Last week in Tainan.

Sunday we attended church at the Taiwan 1st ward again. This time they provided us with hearing aids/ head sets to listen to a translator. It was good to have and so much easier to sit through when we could understand. We also got to sing in sacrament meeting today. We sang the classic nursing song "Lord, I Would Follow Thee". We sang it in English and it was cute to see some of the ward members lip sing along with us. For the closing hymn they sang “God be with you till we meet again”…because this was our last week in their ward. They loved having us there and they were so sad for us to leave. Afterwards, a little old woman came up to us and gave a couple of gifts (pineapple cake and a Chinese beaded lanyard). We had never met this woman before and she just came up and gave it to us! I am continually amazed by these people!

As we were driving home on the bus it started raining for the first time since we've been here! and when it rains... it definitely pours! We walked out of the bus and just being outside for 10 seconds got everyone who didn't have a poncho soaking wet….and of course I was one of them. (this picture is of me after crossing the street from the bus..completely dry.... to 7-11.....) The water on the ground was about 2 inches deep everhwere and I was wearing flats. My shoes were sopping wet. I figured I might as well get even more wet so I went out and played in the rain for a bit. Even though I know I would get sick of the huge downpours here in Taiwan, I wish it rained like this in Utah every once in a while. It was refreshing. There is a Luxgen (car sales) store right next to our apartment and they’ve been having some special sale or party or something for the last week. All day long there is a line of men standing outside the store waiting to greet people. As we walked by they just started cracking up because we were so soaking wet. We had to walk by all ten of them lined up just laughing at us.... Later on that day Sophia and I went out to eat dinner and we had ponchos on and they were still there. As soon as they saw us they burst out laughing and gave us thumbs up for our ponchos. They asked for pictures with us in our ponchos so we did! Ha These are the men still laughing after we passed by....

Later that night, Jane (our Taiwanese friend) stopped by with post cards for each of us to send to our parents. She waited for us to write something on them and she’s going to send them out for us. She then told us she had a special present for us and she pulled out marble name stamps. She found each of our Chinese names and had them personalized into stamps with BYU. These are very common in Taiwan. They use these stamps as their signatures even in banks, if you don’t have your stamp then you can’t do anything with your account. They’re very important.
As she gave each of us ours, she told us what each of our names meant……mine means that I am and will be the “perfect housewife” and that I will be very good at cooking and cleaning and being a mother…..ha ha ha Everyone burst out laughing because I’m the absolute least like that out of all the girls…….

Monday at clinical was once again just play. I had a blast getting to know everyone on the unit. I talked to a medical student on our unit for like 2 hours. He was adorable. He gave me tons of advice for Taipei and taught me a lot about their culture. He told us that Asians are VERY scared and intimidated by Americans. He said that the only reason people don’t always come up and talk to us is because they get so scared. People really want to talk to us but simply don’t dare. He said that he was nervous just talking to me!

Here in Taiwan every single male has to do one full year of military service/training. So this intern has to go one full year after he’s done with med school! I thought that was interesting. Also, the education system is very different here. Everyone attends elementary and middle school. Once they are done everyone takes a big test. If your scores are too low you get to attend a trade school (like a specialty such as baking, farming, etc.) but if your scores are higher then you get to attend high school! I thought that was crazy….AND children sleep in parents rooms until they are around 10 and 11 years old! In America most children sleep in their very own room and if not they do by age 2 or 3. I thought that was so weird. They say it is so they can keep an eye on them. They say it is very dangerous to let them sleep in their own room.

For lunch we had some delicious curry and Dr. Chan brought some cheesecake that his wife made…and let me tell you it was DELICIOUS. It’s a little bit different from American cheesecake. It’s more cakey. I asked for the recipe…but he said it’s too hard plus it’s in Chinese. Ha ha Then my nurse showed up with a delicious yogurt drink and some coke….then our other nurse brought us dumplings!! Theeeenn…….the head nurse brought us some red bean soup for dessert and a grapefruit drink! Geez…I going to die from fullness….

After clinical, Hayley, Kris, and I went downtown to find this world famous knife shop. The man who owns the store hand makes the knives and uses human bones as fuel for the fire that he uses to mold the knives….how cool is that? (the bodies are donated from families who know of his business). Here is the store's sign...lol We then found an amaaaazing bakery with some of the best stuff I’ve ever had in my life. Mom you would have died..they had these delicious lemon pastries that melted in your mouth. (this is one of their cakes) And I randomly ran into one of the native dancers from Hualien here.....The video posted here focuses on him.

P.S. Random fact #1 The director of Brokeback Mountain (the movie about the two gay men)….is from here in Tainan! He also directed Sense & Sensibility.

Random fact #2: We asked the doctor how they determined where Chi flows throughout the body….I guess waaaay back in the day they took the death row inmates and would stab them in certain places on their body. They then would look and see how far blood spattered in each spot…if it spattered a lot, then that meant that there was a high flow of chi… so they based all of the pathways on this method (this is not a lie….dead serious).