The nurses and their families picked us up Saturday morning and showed up with lots of treats, drinks, and water bottles. Sho Wei (my community nurse) rounded everyone up and assigned everyone to cars. We had 6 cars FULL of people! Little kids, the nurses husbands, friends, and us. I was put into a car with Kris and Sho Wei’s family.
Sho Wei’s husband is Kevin, her daughter is Peggy and she’s nine years old, and then her son is Jeremy and he’s 6 years old. They were so much fun! We had a blast on the drive there. We played around, I showed them my American money and they loved it! So I gave them each a quarter. They were so ecstatic about it. It was so cute. Then I had them listen to my iPod and they loved that too. They kept asking for more every time a song ended. The picture after this one is me with Peggy. She bought me a little doll as a present. 
When we arrived at Meinung our first stop was Meinung Folk Village. This is a traditional little village with a bunch of shops and some things that are from the original Folk Village. This village is famous for its hand painted oil paper umbrellas. They were absolutely gorgeous. 
One of the nurses was actually Hakka. It was fun to have her with us and to interpret. Throughout the entire day we got like 3 comments on how we looked like sisters….so apparently I’m asian ha ha
Her son’s name is Jon and he’s absolutely adorable. For some reason he really liked me and followed me around everywhere. Every time I turned around he’d be right there taking a picture of me. Throughout the day he would bring the pictures up on his camera and show them to me. We counted them all and there were 22 pictures of me! Ha ha It was so adorable. I wanted to take him home with me. His mother offered to let me come stay with them ha ha.
Our second stop was a quaint little restaurant where we were served the traditional Hakka meal. It was “Bantiyou” which is rice noodles with pork, cabbage & wintermelon, and Nymphoids Hydrophilla (the Taiwanese Hakka are some of the only people that use these in the world). It was really delicious….except they also ordered some pig intestine and pigs feet (we were not informed that it was pigs feet until after we ate it).
We headed back to our cars to get to our next stop but my car’s tire was flat! So they took us to an extra shop while we were waiting for it to get fixed. At this shop we got to watch a woman make one of the umbrellas. It is amazing how talented these people are. After the shop, we were taken to get “Mein Mein Bing” which is milk ice (Taiwan’s version of ice cream). It was topped with little jelly things and red beans….I don’t know why they’re so obsessed with red beans here for dessert…it’s one of the only things here that I don’t like.
Our next stop was probably my favorite. We all got to paint mini oil paper umbrellas! It was a blast to help all of the little kids and do our own. I had Sho Wei’s husband write my name and Taiwan in chinese on my umbrella…..and considering my artistic abilities, I was pretty proud of the finished product.
Our last stop was an old traditional Hakka clothing store. The tailor there is 101 years old! He was an adorable man. The clothes he made were beautiful. He’s been doing it his whole life. He is called “Jing Lai Master” because he is the oldest master of Hakka clothing in Taiwan. I thought it was very impressive. 
It ended up being a really long day and we went non-stop the entire time…..we were dead on the way home. 
Saturday night Davit drove all the way from Kaohsiung to meet up with us and hang out. It was so cute because he got all dressed up in nice clothes because he wanted to go out clubbing. He even found a special club for us that had free drinks and food for “foreigners”. He showed up at our place and Sophia and I were the only ones there to meet up with him. When we walked out of the elevator to meet him at the lobby of our complex, our security guard starting yelling and spouting off tons of stuff while pointing at David outside of the door. We were so confused and had no idea what was going on. We started walking towards the door and he started yelling louder and motioned for us not to go…I opened the door anyways so that Davit could come in and translate. The security guard freaked out! Davit walked in, then started talking to him and calmed him down. I guess that the security guard thought that Sophia and I were sneaking out with a random guy and thought that Davit was a bad guy and that we were going to go missing (If we did go missing he would be held responsible). Davit explained the situation to him but the guard still didn’t trust us….Davit had to talk to him for about twenty minutes to get him to see that he’s a nice young guy before he let us leave for food….ha ha
All three of us then went out to dinner. It was so sweet of Davit because he paid for all of it. He insisted that it was his last opportunity to treat us before we went back to America so he refused to let us pay. We went to a delicious restaurant and had dumplings and soup.
When we got back we were going to have Davit come up to our room and wait for us to get ready….buuuut the security guard wouldn’t let him come in! ha ha It was kind of annoying but sort of cute that he was so worried about us. We went up while Davit waited in the lobby to get the other girls. We walked in and everyone was just getting out of the shower and in pajamas….instead of going out they wanted to play UNO with Davit….They were all “too tired” to go out. I felt so bad because that was the only reason that Davit came and he went out of his way to plan it for us…..plus most people outside of BYU don’t like playing card games…and definitely not UNO. Ha ha Kris refused to let just Sophia and I go with Davit to a club alone….so we couldn’t go at all. It was just frustrating because we’re only in Taiwan once and we want to do everything we possibly can…but most of the girls want to stay in every night and blog or play cards…I’m definitely not used to that (for all of my friends who are always up for anything and everything anytime…thank you! Ha ha I miss you guys…..this trip would be even better if you were here). 
Soooo we ended up going to Café 85 (a café right next to our apt)….to play UNO. You could tell that David thought it was a little weird. We finally convinced Christina Bohn to go out with us so all four of us went to the night market. We had a complete blast while everyone else stayed in. We tried lots of new things and David showed us all of his favorite stuff. He was such a gentleman the entire night. Every time some guy would hit on us he would get really defensive about us and protect us. Ha ha We even helped him pick out some new sunglasses.
He told us that we are the first American girls that he has ever seen in his life. He has seen two American men at his university before but no girls. It’s so crazy because we are exposed to so much in America...even at BYU…all different ethnicities, foods, styles, and experiences. I never thought that people simply don’t get that in other countries. And I thought Americans were everywhere ha ha David grew up in Indonesia, has traveled to China many times, and has gone to school in Taiwan for the past 4 years in Taiwan and he has NEVER even seen an American girl. That just blows my mind.
Once again I am amazed at how morally sound the Taiwanese culture is. It is very rare here in Taiwan for people to either live together or sleep together before marriage. It is much like the mormon culture (obviously not the exact same). Intimate relations before marriage happen but it is definitely frowned upon and it rarely happens. The divorce rates are affair rates are significantly lower than in the U.S. Pregnancy rarely happens before the age of 25. Davit’s rules growing up were also very similar. His parents made him come home at midnight every single night, he was not allowed to have a steady girlfriend, he was not allowed to smoke or drink and he said that’s how everyone’s parents were. He now currently smokes but he is going back home to Indonesia in August so he has to quit before then because his parents don’t know and they will be very upset with him. The asian culture values respect from parents and most children do everything that they can to obey their parents. Once again I am completely amazed that all of these things they do are not because of religion like we do. It is simply part of their culture to have high standards and respect others.
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