get that much out of church here cos I can't understand it)

May God continue to mould us all into the likeness of His Son!

Jimbo