T21 & T22 - back to school

07/10/2009 by paul.

Well Monday brought a new week and the school kids back to lessons. On Monday I found the time and the God-given inspiration to finish my Bible study and prepare all the handouts and powerpoint slides (in two languages!). I’m looking forward to Thursday when I meet with the church members in Taipei to study Nehemiah 8 together - it’s a wonderful passage. If you’re struggling to pick up the Bible and read it, you might find some wonderful hints and ecouragement from the passage, as well as seeing what the outcome might be! In the afternoon I took the piano class again. I never thought that I would be teaching people how to keep time, but alas there was I talking about getting four beats in every bar! The good news of the day was that my tabletennis skills have improved somewhat, and I now have quite a compatitive partner who comes to the after school club. He’s worked out that if he gets here five minutes early we have time for a match before everyone else arrived for tea. It’s amazing the things that can be used to communicate - we have a great fun time, with hardly a word shared between us (or at least ones both of us can understand!).

In the evening I went to the supermaarket to prepare for the following day. Tuesday (or T22!) was celebration day and in honour of the fact I was here the kids got out of the English class to have afternoon tea! After the wonderful mooncake tea, I offered to make an English style tea, and so with a phonecall to my mum (thankfully I worked the time difference out correctly!) I found out the weight of the ingredients I needed. But there was a flour dillemma. They don’t do self-raising flour in Taiwan. They do plain (of which none is available at this time of year!), bread and cake. I plumped for a mixture of bread and cake flour with a estimated few spoonfuls of baking powder. Thankfully my mornings work was a success when the strange oven thing produced 28 very English-looking and (suprisingly) tasty scones. The school cook who had watched my every move seemed suitably impressed that I didn’t use yeast, or knead the dough. I told her it was my mum’s recipe and if she had any questions to ask her.

So after lunch I made some suitably English sandwiches, and even found some tea that ressembled good old Yorkshire Teabags (one bag makes two cups, or in this case ten bags makes twenty cups). No-one was too impressed with the addition of milk, but then again I wasn’t too impressed with the hard-boiled egg yolk in the middle of my mooncake! The headteacher had decorated the table tennis table so that we could all sit round and enjoy tea together…

After we had eaten I was presented with a huge card with greetings from everyone, and the students gave Jo a little present. Some of the students, as part of their vocational training, having sewing lessons, and they gave me one of the handbags they made for Jo, which was very kind of them. After this, the choir, recorder/flute group and those that like dancing gave a wonderful little concert. It was a wonderful afternoon and everyone seemed to have great fun. Praise God that food and music transcend language (as does He and His goodness!).

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