T40 - a busy day!

26/10/2009 by paul.

Well I can’t quite believe I’ve made it to day forty of my stay here - I make that 5 weeks 5 days!

Today was really busy, but quite boring to write about! This morning I finished all the preparation for tonight’s work. This afternoon I clocked in another 30 scones in Paul#s English Bakery Emporium, which were consequently devoured with much jam and cream during the women’s fellowship, the English class and then the young adults group. And so full steam into this evening, which was quite literally jam-packed. At 6.30 I began the English lesson, which is growing each week, and made it to 8 this week. We read a big chunk of The Wind in the Willows. The kids are pretty good at being able to pronounce words - they may not know what they mean, but they can sure blag their way through understanding. This highlighted for me the difference between mandarin/taiwanese languages and English. In Mandarin or Taiwanese, each character is a syllable, and each is said in a constant rythym. I was trying to talk about how, in English we vary the speed and pitch when we talk to add emphasis and meaning. The difficult thing for me trying to learn mandarin (the written language) is that there are literally hundreds of characters each with its own syllable sound and tone. The tone is really important when you pronounce words, as the same ‘word’ means something completely different if it has a rising tone, a u-shaped tone etc. Just to make things even more complicated, most people in Taiwan speak Mandarin, or at least they do in Taipei. The traditional tribal languages still exist in some parts of the countryside too. But church people, in services and pastoral visits, general conversation, they speak Taiwanese. Taiwanese uses the same Mandarin characters but is pronounced differently. For example, ‘thank-you’ in written Mandarin is 感謝信 and is pronounced in Mandarin as ‘Xie-Xien’. But in Taiwanese, the same characters are pronounced ‘Dosha’… oh well - with my limited understanding of the language here I shouldn’t grumble too much when teenagers can’t understand Wallace and Gromit’s Tellyscope!

Well after the hour long English class, I had a five minute break before heading to the young adult group, which I was leading for tonight. The group usually sit round reading a Christian book and the Bible and talk about what they have read, share and pray together. It is a wonderful group, and they often just chat into the evening without much care for what time it is - it’s great! So this evening, instead of reading, I gave a bit of a presentation that was translated. I talked a bit about where I grew up and what that was all like - they were impressed with RGS’ and Durham’s buildings! I also gave my testimony, talking about how and when God worked in my life so I became a Christian. After that I talked about my calling to ministry, life at theological college and today’s church. I even managed to share the work of Crossfire with them all. It was a really good time and we had lots of conversation, questions and fun, and it also filled the two hour time slot!

After the talk I then headed back to my room to pack my bag. Tomorrow we’re travelling back to Taichung to go to a wedding, that bizzarely I have been invited to along with my hosts. We’ll be leaving straight after the service and staying Sunday night in Tek-Tung - at the church guest house school where I stay about three weeks ago. So exciting day tomorrow…

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