Chapter 10: Taipei and Typhoons!

Nihao!

I am finally in Taiwan! It's so crazy that I am actually here now. I love it! It's so beautiful here. 

We arrived in Taiwan on Wednesday evening after 24 hours of travel and only 2 hours of sleep. President and Sister Jergensen came and picked us up with their two sons from the airport. They are so nice! President Jergensen is so funny and kind of sassy haha. When we walked out of the airport, it was literally a brick wall of humidity. I don't think I've ever felt anything like it. It was like 8 pm, and it was still almost 90 degrees, and I have felt sticky ever since. I am always sweating here. We took a bus from the airport to the mission home, and we stayed in the temple patron housing across the street from the temple. Funny story about that. People here don't always leave their air conditioning running like we do in America. So the AC in our room wasn't on, and it was about 30 degrees Celsius, or 86 F. We thought we turned the AC on before we went to bed, but we didn't. I guess we all thought it was broken? I don't know. But I do know that our room was in the high 80s all night long and that all of the sisters were DYING of heat. Add jet lag on top of that, and let's just say I've had way better nights of sleep. 

The next morning we woke up and traveled a little bit around Taipei, and then we got our trainers and were shipped out to our different areas! My trainer is Sister Kwan and she's been on the island for 8 months. She's so great! Her Chinese is awesome, which is great, because a lot of the time I understand most of what people are saying, but then I have no idea how to respond. I think I just get nervous and I totally forget all my Chinese haha, but I'm getting better! My first area is Song Shan, a district of Taipei. So I am right in the city! Taipei 101 is actually in our area, which is kind of fun. There are so many scooters EVERYWHERE. It's so great because we are biking on the street, and when we come to a stoplight, there's a box at the front of all the cars that all the scooters and bikers go to and wait for the light to turn green. It's a great place to talk to people! That's definitely one of my favorite things to do here. When there's a stoplight, we always bike right up next to somebody on a scooter and start talking to them. Most of the time it's just: How's your day going? Where are you going? Are you from around here? Have you heard of missionaries? I'm in Taipei because I am a missionary. Come to our free English class and learn more! And then the light turns green, they say bye, and take off. It's honestly so fun. Most of the time people are so nice and they get a kick out of me trying to understand where they are going. Most of the time I have no idea what their responses are, so I just say "Wow, hen bang!" (very awesome). 

I got to experience my first typhoon! It was crazy, the wind was blowing really hard and it was raining a lot. We got permission to go home early because 1: nobody wanted to talk to us and all of our appointments cancelled. And 2: because it wasn't safe biking at all. Let me tell you, biking in a skirt or a dress is not my favorite thing, especially when it's windy and rainy. The wind is blowing your skirt up, so you have one hand trying to fix that, also the wind is blowing your bike over. So you are trying to stay modest while not falling off your bike using sometimes one hand to steer, while raining at the same time. So fun. 

The members here are wonderful! Church got cancelled yesterday because of the typhoon (which was dumb because Sunday morning the typhoon was over and there were blue skies, but they still wouldn't have church). So I still haven't attended church all in Chinese yet. But because church was cancelled, we used that opportunity to visit a lot of members. We visited 5 families yesterday, and they all fed us fruit! The fruit here is SO GOOD. We got apples, Asian pears, cherries, mangoes, bananas, and guava. But seriously, all the members here are so wonderful. Everyone has some sort of trial that I am so grateful that I don't have, but despite that, they are all so faithful and strong. One of the people we met with yesterday is a man and his wife who have lived in the same apartment for 40 years! He is currently the stake patriarch, but he was the first president of the Taipei central stake, and was in the Taiwan Taipei mission presidency for 9 years! He is so awesome and knowledgeable. I love getting to meet everyone here!

I'm so grateful for this opportunity to be here in Taiwan! I love everything about it here. Have a great week! I love you all!

Love,

Sister Larson 

林姐妹