Missions work is mostly a lot of getting along with other girls... a.k.a. Epic Post of Intensity

Angel of mercy
How did you find me?
Where did you read my story?
Pulled from the papers
Desperate and hardened
Seeking a moment every fix

All I wanted to say
All I wanted to do
Is fall apart now
All I wanted to feel
I wanted to love
Its all my fault now
A tragedy I fear

Angel of mercy
How did you find me?
How did you pick me up again?
Angel of Mercy
How did you move me?
Why am I on my feet again?
And I see you

Whoa, whoa, whoa
I feel you
Whoa, whoa, whoa

Before just the daylight
Come and I stand by
Waiting to catch the quickest plane
Flying to nowhere
Is better than somewhere
That's where I've been and nothing's changed

All I wanted to say
All I wanted to do
Is fall apart now
All I wanted to feel
I wanted to love
Its all my fault now
A tragedy for sure

Angel of mercy
How did you find me?
How did you pick me up again?
Angel of mercy
How did you move me?
Why am I on my feet again?
And I see you

Whoa
I feel you
Whoa

I'm so lost in you
A tragedy seemed to be over now
A tragedy it seemed to be

Angel of mercy
How did you find me?
How did you pick me up again?
Angel of mercy
How did you move me?
Why am I on my feet again?
And I see you

Whoa
I feel you
Oh, oh, oh

Mercy | One Republic

^--I've been spamming a lot of One Republic/Taylor Swift of late. I totally blame Michael, especially for this song getting stuck in my head. I can't help it - it was his Gmail status for ages. Stupid Michael. ;p On a slightly brighter note, I really like "The Best Day." It's a fantastic commute song and makes me hum in public. Oh, wait, I have rarely ever been reticent to make noise in public.

Title: You know how they say the most difficult thing about missions is getting along with the people you work with, right? :P And there are so many single lady missionaries! My goodness. But HEY, they all do a very good job of it (on the surface, anyway - I would never underestimate church politics, but I like to think optimistically until confronted with alternative evidence ^_^) And despite all my usual whinings about females, it's not half bad around here. I think it's because almost everyone else is more tolerant than I am, and it sort of shames/trains me by positive example to not complain about things. Besides, I think Mom is probably the best sort of training in good old-fashioned WORK a girl could have. So far, nobody has put me to any task that is remotely competition for things Mom has had us kids do. ^_^ (Maybe I shouldn't tempt the OMF people) Um... last week I picked up a massive dead spider while cleaning an apartment. That's about the extent of the "bad" so far. And given the way I grew up with those brothers... spiders are pretty low down on my list of phobias.

...So are germs. And look, everything that's killing me right now is unrelated to germs. Booyah!!

Anyways. I'm here to boost my readership with pictures, 'cuz I'm a loser like that. ^_^

I brought my camera along today. I have some pictures from the morning session with OMFers and some Southern Baptist missionaries, as well as a smattering of Others (Catholics? Independent missionaries? Things? Peoples?). I don't know enough of the OMFers to know who's an "us" and who's a "them," and I'm technically a tag-along wannabe anyway so I try not to diss too strongly. ^_^ <3 Those pictures did not make it into the upload batch... I'm not quite sure why. (I edited on my broken Macbook, then transferred to my uncle's comp to upload to Flickr)

The morning session was pretty great; I enjoyed it a lot. Robert, our speaker, is a Taiwanese Christian who did his dissertation on Taiwanese folk religion, I think. I get the general impression that it has some Taoist roots with very shamanistic tendencies wrapped in a generous blanket of superstition. ;p I learned a lot of useful information about things I never learned growing up (even in Taiwan). Hey, I come from atheist/Christian ancestry. There's not a lot about ancestor-worship in either of those. :P I strongly believe that to "convert" (hate this word) people to your belief system, you have to be willing to listen/understand as much as you want them to do so in return (I am terrible at this, but working on it). So this crash course in inter-cultural religious beliefs is great if you ask me.

So we listened and asked questions until noon or so, when the Wanhua kids' ministry workers departed for the elementary school. ...Where we walked smack-dab into the middle of culture taking place.

Apparently today was some temple holiday in the Wanhua district. Here, the people are helping the guy inside (kneeling) don the god costume.

Hello, god whose name I do not know. If you look carefully, the vinyl window over his heart is actually the peephole of the guy wearing the costume.

That guy on the far right was posing for me. My big camera definitely earns me street cred. ^_^

That smoky haze is firecrackers.

Steady drum beats. Speaking of cultural differences, heh, my dad hates backbeats and conveniently finds ATI's teachings on rock music very much in agreement with his preferences. (ATI teaches that drums/backbeats are wrong because some pagan cultures use drum beats to worship Satan. Or something like that.) I strongly disagree with him, but seeing this makes me understand why he, growing up in Taiwan with these sorts of rituals around him, might think that way. See, intercultural exposure is good for mutual understanding! It's not easy for me to understand his viewpoint sometimes when I approach the subject from my Americanized/second-generation Christian/girl background. :P

Ahh, we learned about these "grand palanquins" this morning. They put gods on the sedan chairs, and then bounce them up and down. For some reason. I don't remember why. I think it puts them in a good mood or they get answers from the gods in this manner. I'd be in a good mood too if I were toted around and bounced. ^_^

It's a community event.

Yep, right alongside the big streets of a major metropolis. That's urban Taiwan for you.

Hmm, I don't really know what I think about Taiwanese religion. (Once again, coming from my Asian-American-Christian-girl background here) It's strange to say, but I missed seeing these outward orthopraxic (new word of the day ^_^) rituals when I was in China. I hope it's not blasphemous to say... Why do I say it?

I grew up seeing this every day in Taiwan for nine years. There's a tiny temple right outside my home in Hsinchu. People worship with incense and idols and offerings of food every 1st and 15th day of the lunar month and on many other religious holidays in addition. Just about every Taiwanese holiday is also cause for worship. Beliefs and superstition and ideas and faith abound in culture, folklore, family life, community, health, academics, career... everything.

In one sense, I find it deeply fascinating and beautiful because I just don't see that kind of passion on a national scale in my only other comparative culture, America. Heh. At the same time, it's sad to see what some people do in their desperation to find God, ranging from sacrificing desperately-needed family resources to appease fickle spirits, seeing the terror that pervades even young children who have good reason to fear the boogeyman in the night, the tears and the prayers and the desires and the hope and the despair. I think seeing the earnestness with which many Taiwanese people seek God jumpstarts the engine of my Westernized lethargic faith. At the very least, it makes me think more seriously about it.

In China, in stark contrast, religion has been so effectively suppressed for several decades that I found exhibited faith to be a completely different cultural comparison (equally fascinating). I'm not used to Asian atheists en masse. I'm not used to hearing Asian kids literally believe themselves to be 'god,' per the Facebook religious view of a girl I met in China this summer. I'm not used to pagoda-type structures housing factories and post offices instead of temples. I'm not familiar with the details of Chairman Mao's writings... not that I know the holy books of Taiwanese religion any better. Heh. A Communist country without incense and spirit worship has a set of philosophies completely foreign to anything in my experience up until this point. This past year has driven home this realization to me very strongly. Whereas Taiwanese people find it relatively easy to grasp the concept of worshipping an unseen Almighty God because the concept of the spirit world has never been questioned, I see Chinese people struggling with the same difficulties Americans face: I only know what I can see and prove with science. How then can I know God?

I've been thinking a lot about the differences between China and Taiwan, partly because I'm here at the moment. When people ask me what I want to do with myself and I toss out that vague remark about wanting to do something with social justice/human rights in "China or Taiwan," I think of the two as one in my head because of my cultural origins. However, I'm starting to have to narrow things down a little bit. Traditional characters or simplified? Culture I'm slightly familiar with, or culture I'm more historically aligned with? Land of my parents, or land of my grandparents? So many little contrasts... with such significant repercussions.

The last ten days or so have made me think a lot about how I got here. (Not in the literal sense, but in that vague head-in-the-clouds sense of "Who are we? And where do we come from?" that Tracy likes to quote in his classes. <3>) I was sitting through the shopkeepers' small group listening to Elisabeth and Chris talk with the people they work with just now... listening to their Chinese, which is the most basic proof of their labor of love here. Neither of them probably finds a passionate love for this language, yet they learned it because they cared more about the people they wanted to reach than their own comfort. I'm definitely not one to brag about my language skills (and if anything, Japanese proved that I'm not as great a linguist as even my elevated homeschooler ego could hope for). But I already know and speak Chinese, just like I know and speak English. In a way, this is a tool which opens doors for me, and I've never really been more aware of it than now.

Sure, I have a very long way to go with, well, anything. Reading the newspaper is definitely not on my list of fun things to do (even in English, haha). I don't speak Taiwanese. I don't even have the family environment for it. I communicate, but I hold back from heart-to-hearts because I don't like being made fun of or feeling limited in my thought patterns. But in comparison with what it could have been - language school for me for many years, fighting to recognize the subtle differences between two achingly similar characters, wanting so much to have the right words to say and knowing that I can't even start to bridge the gap - I am really blessed. And if the only thing standing between me and my people is my ego and a few idioms I don't know, then bring it on.

...Don't think I'm going to go be a missionary now. ;p I'm aligning myself more with Taiwan, though, as loyalty goes. This is home, somehow. (I walked off the plane and sniffed a sewer with delight... then horror once I realized how much at home it made me feel. HAHA.) I'm good with squatty toilets. The food tantalizes, not terrifies me. Doesn't mean I don't love China too... Maybe it's more like loving a parent vs. loving an aunt or an uncle. :P Taiwan is not my dream place to live, but if this ends up being what God wants me to do or something, I'm more and more okay with it. All of it. Rural areas and summer humidity and frickin' mosquitoes and waste in the streets and wet markets and crazy relatives being overprotective and everything. Not because my tolerance for any of those things is any better, but because I'm sure God will prepare me for it somehow.

...Speaking of which, I almost hope I don't get the Wired internship (yes, I reapplied) because I want to go to China with Tracy again next year.

Um, I have talked away the two new hopeful readers who came, lured by the promise of pictures... hahahaha. I do sound more and more Christian every day, don't I? Oh well, I'm just consolidating the different Kat personalities... being so many different people at once was getting tedious. ^_^

Okay, Wanhua. We made ice cream with the kids today... huzzah! Kat had the clever idea of making it in Ziploc bags. I think it was 1/2 cup of milk, 1 1/2 tbsp sugar, and 1 tsp vanilla extract (in case you want to recreate it yourself). We double-bagged the small Ziplocs, then dumped them in the big bag packed with ice. Squish all the air out of all the bags. Trust me, you want to do this. Then we wrapped them up in towels and rolled/shook them until the ice cream froze. The little boys who played around and goofed off in the beginning ended up with ice water and ice slush water. ;p The girls had perfect, firm ice cream. ^_^ I was impressed.

Okay, this kid is a riot. I really like bad kids. I used to be one. There is a correlation. ;P And for the record, we're not bad, we're just really bored when you say the same thing over and over really slowly. So we squirm, and you get mad. It still holds true today for me.










The face is great


I really like his chub


[The other] Kat steals a bite of Oreo mix-in! (I'm going to start calling her [the other] all the time. In brackets.)

Then we played the classic rubber-band-relay-with-straws game. It's surprising how excited they got about group games. This further affirms my theory that the best way to take care of rowdy kids is to tire them out. Again... I would know.







Small imp. He was the first kid whose name I learned... 'cuz he was so bad, he was being called on for misbehavior all the time. ^_^ Love him. Oh, yeah, this is the one who uses the trump card, "You don't love me!" shamelessly. Never fails to work a little bit on me inside. :\ But no worries, it does not show on my face. :D


See how excited he is to participate? It's awesome! ^_^


More kiddies!

The pictures end there. But the day sure didn't, sigh! I went home and bummed around on the comp for a little while. I passed out from exhaustion around 6:30 and woke up at 8:30 to some warmed-over dinner. Then I headed out for the shopkeepers' small group meeting...

One of OMF's ministries is to the working-class people... there are missionaries who go around to different shopkeepers in one of Taipei's myriad malls/shopping center areas and develop a rapport with these workers. They also have people working with prostitutes, but I haven't seen any of that part of the ministry yet. :P Anyway, Irene told me this week that the shopkeepers' ministry needs more helpers so Chris kindly invited me to tonight's meeting. It was right by the City Hall stop on the Blue Line (can't type Chinese on this comp - rather, don't know how) in a cute little... coffee shop...? That... is called something like "Taiwan Milk?" Yeah. Lol. I wish I did bring the camera after all, but hey. Timbo, I met Kaiyuan. Two "shopkeepers" showed up (well, they both work in the food industry so that's technically a "shop," right?). We talked and chatted and drank things and discussed the story of the widow's two mites and how it applied to the current economy... good stuff.

...And now I should go to bed, because this is an EPIC post. But as a final farewell and because I do miss the land of the free... gratuitous pics I found on my flash card!

Here's the Los Angeles Fabric District, a.k.a. Textile Heaven. I bought 4 yards of a lovely green two-tone taffeta material, some robin's-egg-blue cotton, and fleece for making my famed [and sometimes inappropriate] plushies. I would have bought two suitcases' worth if I hadn't been flying to Taiwan. :\ Yeah, my life sucks, I know. ...If I remember right, I only bought cream/black/brown. Right now, I'm really wishing I picked up some baby-blue and flesh-colored fleece. I fail. I don't even remember what I said I wanted the cream fleece for. HAH.


Not as glamorous as it sounds like it would be, but who comes here for glamour? We come for the sales!! They have amazing silks and satins in here.

Um, it reminds me of Mexican taquerias.

I'm told that a lot of the store owners are Armenian. It was a little ethnic corner of exoticity! I mean, I have not seen stalls and booths of random things like that anywhere outside of Asia before.

Here's a random shop keeper who started joking around with us when he saw our big cameras. I'm to email him this picture because he thinks I made him look good. Hey, what can I say? He's pretty cute for an immigrant businessman teasing me in his second (or third or fourth) language, selling me fabric with which I plan to make stuffed poop plushies.

Okay, I'm off to bed. If you do not comment on this post's pictures, at least, I will never post photos again. Ever.*

*This may or may not be gospel truth.