Day 3- Cultural experience to the max

Wow, so the wedding... where to start. So the marriage itself wasn't too different than a marriage in the US; the bride walked down the aisle with her dad and the dad handed off the daughter to the groom half way then some old guy married them. Here are the things that were different:

• Lloyd has 2 younger brothers. I only thought he had the one younger brother that was getting married, but no he has two. We met the other brother before the wedding. Lloyd introduced us to a guy and said it was his brother and Jon thought he was just saying that because he will often call his cousins his brothers etc, but it was his actual brother that his mother had birthed. The parents gave their youngest son to his uncle to raise because they couldn't have kids. That was some crazy-biblical-like child trading stuff that I didn't know really happened. I did think that was pretty cool though and it kind of makes sense.
• The bride's parents are Buddhist and the mother of the bride wanted to not have any meat at the meal because they don't eat meat. This in itself made for some interesting dishes and a never ending joke about the lack of meat by Lloyd's family (most of his family members are Taiwanese aborigines who really like eating meat). The meal was probably ten courses of different strange vegetable things. I ate almost everything, but none of it was that great. The thing I liked the best was the very last course it was a mango soup type thing with little tapioca balls and some grapefruit in it. It was fantastic. Sadly most of the other stuff was not so great. My second favorite was probably the lettuce wraps that had pine nuts in them. The other dishes were things like really bland soup with strange vegetables and sea plants in them, a wooden cup with rice and bean like things, and a variety of things that I had no idea what they were and tried to block from my memory because eating them was difficult.
• Besides the jokes about the lack of meat- the facts that me and Jon weren't drinking, were mormon, and were American were the next favorite joke topics. Luckily I couldn't understand half of this, but Jon was very patient and very polite and filled me in on what they were saying. I think one of my favorites that Jon told me about was in the middle of dinner- at the beginning of dinner one of the uncles had made a joke about saying a prayer and then later in the middle of dinner one of the other uncles tried to make a similar joke but no one laughed because it made no sense to say a prayer in the middle of dinner. Luckily by the end of dinner the uncle that had been the rudest at first was so drunk that he was inviting us to his house and was now our best friend. I'm so glad that we don't drink. I was also glad that the way we sat at the table me and Jon were on one side of the table with Lloyd's younger cousins sitting on both sides of us and then the aunts and uncle's were across the table. I think this helped so we didn't feel obligated to talk to the adults as much, and I was much more comfortable sitting next to the kids that weren't drinking.
• This wasn't really part of the wedding, but one of Lloyd's relatives had a little baby girl and they brought her around wearing a necklace made out of cookies. I watched as other family members made comments (I assume about how cute she was) and then break a cookie off the necklace and try to feed it to the baby. When they brought the baby to me I followed what I had seen broke off a cookie and tried to feed it to the baby and everyone thought it was great. Jon asked the kid sitting next to him why they were doing this and he told him that when a baby is one month old they feed it cookies. I'm not quite sure why they do that, but I tried to feed the baby cookies too.
• In Taiwan rather than gifts all the guests just give the couple money. We saw some of the pile of money and it seemed like a ton. That might be because about 30 Taiwan dollars is one US dollar, but still it seemed like a lot.

I think those were the main things that I thought were pretty crazy about the wedding and the goings on of it. After the wedding we drove back to Lloyd's and his girlfriend ended up driving because Lloyd didn't get much sleep (besides the fact that we were out until 2 getting massages his brother got him up for some thing and he ended up only getting probably 2 hours of sleep). It was pretty funny having her drive because Lloyd and her were kind of fighting about her driving- it kind of reminded me of my parents :). When we got home we took a nap. We napped for a long time. We decided that we probably shouldn't be allowed to nap longer than 2 hours or past 7 pm. I guess here the people stay up pretty late, because when we got up from our nap at about 8:30 we went to a BBQ place for dinner. The part of Lloyd's family that had been sitting at our table at the wedding was there. We just could not seem to get away from that one uncle. The place was an all you can eat thing where you go grab chunks of meat from the buffet thing and then you grill them over the hot coals that are under a little grate in the middle of all the tables. They like a lot of fat on their meat here, and I found it easier to swallow bits of meat that i would have usually only eaten five percent of than to swallow slimy seaweed and some of the weird veggie dishes from the wedding. It was quite the contrast no meat for lunch and pretty much nothing but meat for dinner. My favorite part of both meals was probably the parts that involved fruit. They had some good watermelon and pineapple at the BBQ place that I ate a bunch of. We were sitting around one BBQ with the kids again and the parents were were sitting at another and the one uncle kept cooking us things and bringing them over. We kept eating to be polite until we were too full to eat anything else. It is crazy because we ended up taking all the kids home on the three scooters we drove there because the parents were going to go do Karaoke and of course drink some more. On the way to the BBQ me and Lloyd's girlfriend rode on one scooter and Lloyd and Jon rode on another and then his younger brother (the one that was raised by his uncle) drove another. On the way home me, Lloyd's girlfriend, and the only girl cousin were on one scooter. Jon, Lloyd, and the two twin boy cousins were on another scooter and two of his other cousins were on the one that Lloyd's younger brother had brought because he was going to stay out with the adults. Riding home on the scooters with all the kids was quite the cultural experience. Today was an interesting day. It will be nice to have a relaxing sunday to go to church- Oh, so we are bringing all the kids to church with us. I think they are curious about Lloyd's church and want to see what its like (I think Lloyd is probably one of their favorite cousins even though he is probably 10-15 years older than them). We have church in about 7 hours and Jon is already asleep so it is time for bed. I'll see if we can find some pictures from today, we didn't take many but other people did.

Day 2

it is Saturday morning right now- all my other posts were written at night but last night we got home very late so I just went to sleep. Ok so yesterday we started off the day by going to the National palace museum. It was really cool. We got there just in time for the English tour, and if it wasn't for this tour the museum would not have been half as good. Our tour guide was a lady named Serena and she did a really good job showing us a bunch of different stuff from the different dynasties and telling us the stories that went a long with them. Apparently the Mona Lisa of the National palace museum is the Jade Cabbage. This jade cabbage was a cabbage made out of jade... who would have guessed. The reason it is so special is because it is made from the shiny jade that the people didn't really like much before and it uses the natural color changes in the stone to their advantage because the top leafy part of the cabbage is a more green jade and the base/stem part is a white jade. When she was showing us the cabbage she told us that this was the dowry of a girl who was married to the emperor. Her and her sister were both married to the emperor and the cabbage was the dowry of the least favorite of the two wives. The other wife and this emperor ended up being killed because the mother of the emperor didn't like how he was running things and the favorite wife was really supportive of him and his ideas of restructuring the government, or something like that. We also saw some really cool ivory sculptures. They were AMAZING! There was this one that was all these balls inside of other balls that could spin and move freely of one another. I don't really know how to describe it but it was really intricate and must have taken forever to make, and it was made out of one tusk. The tour ended up being about 2 hours but it was awesome and I would have had no idea that I was supposed to look at the jade cabbage or that all the characters written all over most of the pieces were added later by one of the emperors who really liked poetry and would have people carve a poem he had written about his favorite art works into them. After the museum we walked around the gift shop and then waited for the bus. We took the bus back to the train station and walked around there and found some food. We had some goutie (aka pot stickers) that were pretty tasty we had some regular ones and some spicy ones and I didn't really like the spicy ones too much. We then walked around down to a night market, but it was only about 2 so it wasn't open yet. We thought we might wait until it opened so we sat and people watched for a bit (we totally saw a couple break up or have a fight or something). After a while Jon called Lloyd and he said he wanted to take us to a different night market and to get massages. Jon and I decided to go home and take a nap so that we wouldn't be tired for the night market and the massages. When Lloyd got home from work we got up and went to the night market. He got us some dinner- some fried big round meat filled wanton-type things. They were pretty good, but I realized that eating makes me the most nervous because I'm trying to eat stuff that I have never eaten before and I'm trying to do it with chopsticks. I'm not too bad with chopsticks, but it is still nerve wracking. He also got us this egg thing with some pink sauce on top which I didn't think was very good. After that we walked around the night market and I bought some earrings and Jon got two pairs of shorts. I have no haggling skills in this language and Jon's are pretty bad so luckily we had Lloyd to help us talk the sales people down a bit. At this night market they have very famous chicken soup that Lloyd says makes girls very healthy. I wasn't hungry but he got some and let me try. I got some of the broth and it was super hot and burned my mouth; it was very bitter and oily and made me wonder if this was what drinking motor oil would be like. Don't worry I was very polite and told him it was good and I told him I felt very healthy. He did say that they think bitter things are good for you, so it wasn't just me that thought the soup was bitter. After the night market we came back to his house and talked to his family a bit ( and by talked to his family I mean Jon and Lloyd talked to his family and I smiled and nodded). We then moved our stuff out of the room we had been staying in to a different room because some of the family was going to be sleeping in that room. After that it was about midnight and Lloyd didn't think this was too late for 2 hour massages, so we walked across the street to the massage place. We started out the massages by getting our feet washed and scrubbed with slices of limes. I think this was one of my favorite parts. It smelled good and the water was warm and it was just overall awesomeness. After that we went and changed into some loose fitting pajama-type clothes. This whole time I have pretty much no idea what is going on because I don't speak Chinese. We all went into a room with three mats on the floor so we each had our own mat and lady that would be doing the massage. I was very glad that we would all be right next to each other and I would have some one to translate if needed. The massage was pretty awesome there were some parts of it that hurt but the lady probably spent about an hour massaging my legs and feet and this felt really nice. I realized that my right ankle is still not as flexible as the other from the time that I sprained it really bad over a year and a half ago. After my legs she massaged my arms and then I rolled over and she massaged my back and neck. The neck part hurt way bad because I'm always really sore in my neck. After two hours we were done and I was ready to sleep, not only because it was 2 in the morning but because I had just been massaged like crazy and was pretty much jello now. We walked over the the Family mart (this is a little convenience store kind of like the one that would be at a gas station in the US) because Lloyd wanted to take some money out of the ATM so we took some out too. After this we walked home and I went straight to sleep. This morning I woke up and showered and Jon says that Lloyd's family probably thinks I'm really weird because they people here always shower at night and never shower in the morning. I don't mind being a weird American because today my hair has looked the best it has since I got here because I didn't sleep on it when it was wet. We are about to leave for Lloyd's brothers wedding. I'll make sure to write about what it was like.

Day 1

I guess yesterday could have been considered day 1, but I'm going to call today day 1 because this was the first day we actually did stuff in Taiwan. Today we did most of the things that Jonathan had planned for us yesterday night. I got up a little before 10 this morning (I woke up around 6 the first time but didn't want to get up that early). Lloyd's mom (aka "Jomama"-she said we could call her this the other night. It made me think "I'm not jyo mama" but hey I remembered it right? I'm guessing that she told us to call her that because their last name is pronounced jo and then mama because she is the mom... I don't know but that is what I pieced together in my head. Ok back to what I was saying before) had made breakfast for us. She made some meat filled bread thins. I don't really know how to explain that better but the bread stuff on the outside was soft and the meat stuff on the inside was tasty. After breakfast we walked to the train and went to a museum thing. It was the memorial hall for the guy who was the father of Taiwan. I discovered pretty quickly that Taiwanese people like to take pictures where it looks like they are holding things in their hands so I had Jon take a picture of me holding the memorial building.


This is us infront of the statue of Chaing Kia Shek ( I had to ask Jon how to spell that because I couldn't remember) this is what is inside the upper part of the building I am holding above.


This is outside on one of the terraced levels of the memorial hall looking out over the courtyard with the national theater buildings in the background.


After walking around the memorial hall building we checked out the grounds we sat by a pond and saw some koi, turtles, and birds. Then Lloyd called Jon and invited us to go to lunch with him. We met him over by the temple (this took us a little longer than expected because we went down the wrong street the first time) and then went to a famous xiao lung bao place. It was really good but on my first xioa lung bao I got broth stuff all over my pants. Oops. After that I was nervous about spilling on myself and looking like and idiot so I ate very slowly. At lunch we met Lloyd's new girlfriend, she was nice and she helped serve me some chicken soup with a piece of chicken that wasn't the foot. After lunch we went to the temple. This was the first time that I had to wear headphones because it wasn't in English. That was kind of interesting. They ended up asking us to do some sealings after the session so that took a while longer. After the temple we went over and talked to one of Jon's friends that works doing translation stuff for the church in the building next to the temple (her picture is in the priesthood/relief society manual she is the asian one reading her scriptures). After the temple our original plan was to go to Taipei 101, a super tall building, but because of the fog and rain that we had today we decided not to because we wouldn't be able to see anything. Instead we took the train to a night market and walked around a little and got some smoothie-type drinks for dinner (neither of us was very hungry because we had such a big lunch). After walking around there we got back on the train and got off at the wrong stop and when we didn't recognize anything or know how to get to Lloyd's house so we called him. This is when we found out we were at the wrong stop. When we got off at the correct stop we knew right where to go. Now we are here and we are tired from walking around all day. Jomama cut us up some melon tonight so we ate that and it was yummy. It was a white melon and the taste reminded me of honeydew. Jon is already asleep so I'm going to get some rest too.