I do know Chinese…

Recently, I have had a student named Grace coming to my E6 classes. She is from the Junior High school, but she is Korean and her English isn’t as good as other students. So to catch up she has been coming to my class this semester. In my class there is a strict English only rule. I have one student whose English ability is very low and speaks to me in Chinese quite regularly. Usually, I just stare at her with a blank expression as if I don’t understand. This usually gets her to try and say whatever she is trying to explain in English. I forgot to go over the rules with Grace and she doesn’t know of the English only policy.

Last week, Grace was explaining to me that she had to leave early and would see me tomorrow. She said this all in Chinese. At the time, I was testing Rudy’s reading pronunciation. Rudy being one of my lowest students and also the one who tries to speak Chinese to me everyday was surprised when I answered back in Chinese. So surprised she exclaimed, “You know Chinese!” like it was a major revelation. I will have to continue using my blank expressions and hopefully Rudy will forget that “I know Chinese.”

Seeing the Reunion

Recently Taiwan was given two pandas by China. Obviously this causes mass hysteria in Taiwan. Come on, it’s a panda! So I took a trip to the Taipei zoo. It was my first time seeing pandas which was pretty exciting. Since so many people in Taiwan also wanted to see the pandas, We were given a specific time in which we could see them. Once we were in the huge exhibition hall built specifically for them we just had time to file through to see them. One person that I was with received a call on her cell phone as we were walking past and wasn’t even able to see them. I felt sorry for her since I didn’t even get a good picture with my camera for her to see them. Once the craziness subsides I think I would want to see them again, maybe. The pandas’ names are Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, in Chinese when you say these together it means reunion. So I call these panda’s propaganda, but still they are pretty cool.   All in all, my trip to Taipei was an amazing trip. I had a lot of fun and seeing pandas in real life, I couldn’t ask for more.

                             

I Must Be Famous

My Chinese reading ability is finally getting good enough that I am realizing one of my goals I set for myself when I first came to Taiwan: reading comic books in Chinese, but that’s not the interesting part of the story. I was doing some shopping at the mall in Chaiyi and made my way to a bookstore. I decided that I wanted to test my Chinese reading ability so I picked up a popular comic called Deathnote.

I made my way to the checkout counter. I was waiting patiently for the clerk to ring up my purchase when she asked me if I could read Chinese. I said I could read a little and then said in English that it was more to get me to practice Chinese. I thought that would be the extent of our conversation since I usually don’t speak to people when I’m checking out. She then tells me that my backpack is open. After a year of skateboarding my bag is pretty beat up and some of the zippers are broken causing one of the pockets to hang open. I told her i knew of this and it was no problem. I didn’t feel like or have the vocabulary to explain anymore.

Then she asked if I study or work. I told her that I work at Concordia. You know, the polite conversation kinda stuff. She then asked me if my name was Mike. I was really confused at this point and my face surely showed it. She asked again and I responded “No, it’s Matthew.” I figured that to her most foreigners look the same and she was just confused about who I was. Then she said something that really confused me because I had never seen her before. She said, but you ride a bike and skateboard. Though utterly confused, I responded yeah, that’s me. By this time she was done ringing me up and giving me my change. So we parted ways leaving me utterly perplexed and thinking I must be famous.

Do Not Enter. No Problem

Sore muscles. That’s all I can think about the day after hiking Duli Shan. This was the first time I went hiking since coming back to Taiwan in August. I love Taiwan for the mountain hiking, something you can’t really get in Iowa. We’ve had a couple of typhoons and big rain storms. After these types of weather events you can expect the trail to be a little rough. I had forgotten this fact though. So when Michael, Andrew, Noel, and myself started out on the trail the sight that we saw surprised me. Looking out for safety the park put up a strip of ribbon to tell hikers that the trail was inaccessible. This did not deter anyone though and a makeshift trail was made to bypass the inaccessible part. We were able to enjoy the rest of the trail.

Jangmi

Typhoon Jangmi, the fourth typhoon to hit Taiwan this year, recently passed. I just wanted to let everyone know I am ok. Since Chiayi is protected by the mountains, I normally do not have to worry about the effects of typhoons. The wind was very strong according to some reports up to 140 mph. I stayed inside most of the night waiting out the storm watching movies and reading.  I guess the power went out for an hour during the night, but I didn’t notice anything of that sort. This morning I took pictures around campus. There wasn’t much destruction: a few branches down and one gazebo was destroyed. All in all the most powerful typhoon of the year wasn’t so bad. We did have a day off school though. That was a plus. 

Students Playing Matchmaker?

For my E6 class, this unit we are learning about amazing people. One of the persons we are learning about is Sarah Chang, a world famous classical violinist. She is pretty amazing indeed!

Anyways, during one of my classes I had students think up questions that they would like to ask Sarah Chang. They had the usual where was she born, what does she do when she's not doing a concert. All these questions were easy to answer or at least find information on the internet to answer them. One question however was quite difficult to find. I searched and searched but could not find the answer.

The question was, "Is Sarah Chang married?" Like I said I searched hard for the answer but could not find it. So I went to her official website. I found a way to contact her and sent Sarah Chang a message explaining that I was a teacher and the reason for my question.

Later in the day I received an email from her which said:

Hello!
You're very sweet, thank you for your email.
No, I'm not married! Too young, too busy, too immature, take your pick.....
Thanks again.
Sarah

 

With the running joke of me having a Korean wife, I thought this was just another layer to add to that joke.

Asian Snowball Fighting

I recently went to Korea as part of the CELA trip before the beginning of the school year. While you may think that the most memorable thing for me would have been the shopping. If you thought that you thought wrong. I loathe shopping. We happened to do a lot of it during this trip. I was however to not participate in shopping and was able to be a NSB (Nonsmoking buddy) to the fellow guys on that were part of our travel group.

Being an NSB was not the most memorable event either. This honor would have to fall to snowball fighting with a bunch of Korean kids in Tae Kwon Do. Going on a trip to Korea, I would not have thought that this would even happen. However, we went sledding at a place I saw on the Travel Channel a couple years ago. It was an indoor place that made fake snow. It was fun to watch the skiers and snowboarders. And even more fun to get into a snowball fight.

It started out that the kids were throwing snowballs at each other. A stray one wandered our way and soon Heidi and I were part of a massive snowball fight. We also taught the kids and some of the assistant teachers from CELA the proper way to make a snowball. They didn't know how to pack it so it wouldn't break up when thrown. I think that this is a very valuable skill to know even in Asia.

Stories from the E1 classroom

So it's been a while since I've updated this blog. I'm sorry, I'm really bad at this sort of thing. But i do have a couple of fun stories from the E1 classroom this week. I thought I would share them in a quick paragraph.
The first story has to do with my birthday and my Chinese name. Since it was my birthday on Monday, the office decided to throw a party. In our meeting room they drew a picture of me and had written on the chalkboard, Happy birthday Fei Da Nyo. Which happens to be my Chinese name. Well, some of my 1st grade students do their homework in that room when they are waiting to be picked up by their parents. They saw the name on the board and knew it was my birthday so the next day they asked if Fei Da Nyo was my Chinese name. I told them it was, so all during break time that day I heard Matthew zhong gyen mingza Fei Da Nyo. (Matthew's chinese name is Fei Da Nyo). The students then tried to talk to me in even more Chinese and were amazed at how much Chinese I knew.
The second story also happened during break time this week. I was sitting on the floor with Jamie and Ginger. I had taken my glasses off for a bit, and that is when Jamie noticed something about my eyes. They were green! So she says in amazement, "Matthew have green eyes." It made me laugh, and I said yes.
And those are some stories from the E1 Classroom.

New friends, a good time

This past week we finally started OSF again. It was great to get to talk with the Junior and Senior High students. Since I don't get much interaction with this age group throughout the week, it is always fun to get a little time with them. We had a game night and quite a few students participated in the fun.  Stalin brought a book that he had just bought and it had the presidents of the United States in order. So Stalin, Mark, and I had a good conversation about United States history. Having a conversation with Stalin is always interesting you never know what you are going to talk about. A new AFL student is here as well this semester. He was living in Canada and you can tell that his English is very good. While I didn't talk with him for long, it was great to meet him. I think he will be a great addition to OSF and the CMS
campus.

English Worship Sermon

Today we have English Worship at a park in Chaiyi. I really enjoyed it. Many kids slowed down as they were riding their bikes to listen to the music. It was a great worshipping and witnessing opportunity. I gave the message today and I want to share it with you. While I am not known for my verboseness, I like to be succinct and get to the point of the matter. I think I did that today.

"The Bible passage for today comes from 1 Peter 1:13-25. This passage is a first of a long series of lists that peter wrote saying what we must do. The main verse I want to focus on today is from verse 22; "Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply from the heart." Early in the passage Peter writes that we are obedient children. God has show us a love of a father by adopting us as his children and out of this love we obey what the Father says.

During our day to day activities we may forget to sincerely love our brother. It is hard to have a deep love for one another as we are commanded in verse 22 to love one another. This command is take from John 13:34-35, which says, "A new command I give you, love one another, As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another." Our standard, what we strive for is to be like Christ; to be perfect. Spreading the word of God is the most important work we do on Earth, but just telling others without actions to follow up does little. Faith without works is dead. The action of love shows that we are truly set apart from the world. That there is something different about us, about Christianity.

Yet when we try to love one another we continually fail. we try to show love but we mess up by: fighting, bickering, putting others down. We forget the love of God, how he brought us into his family. We only think about ourselves.

As we begin the new year, the usual tradition is to make a new year's resolution. While many of these resolutions are broken in the first week, first month. Rarely do they last the while year, but let us make this solution: to love one another as Christ has loved us. Knowing that we will break this resolution, but also knowing that heaven is not gained by anything we do, but because of God's love for us. For he loved the world so much that he gave his only son Jesus to die for us. So that we may become sons of God. I cannot imagine how much love it would take to have to give up, to sacrifice your only son to save someone who continually disobeys you. We do not obey the truth as it says in verse 22, but still God loves us. As I end today I want to listen to this verse from verse 24.

All men are like grass and all their glory is like the flowers of the field, the grass withers and flowers fall, but the word of God is forever. So even if we try to be perfect if we try to show the love of God we will still leave this world quickly. Our glory, our love is useless in the long run, but standing on the word of God, this last forever. Put your faith in Christ, realize the love of the father and be saved. In his name. Amen.

Haven't you always wanted a monkey?

Yesterday, Michael, Andrew, and I went hiking on a new found mountain site that Andrew researched very carefully. Well, I shouldn't say hiking, I should say we tried to hike. Since we didn't exactly know where we were going it was more of an adventure to to talk to the people, most of them spoke very little mandarin Chinese. So Michael had to pick out from the Taiwanese and the Mandarin that they knew directions. This sometimes caused confusion and was a little frustrating at times. In the end we did find the place where we wanted to hike, but decided not to go hiking since it was getting late and we didn't want to be driving on the mountain roads in the dark. Leaving the place we felt like a day had been wasted, our hearts were heavy. We had seen some beautiful scenery, but had not done what we had set out to do. Coming back down the mountain we decided to stop and try to find a cave that we saw a sign for. When we stopped there was a lot of commotion in the forest. We were very silent to find out what it was that was making all the noise. And that is when Andrew spotted a monkey swinging through the trees. All together we saw three wild monkeys. Because of this, the trip felt worth it.

Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart

Well, I had my first major holiday without family this week. It was good, even without a few days off. Michael told me that he gets sentimental when eating food and I laughed it off as a crazy notion, but once I had my first taste of turkey and my pumpkin pie I realized what he meant. We had a big thanksgiving feast at the Practice Hotel. About 100 Taiwanese came and celebrated with us. I was amazed to see how many came to give thanks and join in on the food eating. I even had apple pie, which I was very thankful for even if it wasn't like Grandma's. Eating that pie, that's what made me miss home the most. Not being able to hear Grandma complain that no one eats her apple pie and threaten not to make it next year, when in fact it's the pie I look forward to the most. I was even able to watch football to round out my thanksgiving week. Technology is amazing. Being able to watch the Packers play football made it feel more like the holidays even if it isn't cold and snowy outside. So as I end this blog, I realize that I have much to be thankful for: good friends, good food, and a roof over my head.

I Think I'm Turning Taiwanese. I Really Think So

I have a funny story about something that happened to me after Wednesday Night Bible study. We had finished and we were having our delicious snack of oranges and I was talking with some of the students when a little girl and her mom showed up to talk with Monica. The girl was amazed that there where Americans there and said 3 Americans in Chinese. All the Americans then noticed that the little girl did not know how to count since there were actually 4 of us. So we said 4 in Chinese. The girl looked confused and counted again, but she didn't point to me when she was counting. That's when someone told me to take off the hat I was wearing. I did. When the girl saw that I did not have black hair like a normal Taiwanese person, she recognized me as American.

And the Lord lifts up my soul

This weekend almost the whole group of missionaries went down to Tiachung for our fall retreat. It was a great weekend of praising God. We had wonderful weather; you just couldn't ask for better weather. I loved all the songs we sang. Even if I don't have the best voice singing just lifts up my spirit. Being able to sing in English with English filling up the room was amazing to hear. We also stayed in the same hotel as the USA baseball team that was in Tiachung for the World Series of baseball. This time was also a great time to get to know some of the other missionaries that I don't see on a regular basis on a more personal level. While I may see them for bible studies, I don't always have time to get to know them personally. This weekend I was able to just let it drop and renew my spirit.

 

The East meets West

I went to a Chinese concert with all the traditional Chinese Instruments. I was told it was one of the best concert groups in Taiwan. While I heard this, I didn't know what to expect since Heidi, the music guru on Team Taiwan, said the the sound was very shrill. All I have to say is the sound was amazing. They played many songs that I did not recognize, but when they played Western songs that I did recognize the Chinese instruments with the cellos, drums and harp gave it a sound that was simply beautiful to hear. The flute duo that I heard was also great. I wish that I would have taped some of it, but they requested no videotaping so I respected that wish.

Back in the Swing of Things

So after a long Hiatus I am finally back with my computer. Today has been busy baking cookies for the Halloween Party at CELA on Monday. Tonight we have a Halloween Party at the Hanson Manor. It should be a good time to just kick back and relax. I am finally feeling more comfortable teaching the 1st grade class. They are starting to listen to me as well! It's is great to have some relationships forming. One in particular is with a student named Stalin. He will come into the CELA office everyday and talk for a little bit. I am usually busy with things so I cannot talk long, but he constantly asks me if I will come to Thrusday night to talk more.
I have also decided to post a picture of some of my E6 students. They are a wild bunch at times, but usually are pretty good.

I'll try to keep you updated more now that I have my computer once again.

If you want to check out YouTube I now have some videos on there as well

In Christ,
Matthew Fick

1st week of School

I just finished my first two days of teaching. While i didn't feel quite at home with the E1 kids (1st grade) I got through it and that's all that matters. My E6 kids (6th Grade) are amazing. I ran into one of them at a book store on Saturday, but she was too shy and didn't want to talk. That is how most of the students are; they are very good in speaking English, but they are too shy to actually speak. I am learning a bit more Chinese not as much as I wish I knew, but enough to order things from restaurants.
I visited a temple yesterday on our bike tour and was amazed at the architecture. It was so ornate and very beautiful. and then I realized everyone worshiping there did not know Christ. It weighed really heavy on my heart and the hearts on the other missionaries as well. We had a prayer after visiting the temple for the people of Taiwan. I ask that you too pray for the people of Taiwan that this tiny island may experience the growth of the Christian church as the disciples at Pentecost experienced. Just thinking that 3,000 could be added to the number of the church in one day is amazing. If that happened during the time of the disciples, I pray that it could happen now.

'til next time. tzi chien.