Howdy! It’s MOOving time again! (Nope, I didn’t send enough photos to avoid Mom opening the “vault”!)
This last week, I ended up moving to TaoYuan! It actually worked out really well; I wanted to move to TaoYuan for my last area. I only have three transfers left here in Taiwan, so although technically it is possible that I move again, it’s highly unlikely. I hope I don’t though…moving isn’t fun.
Jerry (聖睿), from the Xinpu ward, helped with our pancake party!
The night before I moved was (of course) English class. In my class, we talked about cooking and then made pancakes! Lots of students brought me food, which was awesome…until I had to find somewhere to pack it in my luggage.
Pancake patrol – AKA English class
Sure will miss these folks – but at least we can keep in touch!
In the end, I just gave up and sent a bunch of boxes with my luggage that was shipped. In Taiwan, it’s super cheap…only about $10 USD to ship all my stuff to my new area. Before leaving English class, we all took a group picture and exchanged contact info…they all now have my Facebook, email, and Line accounts yay!
Jadeite Cabbage
Last Monday, we went to the National Palace Museum with our cool friend, Paul. He drove us there and back, so it was super convenient. Plus, he used to work in the museum as a tour guide, so he pretty much knew everything about everything in the museum! We had a really good time there. That museum is always fun to visit!
Some of the Chinese characters engraven on the inside of the cauldron
(The Mao-Gong Ding is a 3000 year old bronze, three legged cauldron. Along with the bell, the ceremonial cauldron is famous for the long inscription. The 499 Chinese characters engraved on the interior walls of the cauldron were a record of events and used to report to the ancestral spirits.)
National Palace Museum
The original “boy bun”…such a trend setter! Bwuhahahaha
We just got through two typhoons. They weren’t that big; the ones I encountered last year were a lot bigger. The winds were kind of strong, but overall, they were both pretty weak. It’s likely, though, that there will be more this year, so that’s something fun to look forward to. I bet the Taiwanese people were pretty happy since the government called off work and school on both Saturday and Sunday.
Just another bad hair day…
Today it’s still raining a bit, so we’ll probably find something to do inside. We live across the street from the chapel, so that’s very convenient. There’s also a Carrefore and Costco in our area – this place is pretty awesome! The members here are really cool too – they told me I have good Chinese – yay! I’m excited to be here – we’ll see what it’s like!!
– Elder Austin Simonson
文浩竣長老