Chinese Singing Contest - Anne Marie Gets 1st!

After class one day in October, our Chinese conversation teacher approached Anne Marie and said she saw on her school file that she had a degree in music. She asked her if she could sing in Taiwanese for a concert in late November. Anne Marie reluctantly accepted the offer, feeling that she wasn't great of a singer and knowing it would be a lot of extra work on top of studying Chinese every day. We are studying Chinese, but the song was in Taiwanese.

The concert would be by one of our teacher's friends who actually wrote the song. It turned out that he was very famous and had won the Taiwanese equivalent to a Grammy some years ago, as well as other awards. We had the privilege of going to his house, seeing his awards, and getting to practice the song with him.

Our Singing Group

Every year our school, (中山大學 - Zhong Shan Da Xue) holds a singing contest for foreign students from around southern Taiwan. Our Chinese teacher convinced Anne Marie to compete with the song she was learning. She figured it would be a good trial run to help prepare her for performance in the concert. We also decided to participate with a group of 8 other classmates with a group song: Yen-j嚴爵 feat. PEACE [ 輕輕 Lightly ] Official Music Video

There was a lot of really good singers at the event. Many students who had been in Taiwan for years and had been studying Chinese for a long time competed. Anne Marie was the only one to sing in Taiwanese.

At the end, they announced the winners. The whole contest was in Chinese so I wasn't sure all the time what was going on. When she got called up to the front I didn't know why; but when she came back to her seat and showed me her prize money and certificate and I realized that she had won first place in the solo category!  We were both in shock!

Anne Marie and the other top contestants

Our group performance didn't even place. However we did get 1st place for best delivery!

*All photos provided by our school's faculty.

Lotus Pond Dragon Boat Race - 蓮池潭的龍舟

One of our Chines language school classmates was competing in a dragon boat (龍舟) race at Lotus Pond (蓮池潭). We decided to go out to support him and the rest of our school. Watching the race today got us excited for the Dragon Boat Festival which will take place next May.

Dragon boats are long narrow boats that hold twenty paddlers, one person steering in the back, and one person drumming in the front to keep everyone's rowing in sync.

It is believed that the use of dragon boats for racing originated in southern China during the same era of the Greek Olympic games. Originally, dragon boat racing was to celebrate the summer's rice planting and to celebrate the Chinese's dragon water deity. For some more info, check out Wikipedia.

Dengue Fever Outbreak in Kaohsiung, Taiwan

This past week has been pretty exciting. We've been studying so much for our midterms, and in the middle of life we had to take a break for Dengue Fever.

All Saturday morning we studied. In the afternoon, we decided to take a break for an hour a two to get some fresh air. When we got home, we found a pink paper with an official notice on our door, which was written entirely in Chinese. The only recognizable thing on it (besides the few characters we've learned) was a picture of a mosquito in a circle with a line through it.

We've seen many posters around talking about mosquito prevention because of the problem that Taiwan has been having with Dengue fever this year. It's a disease spread by mosquitos biting infected people and then in turn biting others. Over 25,000 people in Taiwan have become infected since May! We thought maybe this notice was just some good information about prevention. After checking with a Taiwanese friend the following morning, we found out that someone either in our apartment building or in our neighborhood has been diagnosed with Dengue fever. The government had issued a warning to us and our neighbors that they would be sending people to inspect and to spray everyone's homes the following day. If the inspectors found any larvae in anyone's home, they would be subject to fines. If anyone was not at home when they arrived the next morning, they would call the police to break in.

Sunday night we had the privilege to be Skyped into a church's mission conference. We were planning to prepare for that and to study most of the afternoon. However, it turned into us buying plastic tarps and tape. We spent the rest of the day cleaning our house and covering furniture and all our belongings with plastic to protect them from insecticide fumes. We were worried that the toxins from the spray would make us sick. Monday morning we also had to miss the first hour of classes to let the inspector and bug killers in.

Other than how time consuming this endeavor was, it is a somewhat scary thing for us. We are in a foreign country, we don't know their regulations on bug chemicals, and also Anne Marie has the gift of attracting mosquitos to bite her legs. There is also a frustrating side to this; our home is clearly not the problem as it has always been mosquito larvae free from how clean it is, however they sprayed everything in our home anyway. Also, in our courtyard there is standing water in the floor drains constantly which is the most likely place mosquitoes would breed, but they didn't even bring up that issue as far as we could tell and left the standing water there to continue as a breading ground.

After school we opened all our windows in an attempt to air out our apartment. We then spent all of Monday afternoon cleaning the walls, floor, and other various places. So far neither of us have shown any symptoms from this disease and we pray that we never do!

Taiwan Focus - Dengue Fever Article

Explore Kaohsiung: Formosa Boulevard

Formosa Boulevard

Formosa Boulevard (美麗島站) is Kaohsiung's main MRT station. It is named after the Formosa Boulevard Project, which aimed at remodeling Jhongshan Road (中山路) to prepare for the 2009 World Games (which was for sports not contested in the Olympics).



There are two MRT lines that meet here. The Orange line which runs West-East and the Red line which runs North-South. You can transfer to the next line in a matter of a couple of minutes. At this station you can exit on any street corner on the intersection of Jhongshan (中山路) and Jhongjheng (中正路).

Dome of Light

Within the Formosa Boulevard Station is a massive beautiful art piece called the Dome of Light. The Dome of Light was created by Narcissus Quigliata. It is the largest public art display made out of individual pieces of colored glass (Source).



The pieces were shipped from Germany and took about 4 years to complete. It has a 30 meter diameter and covers a area of 660 square meters (2165ft). The art is symbolic of the 4 stages of life. Water representing The Womb of Life; Earth representing prosperity and growth; Light for the creative spirit; and Fire to illustrate destruction and rebirth.

Moving to Taiwan

We have official moved to Taiwan! We flew out on August 2nd and arrived August 4th, celebrating our two year anniversary in the San Francisco Airport (8/3). The flight from San Francisco to Taipei took around 14 hours. It was a very tiring few days of travel.



After we arrived in Taiwan we met our Taiwanese friend, Nikki, who is studying at Moody. She allowed us to stay in here home and to show us around her neighborhood and reminisce about the places and food we missed that we haven't had since the last time we were in Taiwan.

We then decided to take the High Speed Rail (HSR) to Kaohsiung. Its about $25 more a person then a bus or a train. However it only took us one hour and a half verses a six hour trip! The train is a straight shot with quick stops along the way that travels over one hundred miles an hour.

We met up with Kim in Kaohsiung, who is another Taiwanese girl studying at Moody. Her family brought us to our new apartment which she rented for us. She also took the time to get our phones, internet and transportation needs all squared away. Having her here has helped the process a ton compared to if we had to figure out how to do all these things ourselves. A lot of these things would be impossible to do without a Taiwanese signature also.

Its so crazy being back in Taiwan. We feel very excited, nervous, scared, and relaxed. It's hard to explain the feeling. We really feel at home in Taiwan but are also so far away from everything that is normal to us.

Taiwan Bound: Moving Out

We just moved completely out of our home. It was a very sad and exciting moment. Seeing our house completely empty and lifeless was hard but knowing that we are on our way to Taiwan makes it all worth it.

Anne Marie played Sunday morning for the last time. She enjoyed this last memory with the band and close friends from our church.

We will be in Michigan for three weeks and then Ohio for two weeks before we are sent off to Taiwan!

Last Day at First Glance Skatepark

Last Tuesday we celebrated my last day with First Glance Skatepark Ministry. It was a fun relaxing time just to be with everyone one more time before I leave Akron, OH. It was definitely a bittersweet time, skating hard with everyone but knowing it was the last time I would see a lot of these faces or at least for a long time.

We had a little farewell time and all the guys prayed for me. They gave me a departing gift that had all the signatures of that skaters that were there on the bottom of the deck with my favorite brand of trucks and wheels. I'll be using the trucks and wheels but I'll hang onto that board with their signatures!

Jeremy DePace made a Farwell video for me. I didn't realize he did this but am so glad he did. It really means a lot to me seeing all these faces in this video that I have spent time with almost every week and almost every day for some of them. Thanks for the video!

FYI: There was kind of a joke that got started tonight, the kids in this video refer to me in a way that isn't very nice but its all a joke, they don't really think of me that way....I hope. :)

Normally when the park closes at 10pm I'm eager to shut the doors and leave. However this last session I didn't want to end. I stayed at the park till 11:30pm skating with one of my favorite dudes Isaiah Jones and Joe Simpson. There was one trick I really wanted to do before the night was over and they stayed there and pushed me to get it!

June 2015 Newsletter

Garage Sale

Anne Marie and I are doing a lot to prepare for moving to Taiwan. It has been an emotional process going through all our belongings and having to determine if we bring it with us, store it, or sell it. All of those questions are answered through determining if the item is sentimental, how big it is, how much money is it worth, how easily we can replace it, etc. This process would be complete different as a single guy but being married adds whole new layer to the process.

We tried to pack up everything we wanted to get rid of and even a lot of stuff that we will be taking with us. We are now living off of plastic plates and forks. Our house has a strange feel to it with its emptiness in most rooms now.

There was a flea market at our friends house. So we packed our car three times to drive stuff over. We started at 5am and went till 3pm. We didn't make a huge profit but it was still something. Everything we couldn't sell, we are donating or giving to Anne Marie's parents for their garage sale.

Long Hair, No More

Before


After

The beard has to go too...