Cultures colliding (parts one and two)

...is the theme of this past weekend for me here in Taiwan.

Part One
Saturday morning I relaxed at home for a few hours before heading out to meet my boss. Several of us followed her to her farm about 20 minutes from the Chudung school, where her 74 year old mother has planted a huge field of vegetables that are now ready for picking. Serena, my boss, is using many of these to feed the children at school everyday (this is customary since it's an all day school and serving hot nutritious meals is a selling point). Of course this is only provided in the school at Chudung and I teach in Erchong so I don't eat this food everyday...which is actually o.k. with me. Anyway, Serena is very health conscious and earth friendly so she's growing these veggies organically to feed the kids better food and to lower her food costs. So, we were invited to pick some veggies for our own personal use and off we went. What an experience. It was a beautiful day and we each picked a big bag of veggies, mostly unidentifiable, but still I'm sure healthy. The funny part of the afternoon was realizing that I was never going to know what these veggies were called, as each time I asked "What's this?" the reply was "Uh, uh, Chinese vegetable." To which I just nodded and thanked God once again for the internet. (Although honestly that didn't really help me either when I was deciding what to do with these huge peppery flavored green leaves, not really lettuce but not really mustard greens. Something else. Oh, yea, Chinese vegetable!)

Then, after picking my bag full, Saturday evening had been prearranged by the secretary at the school for a few of the teachers to go to an aboriginal restaurant with three of the students, who are siblings, and their parents. This is always a sacrifice since our down time is precious, but it is one of the reasons I believe I'm here, so I agreed to do it. We met at 5:30 at the school and followed the father to the restaurant. Their Vietnamese servant had arranged the table at the restaurant with these thimble sized drinking glasses and had filled up a pouring pot with this clear liquor. We each had one of these drinking glasses and thankfully one of the teachers who has been here for 13 years (he's from South Africa and married a Taiwanese woman) told us not to drink it too fast, or at all since he would keep filling the glass every time it was empty. I managed to pour mine into another cup after a while and never had to drink it, but smelling it seared a hole in my nostril. Whoa! Strong does not describe.

After making it through many courses of various animals with bones or eyeballs looking at me (not only was the usual fish eyes on the menu, but yes, we ate fried bee...my first time, not too bad, but honestly...bee?), we finished the meal around 8 and were invited back to his home for tea. This was something we couldn't get out of, so we all went, hoping and praying it wouldn't last too long. Well, by 9:30 he was brewing the third kind of tea and the best, of course, so we were pretty stuck. I drank more tea than I've ever had in my life and don't know that I've felt any benefit from it, but alas it was about building the relationship so it was not a complete loss of an evening. I learned a lot about Chinese culture and how this man feels that he must send his four children to English school because it is part of the expectation for the future in Taiwan and internationally. He sacrifices his own pleasures (except for the tea) to make it possible for the children to have English classes, and he's very proud that he can do it. They live in a big house that he built, that has traditional Chinese concrete floors.

It was a good evening, but just long and I was frustrated to come home after 10 with a bag of dirty veggies to wash and put up, plus the need to prepare for Sunday. I had to confess my bad attitude and ask for forgiveness. When I did I felt really honored that I had gotten to spend the evening with Alec and Susan and their four children, Victor, Vincent, Eva, and Wayne. You can pray for them too when you think about it. They have probably heard the gospel before because Alec mentioned having tea once a week with a guy who goes to my church here, so I can only assume that was for evangelical purposes. But, I don't really know much more. No doubt I will have another opportunity if I want it.

More later about my Sunday with the South Africans.

Part Two
Sunday afternoon was lazy for the most part, which was just what I needed after such a crazy Saturday. Our home now has three living in it, with Mari here recovering from her scooter accident, and we'll soon be moving to a four bedroom place where we'll welcome a fourth roommate. We were all four here on Sunday afternoon just relaxing and eating lunch and for some reason the topic of teaching me Afrikaans came up. If you don't know, Afrikaans is the language spoken most often by white South Africans (which all these folks are), and I believe it was brought by the Dutch settlers who "colonized" South Africa many hundred years ago. (Wow, if you're South African and you're reading my blog, forgive my pathetic explanation of your mother tongue!) So, it sort of sounds Dutch and German with a British lilt to it. Anyway, my roommate, Annaloe often tries to teach me a few words, and she gets very excited when I speak the odd Afrikaans word here and there, so she of course was really into this. Again, for some reason, only known to the highest level PhD's in Psychology (or maybe Psychiatry) we started talking about words that we really shouldn't be talking about, and I found out that when you want to say "I need to go #2" in Afrikaans, you say "I need to go poof" or something like that. Those kinds of conversations can only continue downhill (there's that saying again) and of course this one did, until we had all embarrassed ourselves and laughed til we were crying. This was a great feeling. You know you're amongst friends when you laugh until you cry. Round two of this started later in the day when another (South African) friend came over and we re-enacted the whole thing for him. It's the little things that keep us going, eh? Just had to share it with you. And with that I'm off...

Until next time, LC