Too-to, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!

Hi!

Sorry I haven't written sooner, but I had a major presentation to complete for this afternoon, so you must excuse my tardiness.

The weekend
I love weekends!
Don't you? 2 days of no work/study to do and the chance to go to church and sleep in on Saturdays. After last week's taxing trip to the mountains, I was glad to kick back and relax in Puli on the weekend.
Friday night, we went grocery shopping and spent lots of money (well it sees like a lot of money when your grocery bill is over $700, but then that is really only $30 in Australia). We have discovered that meat costs about $1 AUS for one meal for all 3 of us, so we have decided to hoard up meat in our freezer to include in our meals each night. We 'think' it is pork ('joo-ro') but we really have no idea! It tastes nice with garlic though!
On Saturday afternoon Peter L (the computer guy) and his wife Ivy and their 2 sons (Eric and Edward) took us to this festival in a nearby village. From what I gathered, some famous person did something special a few hundred years ago and so now they have semi-deified him and made big idol/statues of him and hold a festival for him. This involves a lot of noise and firecrackers and big banging drums and really loud PA systems blaring the Macarena song over and over again. Unfortunately I had a headache that day and so the novelty of the decibel delights were lost on me. During the festival they get 2 carts and put a giant statue of the famous man/god/whatever-he-was and they get teams of men to push the cart and race the statues to the end of the road. This was pretty funny to watch (yet also sad) as they were literally 'chasing' after idols.
After we had watched the cart races, we were invited over for tea (that's the drink, not the meal - Taiwan holds tea in higher regard than Aussies their BBQs) at one of Peter L's friends houses. We chatted about politics and taxes (now don't I sound like an old man?) and the educational systems in Taiwan and Australia (sign me up for my hip replacement now!) and it was good because we were able to get Peter L to teach us more Mandarin (it's much more useful when you have someone to correct your bad pronunciation). I also discovered that 'guang-to' actually means 'skin-head' and the correct title for my alopecic hereditary male pattern androgenic baldness is 'too-to' (sounds like I'm the pet dog of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz).
Saturday night, Peter's sons, Edward and Eric invited us to go to the somewhat 'smaller' (compared to Taichung) Puli night markets. At the night markets, we spent some time shopping (having grown up with 3 sisters has desensitised me to the pain of retail therapy) and we spent some time at the shooting gallery (instead of shooting tin ducks, you shoot ballons) and we won a dodgy pair of watches that don't even tell the time (another fine product of Taiwan) and then we drank some tea before heading home for the night. It was quite bizarre because until that night we had hardly seen any young people (under 30) in Puli but at the night markets they all came out of hiding and were filling the streets with their merriment.

Church
Church on Sunday was fun! Joyce graciously picked us up again and we got to sing hymns in Taiwanese (they write the Chinese words in English letters so we can attempt to pronounce them as we sing) and the Bible reading was from Samuel (the bit about the guy who touched the ark of the covenant and got struck down by God) and I have no idea what the sermon was about. Apparently it was a thanksgiving service and o at the start the choir got up and started singing really nicely (Joyce translated it as "Praise the Lord, I want to praise the Lord" over and over again) and then all the Sunday School came up and sang for us. It was SO cute and reminded me of my Sunday School kids back in Sydney. Up the back were the big tough boys who refused to sing (the 'too-cool-for-school-brigade') and up the front were the ankle biters who have no idea that they are supposed to be singing and just grin at the congregation and incite the other similar heighten children next to them to riot and in the middle were the kids (mainly girls, cos boys are impossible to make sing in Sunday School) who actually did sing. It was very similar to a Parkes Baptist Sunday School Anniversary performance (in a good way Aunt Marge!) and then halfway during the sermon we had 2 new people join us; 2 of the campaigners for the election. I thought this was really dodge cos they waltzed right into church halfway thru the meeting all dressed up wearing their banners (in Taiwan you wear these tacky gold and red sashes with your 'number' on it when you are election campaigning) and they then stood at the door after church handing out how to vote cards. It really got up my nose that these people were doing this at church, but most of the Taiwanese people thought it normal, so maybe I'm just overreacting? What do you guys think?
After church Joyce got roped into taking the election people on a quick introduction/tour so Pete and Jade and I were left to play on the church's play equipment (which was really fun!) and this kid came up with his mother and said to his mother "That man (me) is a foreigner because he has blue eyes, but that man (Pete) isn't because he doesn't!" Then this kid proceeded to run around the play equipment like he had just been infused with intravenous undiluted red cordial. Up and down the ladders, jumping up and down on the platforms bouncing off every solid object like he was a Gummi Bear. Pete and I made a quick spot diagnosis of ADHD and hid our laughter as his mum tried in vain to bundle him into their car.
Joyce then took us to meet her dog and we realized that she actually lived above the church (the manse is above the church) and so we got a quick tour and she had a Welsh corgi named Donna who was really cute but had no tail (something about cutting it off to prevent sheep or cows getting it?? Any thoughts from a farmer in Parkes?)
We asked Joyce what she was going to do that afternoon and she replied, "Wash my dog, my father and my car!" (We knew she meant her father's car not her father, but it sounded funny!) Haha!

Banking
At long last I finally ran out of my initial money, so I had to make a trek to the bank on Monday. Now I had managed to survive for 3 weeks on only $100 AUS but decided it was time to cash in my travelers cheques so off I trekked into the dingy streets of Puli to find the bank. I had previously ridden a bike around town to find the bank, but to no avail, so this time armed with a map and determintation I walked for 30 minutes into town to find the Bank of Taiwan. After much searching and praying (the traffic almost killed me on multiple occasions - I love road rules in Australia!) I finally stumbled across this small dark alley in which the bank was situated. Not exactly the most easy place to find, but I managed to get them to convert my cheques into $23,000 NTD (doesn't that sound like a lot?) which is actually only $900 AUS but seeing as it sounds like a lot of money, I felt rich and plan to take a photo of my riches before they go (I can't think of any other time when I will have $23,000 cash on me).
On the way home I tried out the local KFC (it's amazing how you can order using charades and pointing to things) which was very substandard! I don't think I'll be going back there again in a hurry! The burger was so small and had almost no chicken on it and the fries were not like the KFC ones in Australia, they were more like stale Hungry Jacks ones.

Medicine
Being back on the wards is great! Having had a week off, Pete and I were ready to tackle the deep dark depths of internal medicine and sure enough within 2 hours of being back I had been given another presentation to do. This time I am presenting to the ICU ward meeting on the topic of "Current management strategies for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome with particular reference to the Evidence Based Medicine support for prone positioning"... sounds like fun eh? I think so too!
Despite the heavy workload, we still do get time to relax a lot and I AM thankful for the teaching Dr Nathan has given me, cos today when Pete and I showed up for ward rounds, we were told that we were getting 'shuffled' around to other doctors. So now I am with Dr Wally whose English isn't as good as Dr Nathan's so I will be learning a lot less but hopefully there will be less assignments for me (although he has already asked if I can do a presentation to the doctors on "The Australian Medical system")
Dr Wally is a lot different too in his style of medicine. One of our patients has severe chronic alcoholic problems (resulting in him bleeding in his stomach from oesophageal varices) and Dr Wally knew that the patient was a Christian so he told the patient that he needs to "be a good Christian" if he wanted to live much longer. I think he was trying to encourage the patient but I'm not sure if it worked because as we left the man broke down in tears and wept. Pray for this man that he would find comfort in God and that the Spirit would fill him (instead of wine which leads to drunkenness).
I had to stop myself from bursting out laughing today in the ICU. Dr Wally was trying to explain the bad prognostic state of one of the patients and he meant to say 'vegetative' but he came out with "He is in a vegetarian state". If it wasn't for the face mask disguising my grin, I'm sure I would have been caught out!

Coping with Taiwan
Sorry if my last blog seemed a bit despondent. I think it had been a long week and I was feeling the pressure of all the new things here. I am feeling much better now (thanks!) and God has been very good to us all over here! Friday night we all sat down and talked about how we were feeling about Taiwan and our homesickness which was good, because I realized that it wasn't just me feeling like that and then on Sunday I had a phone call from a whole bunch of Unichurch people (thanks Jeanne and Daniel and Steph and Ange and Bek and Bron and Bec!) which really encouraged me and then on Monday morning I had an inbox full of encouraging emails from back home... so thanks to all those who wrote/called and encouraged me! I really appreciated it!

Quick question
In our Bible studies that we have been doing at night, we have been looking at what Jesus death means for us. One of the questions we had that we haven't been able to find a good Bible verse for is "How can we be sure that Jesus death was sufficient enough to redeem us?" Anyone out there got any helpful passages? Thanks!

Health
Another quick prayer point, since being over here, all 3 of us have been expericning regular headaches and fatigue which has been taking us out of action for a while. I'm not sure if it's the climate or the stress of a new environment but we would appreciate your prayers for good health (and thank God that none of us has come down with food poisoning so far!)

Music
For those of you who may be aquainted with my 'diverse' musical tastes, you will know that I like to listen to anything and everything and Taiwan is no exception. Having found that there are 3 music channels in Taiwan (2xMTV and channel V) I have been educating myself on the local music here and have been very impressed. At the moment I am trying to locate some CDs next time I go into town, particularly one called WuHA (I think?) and this Singaporean singer named Stefanie (whose latest video clip we think is a ballad but has this random guy screaming in it all the time? Can any of my Asian friends explain that to me?) The only Western music they play is Eminem and Britney but I manage t keep myself amused with the vast array of funny Taiwanese artists (like this funny dance number called "UpUp").

Well anyway, I have rambled again for far too long and need to go and give my presentation to the ICU staff now, so I'll sign off and hear from you all soon!

God bless,

Jimbo