Sometimes, I am reminded that being an American makes life really easy. Today it was during my Bible Study. We have been studying Max Lucado's book, He Choose the Nails. Actually I studied this book before so I thought it would be easy, but it was so different. Today, each woman took a chapter and explained its relationship to her life. I listened to some of the most amazing faith journeys. I could scarcely imagine. Two Taiwanese women were the only Christians in their families. One woman from Africa had lived through the deaths of three of her children, all the while praising God. One women suffered the loss of her father and the descent of madness of her mother while only a child, converted to Buddhism and converted back to Christianity while on her knees in a marathon prayer session that I could scarcely imagine. She was European, actually from a country that considers itself very Christian, only no one goes to church.
I have always been a Christian. Sometimes my faith is strong and sometimes not, but it has never left me. I have always lived in a place where being a Christian is a normal and generally accepted good thing. Even when my life has been dicey, that constant has remained. I wonder what it would be life to survive as a Christian in a hostile environment. These women look so ordinary but their strength is extraordinary.
Just one more reason why I am so glad to be an American, because I want to be Christian, freely, without reserve.

Some Things Just Don't Translate Very Well.

This sign is for a food and gift shop in Danshui, in a lovely tourist district. I am not sure that I would ever buy anything in a Turd Baby Shop even though it looked cute and fairly clean. As we learn more Chinese language (so far only spoken and Pinyin), it is already apparent that this is a language for poets and storytellers. It is hard for the Westerner to understand and speak because it is spoken almost in a chant. Ma for example can take 5 different sounds or tones, each meaning something different. Items in the modern world just don't quite fit nicely into the melody sometimes. We have eaten in a restaurant called "Very Good Seafood". I avoid the restaurant with a picture on a buzzard on the sign. I am afraid that the name is roadkill restaurant but I confess that I don't know. It just doesn't sound good somehow.

See you Thursday in Chinese literally translated means "day 5 see you." I am happy though that the literal translation of Sunday is Sunday. Somehow makes it a special day.

I have also noticed that wearing clothes with slogans written in another language is a bad idea. Last Saturday I saw a grandmother walking her grandchildren to the park by our house. Her shirt said "too much sex can leave your vision blurry." I am pretty sure that she would have been horrified if someone had given her the literal translation of that shirt. But the shirt looked nice and was probably cheap. I doubt though if Grandmother would really want to project that image.

Amazon finally finished giving me my refund, $1.99 at a time. Still it seems pretty silly that I can legally purchase music and movies, tv shows etc., from the i-tunes store but not from Amazon. I still have not purchased any illegal dvd's either. If the US was serious about protecting copyright laws then they need to make it easier for people who want to use legal channels to do so. My Toshiba computer, Japanese namebrand, manufactured in China, designed in Taiwan, is broken. but the Toshiba repair people say they cannot work on an American computer. It would void the warranty. Well it is no longer under warranty so now maybe they don't have the parts. The same problem happened with my Averatec computer just before the holidays. Interoperability isn't enough, just as we discovered during the Industrial Revolution, parts need to be interchangeable too.

It is amazing I tried to purchase a video from Amazon.com. The critical question was " is your computer American?" Well, my computer is American, purchased Plano, Tx. I can produce the receipt. Unfortunately, my ISP is in Taiwan. That wasn't the question. So, any way, I have been charged for $47.98 for videos that I cannot download. According to Amazon, I cannot return them either. So until Amazon lets me either return the downloads, or refunds my money, please boycott Amazon. PS I can purchase illegal copies of what I want for about $10 American, not the $50 that Amazon was charging. I tried to be legal. So far I still haven't done anything, illegal. What would you do?

Chinese New Year celebrations end with the Lantern Festival. Since this is the year of the pig, many of the lanterns are a pig's likeness. These lanterns are at the LongShan Temple in Taipei. There are many others all over Taipei City and they are brightly lit in the evenings. But originally the festival was staged so that young women of an age to marry could go out onto the streets in the evening to attract any possible suitors. They would rinse their faces in water reflecting moonlight (so their faces were bathed in the beauty of the moonlight) and then pull some spring onions (for luck?) and then parade through the streets carrying decorative lanterns that they had created. At the temples, now people of all ages visit the lanterns and walk under ones decorated with luck synbols to obtain luck for the new year. LongShan Temple is an unusual one because it is both Buddhist and Daoist so it contains gods of both. While Daoist traditions include meat offerings, since Buddhists are traditionally vegetarians, this temple is vegetarian. When you prayed to the gods, you had to be sure to include your name, birthdate and address to make sure that the god bestowed his/her favor on the correct person.

I didn't walk under any lanterns or pray to any of the gods in the temple. I followed another tradition for luck...you aren't suppose to sweep the floor on New Year's Day because you might sweep away your luck for the year. As I am not a big fan of housework, I really like this tradition and plan to follow it every year, for both the calandar new year and the lunar new year.

We just got back from a Chinese New Year Vacation to Thailand (Okay so we got back on Monday). It seemed like a good thing to do especially since we spent a long weekend in HongKong last month.

We spent the first full day in Bangkok, touring the city, seeing the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Keo, Temple of the Emerald Buddha. These are amazing structures decorated with Gold, gold leaf, Chinese porcelains, mirrors, crystals, semi-precious stones and jade. It is very opulent and beautifully maintained. The Emerald Buddha is actually made of Jade stone, one single piece 31" in length. We saw that Buddha and several others but almost as many sites were closed to tourists as they were considered too sacred. Like our White House, most of the Palace was closed to tourists too although the king no longer lives there. SO much for the city...it was time to find the water! So we toured the canals in and around the city of Bangkok and then off to our real destination, the beach on Koh Samui. Wow! The beaches were white, fine grained sand and the water was seductively warm and inviting. We spend the next four days seriously relaxing, and eating as the good was excellent.

Thailand is a country that is about 95% Buddhist and about 4% Muslim. Both groups are sincerely religious, but the Muslim extremists in the south part of the country have declared war on the Buddhists and things were pretty ugly in the southern part of the country. In fact, while we were there, travel by British and Australians was being discouraged. Americans had been told long ago to stay away due to the fear of terrorist attacks. We saw no sign of violence and a large number of Muslim tourists were enjoying the sights as much as we were. However, as a precautions we also didn't wear any symbols of our Christianity as we normally would. I understand that Christians are not suppose to wear a cross because it is offensive to Islam as a reminder of the Crusades. It is so sad that intolerance by just a few people can hold the greater population hostage. How did I know that some of the tourists were Muslim? By the conservative dress of the women and the religious symbols they were wearing. I wasn't offended.