An American in Taipei...and a German.

So, as you could probably tell from my past posts, typhoons have been attacking us from every direction. Well, not really, but they had ruined the two previous weekends. Two weekends ago, much to my surprise, and pleasure, I was able to take the 2 1/2 hour train ride from Feng Yuan, where I live, to Taipei, to visit an old mission buddy. (Wow that last sentence has a lot of commas). After my 2 hour class that I taught early Saturday morning, me and a group of friends began the trek to Taipei. After sitting on the hard floor of a train for 2 1/2 hours, I was ready to stretch my legs and see my friend.

Stephan and I served together in the Czech Prague Mission and happened to be in the same MTC group. He's from Heidelberg, Germany, and he's the only mission friend whom I haven't seen since I got home about 2 1/2 years ago. But I did happen to meet his sister at BYU, and she is now one of my good friends. Anyways, it was kind of random that we were able to meet now on the complete opposite side of the world.

I should probably explain why he is in Taiwan. Stephan is here studying at Northern Taiwan University, which is a sister school with his univeristy in Germany. For his business program he needed to do a semester abroad, so he decided to come to Taiwan.

Anyways, after we went to the Taipei Temple, he showed us around the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial. We walked up lots of stairs, took lots of pictures, and then met lots of Taiwanese school girls.

Stephan and I were talking on the steps and this group of girls were staring at us. One had a loud speaker and called out, "Hey!" So I decided to walk over and talk to them. And I ended up talking to them for at least 30 minutes. They taught me how to say "break dancing" in Chinese, and showed me their incredibly cool dance, and gave me their MSN names so we could instant message each other. The video below is their "dance that is healthy and good for you" (aerobic dance) that they have to perform in front of their entire school.

All in all it was a fabulous trip, and it was so good to see an old friend.

Ming tien jien!