Jake and Emily's Wedding

This last week my wife and I took a week to spend down in Florida to stand up in Jake and Emily's wedding. They are a wonderful couple that we have served in Taiwan with in the past and will again in the future. They both first met in Taiwan with a similar story to ours with some differences.

We left Wednesday driving all the way down in one day. My wife makes fun of me for this but I have a rule that we can only stop once about every 5 hours. So basically we only stop when we need gas and food at the same time, any bathroom needs must wait until those stops come up.

When we finally got down to Florida, just past Jacksonville, I heard a loud noise. Now my car makes all sorts of weird noises so I normally ignore them. However moments after I made a comment about it to my wife our tire blew. We originally were going to arrive at our stop at 11:30 but got delay until about 1am.

The next week Kyle Paradis, another groomsmen and I charged lots of tires including the Bride and Grooms honeymoon car the day of their wedding. Luckily the bride never found out...

Kyle Changing Tires

The actually wedding was at a resort at St. Pete Beach. It was a beautiful location and aloud us to have a decent amount of time at the beach.  There was lots of old friends from WOLBI (Bible College) that I got to see again and made lots of new friends.

Picture: I snapped a few pics of Jake getting a haircut for his wedding.

Both Anne Marie and I had the privilege of being in the wedding. About 30min before the wedding it was down pouring. When the wedding finally started there was still a very very light rain but it made for a beautiful ceremony with people holding umbrellas in the audience.

They wrote their own vows. Jake has an amazing way with words. Most of the time its for making jokes, but he can be really powerful and make people feel and understand his emotions. Many people were crying after he finished his vows to Emily.

The next few days we were able to meet up with friends and spend a few days with Anne Marie's relatives. We even stopped by were we got married almost 2 years ago. While we were there we took some photos of ourselves trying to re-enact the photos from our wedding day. (but I don't have those to upload at the moment)

Tainan, Taiwan (Trip Part 1)

What started out as a four hour, fun trip driving scooters turned into a twelve hour adventure, through the mountains. I knew it was a little longer going through the mountains but I didn't anticipate it taking that long. In Taiwan scooters aren't aloud on the highway, and some how we ended up on one, giving us a police escort. Luckily he left us off. Then we finally arrived from Taichung to Tainan at 5am.

Not to long into our day, I decided to climb a tree (left picture). However Grant the Korean decided to try to, but fell and twisted his ankle pretty good.

Five Concubine Temple

Apparently there was an Emperor with five concubines. Eventually he died and the dedicated themselves to honoring him or something silly and mystical sounding. (its been to long ago for me to remember all the details)

One of my favorite parts about Tainan is all the history. I think Tainan has best preserved its historical places then all of Taiwan. (Photo: Old Temple's and gods with plaques to historical figures)

Mexico, Taiwan (Kenting)

We took a trip down to Kenting, Taiwan with 10 people. It was a hard decision to go because I had exams the following week. I had lots of work to get finished.

The first night the guys stayed at Victors house. While there I found a bunch of cowboy like hats. We ended up wearing them down to Kenting, pretending to be like Mexicans.

As I looked around, I realized, Taiwan is Mexico! But everyone forgot there hats and tacos.

I added the mustache

While we were driving down the road, I joked about wanting to have my picture taken with a cow, because of our outfits. The Taiwanese driver, Victor, slammed an the brakes. And both of the Taiwanese in the car yelled, "WHERE!" while frantically looking both ways with their heads to find the cow. I forgot that Taiwan doesn't have many cows and it is kinda a touristy thing to go see them. But eventually we found their cows.

It was difficult taking a picture of our hotel room because it was sooo huge. Actually it was one tiny room with beds and a bathroom. You can see the whole thing from this photo. However, it was cheap.