Hey Mom and Dad!
This week has flown by. It really
does feel like we just emailed a few days ago. But it's been good! First off, thank you
for the package! I picked it up last Monday, and it was so fun. First package
in Taiwan! And the candy was great. :)
Well, the phases are just for the
language study. (I asked Amie to explain this to me.) So there's three phases. The first phase (the one I'm on now)
is just all the missionary lessons in Chinese. So it's just like a text book
basically, but it has all the vocab, teaching phrases, grammar, etc. So there's
5 lessons in Phase 1, and you have to pass off each lesson to your district
leader in order to move on. You do that by doing some practice teaching, and
also just by them quizzing you. Then when you're done with all the lessons, you
pass off phase 1 to your zone leader. Phase 2, is just flashcards and vocab.
It's just everyday words too, not church vocab. There's a ton too, haha, it's a
lot of words. Then Phase 3, is learning to read and write characters. And
specifically learning how to read the Book of Mormon in Characters (that's one
of President Day's goals for all the missionaries here). Right now I'm on lesson
3 of Phase 1. I passed off lesson 2 last week at district meeting. So I'm
almost about halfway done with Phase 1. I don't really know how fast every one
else does it, but apparently according to my district leader I'm getting
through it pretty fast. It helps that I already learned a lot of the grammar in
High School, and some of the words, so I already have that foundation. But
yeah, that's the phases! My plan is to be done with Phase 1 by the end of
January, and I really think I can. I'm excited. Learning Chinese is hard, but
it's really fun too. And I think it's even more fun now than in High School,
because I'm really forced to speak it ALL the time, haha.
Well, like I said this week's been
good! I forget to mention in my last email, but we actually had exchanges last
Monday night and Tuesday, and that was really fun! My first exchange
experience. It was with the temple sisters, so I went to Taipei with Sister
T, and Sister B went to Dan Shui with my companion Sister E, and
it was really fun! I was a little nervous before it, because I didn't really
know what we would be doing or what to expect, but it was really good. We ended
up just contacting in Taipei for about an hour and a half, and then we had a
'qing ke' (member gives you a meal basically), and we went to this delicious
japanese restaurant. Ah it was so good, haha. And the family was really nice!
It was a Mom and her 4 daughters, then Sister T and me,
and 4 Elders in their area, so it was really fun. After that we just went home,
slept, then woke up for studies, and by the end of studies we had to head back
to Dan Shui since it takes about an hour and a half. Contacting was so fun
though! It made me realize that I should really be better about talking to more
people, because everyone's so nice! And it always feels kinda good when they
say something like, "Wait, why is your Chinese so good? You're from America..."
haha, it's funny. But I want to try and do that more, just start a conversation
anytime I can. Sometimes it's hard, because I get tired and don't really want
to talk, but once I start talking it's great, so I just need to do it. We
also have exchanges later this week with the Sister Training Leaders, so next
week I'll be able to tell you how those went.
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| Getting ready for 'exchanges', where they temporarily switch companions with other missionaries in their district |
One of our investigators made us cookies! It was just so cute, especially since hardly
anyone here even likes cookies, haha. She made us each our own bag, of about
10. We both successfully ate them by the end of the night, haha. And then the
next time we met she had made us more! She is so cute. She's 19, and entering
college next year.
She's come to ALL of church the past 2 weeks, so it's been really fun. It's so
fun to have investigators at church!
Then on Thursday we met up with
Dad's friend FC and his wife, and that was really fun!We just
met up at the MRT station at about 5:30, and they took us out to dinner and we
just got to know them and had a good time. They're so nice! They gave us
delicious little pineapple cake pastries, ah they're so good, haha I love them.
We still have a few left. They took us to this Tibetan restaurant, and the food
was so good! They were just really good to us. FC really likes Dad, haha, he
said how Dad is just good to him, always makes jokes and is just really
humorous. It was fun. We might try to meet up on a P day or something, so we
can have more time to do more stuff, but it was really nice! We originally
weren't going to be able to get together this past week because we didn't have
much time, but he called back and said that his wife and him were just going to
come to Dan Shui because they really wanted to see me, so that was so nice.
It was really fun :)
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| Having dinner with a good friend of Amie's Dad, FC :) |
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| FC's wife |
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| Looks delicious! |
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| Look at the size of those noodles! |
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| Enjoying the pineapple pastries! |
We also had 2 investigators at church! That's the most so far, and that was amazing. One has been an investigator for a while, and had never attended church, so we were really excited. She could only stay for Sacrament meeting, but she said next week she would come for all of it. It was really good.
I really do love the ward here. It
was really fun yesterday, I made more of an effort to go up to people I didn't
know and just start talking. (Last week, we kind of slacked with meeting with
members, so we needed to get back on that). I would just go up to some sisters
I didn't think I met and just be like "Bu hao yi si, wo ren shi guo ni
ma?" (I'm sorry, but have I met you before?) And luckily, my memory was
good enough, that I only went up to people I hadn't met haha, and we got a
couple set ups from that. The ward is all really nice. We had dinner at the RS
President and her husband's house last night, and they made so much food! It was
like, lemon rice with curry chicken and it was so delicious, haha, I loved it.
The Bishop is also great. Our Ward Mission Leader is out of town a lot lately,
so we've just been meeting with the Bishop, and he's helped a lot. Both he and
his wife served missions, so they're really good to us and just really
supportive. It's nice.
I officially love riding my bike as
well, it's so fun! We went and got baskets put on, so now my bag just goes in
the basket in the front, and so we're going to start 'stop light contacting',
haha, it should be fun. It'll be so convenient to get to our little pamphlets
now, so I'm excited! And the weather is officially cooling down! Of course,
it's no where near cold, but it's nice. I actually have to wear a light sweater
or blazer at night, haha. Apparently it really does get bitter cold up here in
Dan Shui though, so I probably won't be liking the cold so much in about a
month, haha.
Thank you for all the pictures!
Everyone looks so grown up! It's weird that it's already the middle of
November! Haha, I can't believe I get to talk to you guys in about a month,
time really does fly by these days.
Well, I love you! I'm attaching
pictures soon, and there's a couple of me on my bike, so you'll have those :)
Love you and miss you!
-Qiao Jei Mei
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