8-12-2013

Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 12:03:34 +0800
Subject: Strange foods and nice people
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello everybody How are things at... where ever you are?

Well this week has actually been a really really fast week and I am surprised that it is already Monday again.  So as far as the big burning question on everyone's mind is that my Chinese is still pretty much useless as I cant really understand people but that's ok because I have an awesome companion that does all on my translations or fanyi for me, so that's that

So heres are the highlights I think of the week.

Some interesting foods that I have had the chance to eat, just yesterday there was a meat on the table and whenever we asked what it was the people would laugh and tell us that they didn't know the Chinese name (because most people speak taiwanese which is a language of its own as well as chinese) they only knew the Taiwanese name. So as someone went to the computer to translate it into chinese I just ate one and it turned out to be Pig Testicles so that was cool... next thing was also at the same dinner which was an avacado smoothie, which was actually rather good, but It didn't really taste like avacado so you can think what you want of that.  Then theres this fruit here that's in season right now called Long yen which translated means dragon eyes, and I pretty much eat that everywhere because its really really cheap and it seems to be the gift that people just like to give you, what it is is they give you a branch with these brown balls growing on it, and you peal off the skin for a little bit of fruit on the inside but within the "meat" of it there is a big black seed, it kinda tastes like a weird grape so that's kinda cool, and finally the thing I ate right when I got here is called a hot pot and the weird thing about those is that they give you a bowl of raw things and a stove of water that you boil then you just throw what you want into the water and wait for it to cook... kinda interesting but I dotn really know what to think of it.  But there's my food story for the week

So as it turns out my area, the Huwei area is actually a really really large area and I still haven't been to every town that is in it, but that also means that there is a lot of travel time to get to each appointment (sometimes up to an hour) so while we were doing this a car pulls over and waves to me and my companion, so my companion stopped but I wasn't really paying attention until the last minute and then I realize that things have come to a stop, so I grab my breaks and right when I get next to the car, my bike flips over! So as it turnes out the person in the car was a member and worse still is that I remembered them... So that was really hilarious!!

An interesting thing about I think its Chinese culture is that when a guest arrives at your house to meet with you, you always bring them a snack or something to drink.  Every time.  its rather an interesting custom but that's what it is, its also really nice after biking in hot weather as people tend to just bring out an ice water =) but I bring this up because we were looking for a less active and right as we got to his house his mother, who only speaks Taiwanese, so no Chinese, comes greets us, and we are asking her if her son is home, she has no idea what we are saying, we have no idea what she is saying, but she brings out a bottle of water for each of us and a little bag of ice cream... We tried to decline it but she totally insisted, even after we called up her son to translate for us and tell her we couldn't sit down with her, but she was the nicest old lady, it was a really cool thing.

Well that's about it for the interesting things that are happening here, the people are nice, the lessons are all in gibberish here, and I totally love it

I know that I am here for a reason and I don't know what it is yet but for now I am enjoying it

Elder Heaton

He Zhang Lao