Sunday, February 8, was the one day I did not take any pictures, even though I had my camera with me all day. The day started really early, as Kristina wanted to take me to the
church in the city of Taichung (“ch” is pronounced like “j”) that she attended last year school year; it is about 4 ½
hours away from the school, including waiting time at bus stops and getting
breakfast. Before we left, though, we had a quick Skype call with the family back in the U.S. and I took a shower, trying not to get water all over Kristina's bathroom (I'll explain more about the showers later). I didn't succeed very well, but did do better the following days.
We left the school campus around 6:00 a.m. to catch the local bus to Chaiyi City. Once we arrived there we crossed the street to the bus station, grabbed a snack from one of the shops at the station, and then boarded our bus to Taichung. This was a longer bus ride, allowing time for me to catch a nap. An hour or so later we arrived at a bus station in Taichung. We ate breakfast at
the nearby McDonalds on the third floor - a first for me. A lot of buildings in Taiwan are tall and narrow.
After breakfast, we had a few minutes until it was time to catch our next bus, so Kristina told me a little about the Filipino and Indonesian population in the city (and that more of the Filipino's know English than the Taiwanese).
After leaving McDonalds we caught our last bus, got off a few blocks away from the church, and walked the remaining distance. Even though the church is pastored by an American, the services are in Chinese, so Kristina thought she would have to translate everything for me. It just so happened that a guest speaker was there that morning, so the sermon was in English, and then translated to Chinese. Since I was not the only one who could not speak Chinese, the pastor translated the hymn names/numbers into English (they did use Chinese/English hymnals so I was able to sing in English); Kristina also filled in a few things, like the end of prayers or the invitation. We ate
lunch at church, after the morning service, but before Sunday School.
Pretty much all the Taiwanese at the church spoke a little bit of English. A couple were fluent in English, and others had a good grasp, so I was able to talk to people. After lunch we divided for Sunday School; the pastor's wife taught the lesson in a combination of English and Chinese since I was there. When we left that afternoon, one of the ladies in the church drove us to a bus station, so we were able to cut one bus ride out of our return trip. Since we were not tired (like on our early morning bus rides) Kristina and I had a good chance to just talk as we sat in the high seats in the very back of the bus on our hour ride back to Chaiyi City.
That
afternoon/evening we met Fae and Mr. Owens in Chaiyi City, where we went to the
85 Coffee Shop, which serves tea and cake (of which I purchased both). As Mr. Owens was looking for parking alongside the street, he imparted the interesting fact that you cannot park anywhere in Taiwan that has a red line painted on the side of the road; you can only park there if the line is white. Parking in the city is really tight and hard to find. We thought the place we had parked was okay, but we stayed in 85 just a few minutes too long, and Mr. Owens ended up with a parking ticket (we saw the policeman sticking tickets on cars parked just a few ahead of us when we made it back to the car).
After that we went to the night market,
where I bought my first non-food items of the trip (excluding transportation tickets). After our visit at the night market (where
Kristina demonstrated her skills shooting balloons with an air soft gun) we
went to Carrefour, which is kind of like a Taiwanese version of Wal-mart (except
it has two floors), to pick up groceries. With our groceries and night market purchases loaded into the trunk of Mr. Owens car, we headed back to the CEI Campus, a trip made much simpler and quicker thanks to Mr. Owens acting as chauffeur (instead of us catching another bus).
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