I Woke Up to a Better View than You.

Rested and relaxed from a couple days in Jhongli, Eric, Levi, the family that leads the Jhongli Navs, and I woke up very early to catch our trains to Hualien on the east side of Taiwan. In between trains we had an hour or so to wait in the train station and actually ran into our friend, Peter, and some other guys in the Taipei Navigators as they were beginning a bike trip through the area. It also turned out that they would be staying in the same town that night. Talk about a chance meeting. After chatting a bit, we parted ways and my group continued on with the journey via the less physically exerting means of transportation.

Before reaching our accommodations, we met up with a woman (English-)named Bethany who works in a ministry called the WPLA (the WP stands for Woodpecker, but I don’t know the rest…) which does a lot of work with the children in the area as well as other charitable undertakings. After buying us an incredibly large lunch, we headed to the secondhand store that the WPLA owns and operates to earn money for some of their work and I bought a few things (including some gifts for the fam) at great prices. Feeling all warm and fuzzy due to the fusion of shopping and being charitable, we moved on to help move boxes at the warehouse and take miscellanea to set up for the night market. A few of us grabbed some dinner and then, clad in a green WPLA vest, I actually got to work at the night market stand! While it’s not the most glamorous job in the world, how many other people can say that they worked at a night market in a foreign country? Not many. Essentially, however, I was useless. About three customers actually interacted with me to pay and most of the time I just joked around with the kids from the WPLA that were helping out or talked with our bike-tripping friends from Taipei once they stopped by. This was, of course, fine and altogether to be expected, seeing as my grasp of the Chinese language is not so premium.

The next morning I woke up to a better view than you did (not to brag or anything).
Today was another free day so we did some sightseeing at an old logger village and then met up with one of the American girls, Devina (sp?), from a few days ago. We went to the shore for a bit, to a curry restaurant that Devina likes to hang out at, and ended the night at an Aboriginal Festival. They had a lot of really awesome dance performances in traditional garb as well as some stalls to buy stuff. I totally would have bought one of their (probably over-priced but still pretty) outfits if it would not then end up never being worn (traditional Taiwanese Aboriginal attire would be a bit too unconventional for my dress preferences). There was also a part that the audience could participate in the dances and while I did get to dance a little, I missed most so it was just some awkward moves on the outskirts of the circle :/

As for Hualien itself, it is absolutely gorgeous. To nobody’s surprise, the mountains pair beautifully with the coastline and, when a bit further inland, can also stand on their own. They are also a different sort than what I have seen in the US—more lush with all types of trees, including palm, and much lower. Despite this, the clouds are compelled to hang low with them and halo the broad summits. Behind those in the foreground, the mountains of the backdrop seem more like blue shadows or strokes of an impressionist’s brush than physical, rocky forms. More clearly stated:

Finally: a note on the ministry. Although the kids’ situations are quite similar—notably the population gap as well as some issues within the families—the work we are doing here is so different from that which we did on Penghu. Penghu was much more stable—we stayed in one place and worked with mostly the same people for the entirety of the camp. Here, we’ve changed places three times already and done a lot of driving to get to different places. Each day tends to be at least on some level capricious and it’s always different. Penghu also seemed to be more personal. There we were with the kids for the good part of 2 ½ days; here, maybe an hour. Here it is more presence and encouragement-based. Although I understand the many reasons why we can’t, I feel that there is such a need here for someone to be constant, or at least not as arbitrary as we have been. Unfortunately, that’s not me. We can be thankful, however, that Bethany and the WPLA do relieve some of that need each week, but I can’t help feeling that more needs to be done.

(By the way, did you catch the "Everything is Illuminated" allusion?)

We were staying in a wonderful little B & B that was in a legit countryside (none of this phony Penghu countryside) and the room I was in positioned me perfectly to see the mountains right from the bed. The owners made us a delicious breakfast (sandwich and fruit—homegrown, I do believe) and then we had the rest of the morning off. We then met for lunch and began a tour with Bethany of some of the kids’ clubs meeting that day. At the first we met up with four other American girls (the first obviously foreign girls I had seen except for one other a few days before at this point) who were there teaching at an English/character school. With each group we introduced ourselves, played games, answered questions, and spent time with the kids in general. Each group was unique and special in their own right (though I have to admit, I did have a favorite group). At a couple of the stops, too, I was able to put to use some of my ChinesePod/Chinese 101 work to use and spoke to the kids in Chinese. Most impressively (though not really all that impressive) I successfully asked for English names as well as for who owned a puppy that was hanging around.

The next day we had off so we played tourist and went to Taroko Gorge National Park—it’s kind of a big deal here. That morning we had also left the bed and breakfast in the countryside for one in the city. The view was still nice, but not quite what it had been (plus, there was a dead bird on the roof outside the window…). In Taroko we also met up with the leaders of the Taiwan Navigators and their family. The park itself was quite touristy, as evidenced by the relatively high amount of obviously foreign people we saw (including my first sighting of another blonde girl—finally, another girl that stuck out as awkwardly as I do). We explored a bit in the park and then stopped for dinner at a place that had part of my Chinese name in its name, so I was excited (though it’s really not that big a deal).

The next day we went to another church here in Hualien and talked and hung out with the kids. After learning that I had played the flute, one girl asked me to play and, by some sort of miracle, I remembered how to play—and did play—“Amazing Grace.” We then rested for the afternoon and went to the university there to watch an end-of-camp performance that some of the kids Bethany works with were in. The ever-popular 7-11 provided us with dinner and we called it a day with a few card games with the kids at the new bed and breakfast.