Taiwan is pretty amazing and very weird! It's really hot and humid.
The flight here was pretty alright. I was pretty bored for most of it and didn't sleep a whole lot, but my comments were cracking up the other Elders next to me. So at least I got to entertain them. When we were about to land I looked out the window and saw nothing. It was a mixture of pollution and rain. So it was pretty much just black. When we landed they played this oriental music throughout the plane. One thing I noticed when we stepped out was the smell. China has a certain smell to it. I don't know how to explain it. It just smells.....interesting...kind of bad.
The bus ride to the mission home was interesting. We got on the bus and we had orientation. It was really hard to stay awake and I'll be honest, I fell asleep like 500 times. I felt really bad but I was the most tired I have ever been in my entire life.
When we got to the mission home they didn't have enough room for the Elders. So we had to walk with all of our stuff at like 11:00 pm to an apartment a couple streets down. It was really busy in the streets and really crazy. People around here don't follow the rules. Or maybe they don't have rules... I'm not sure. Our apartment looked like something out of Kowloon. It was interesting, but it was unexpectedly really nice inside.
The food here is interesting. I'm definitely going to have to get used to eating the food. There's a lot of fish and a TON of rice. All the Asian stereotypes about food are right. The worst food I ate here was the "high quality" Taiwanese food. It's super gross. I've already eaten some weird stuff like duck, fish eye, and mysterious meats that I don't know (probably dog). Everything has this weird taste to it, like a Taiwanese flavor.. I don't know how to explain it. It's kind of gross. The best food I had was at this Thai lady's little hidden shop. It has the best fried rice I have ever had. She was super cool and knows the missionaries although she's not a member. She turned down the music and stuff for us so we could pray.
So my area is Qingshui. It means clear water. It's a small city northwest of Taichung. It's kind of like half farm half city so it's a little interesting. There's so many cool temples here. There's a lot of funny stuff that goes on here. Lots of grown men riding scooters and wearing hello kitty helmets. .. It's weird. Most people here are really nice though.
My companion is Elder Mitton. He's from Provo. He's been out for about a year. It's his first time being a trainer and he seems pretty intense. We don't really have a whole lot of investigators. We have two but we can't get a hold of them. It's really hard to teach people here because they're willing to be taught and then when you set up an appointment they flake on you. The main way we contact is on bikes, so we ride up to people and try to talk to them. It's really hard to do. Mostly because I can only get as far as "Hey, how are you? I like your scooter." Then it just goes down hill and I don't understand them. If you don't understand someone's Chinese here it's almost like an insult. So some people kind of get upset and think you're super stupid. We were tracting on our bikes and we stopped at this light so I leaned over to this guy who was riding his bike and started to talk to him. He went off and just started yelling at me. He was also chewing this red bean stuff. I don't know what it's called but it's basically super intense chewing tobacco that DESTROYs your teeth. I was laughing so hard when he was yelling at me. Then we were talking to a guy and we just said Hi. He starts mocking us and going "Wo zhi dao, wo zhi dao" which means I know.. I know.. Super funny!
Our apartment is pretty alright. It's a crappy little garage with an upstairs. We don't even have a shower. We have a shower head hooked up to a sink. The entire bathroom just turns into a shower. The bed is heavenly though. I haven't had a comfortable bed since I left home. Our backyard is a rice field and then there's this 3,000 year old house next to it with some Asian lady living in it. It's interesting.
I like my new bike. It's really nice. I don't have my biker legs yet so my companion just leaves me in the dust and gets mad at me for going too slow.
We did some service two days ago. That service was working in a rice field. So I've officially worked in a rice field. It was really hard work. We did it barefoot. There were bugs, frogs, rakes and rice. The mud would go up to your knees so I was caked in mud when we were done. Then we had to bike back in the hot 85 degree weather + humidity which is awful here.
On P-day we get two hours on the computer but one of the hours is like all training and branch president stuff. I'm in a Gamer Cafe right now surrounded by Asians playing League of Legends and yelling Chinese swear words. It reeks of cigarettes and there's moaning in the distance. Just another day in Taiwan........ I emailed some buddies from the MTC and they all basically described being in the same kind of place I'm at. I love it.
After this, we're going up to a Daoist temple for a little celebration. Should be interesting and weird with lots of fireworks. They really get into fireworks here. After that we're teaching a lesson and then contacting at a Catholic College far away so we'll have to take the bus.
I've been kind of struggling. I feel like I don't know any Chinese and it's really hard. I can't even talk to people. I can only understand like 2 of the 500 words they say at 500 miles and hour. So I've been really stressed out to the point where I've thought about going home a lot. Like it's really bad. We have like 500 flash cards we need to memorize in 13 weeks with phrases, vocabulary, how to begin teaching -- all in Chinese. It's really intense here and it stresses me out so bad. It's really tough to stay positive and I'm kind of depressed. I'm having a hard time adjusting to missionary life in general. I'll probably hang in there though, because if I gave up I would probably just be moping around home all depressed and hate my life.
I love you so much! I miss you guys and I wish I could've watched General Conference with you guys. I have to wait another week to watch it here in Taiwan.
Love,
Silas
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