Sabbath in Tainan and the Journey South to Kenting

The whole family outside the Tainan, Anping chapel with Airbnb host, Alex

Thanks to the miracle of the internet, we were able to find not only WHERE an LDS chapel was for church on Sunday, but when we could hit a sacrament meeting. Thankfully, one was "playing" at 10:50 because getting our whole crew and ALL the luggage repacked and loaded took all morning, and I was up early.

Alex, our Airbnb host even came with us! I'm not entirely clear what his motivation was in doing so. Before we went, he asked me for more money than what we had payed via Airbnb, so my cynical side wonders if his attendance was to make us somehow feel obligated to him for extra money. I explained the extra wasn't my understanding of the agreement and said we'd rather not pay, and asked him if that was okay. He handled disappointment like a champ.

My Chinese isn't good enough to understand church if I only half-listen, and entertaining Stew for even an hour took more energy than I wanted to spend and kept me from really partaking of the spiritual meal. (I blame the baby!) The kids listened to the meeting translated for part of it, but I think the translation machines are garbled, so no one, in fact, got much out of the meeting.

We weren't sure how we would be received after the fact. We arrived late and walked half-way through the small chapel hunting for seats before they opened up for us more space in the cultural hall. So pretty much everyone knew we were there. We only saw one set of missionaries in sacrament meeting, but did see a sister missionary in the building, and a handful of other foreigners as well (though none in leadership). So I didn't know much of what was going on. And I wasn't even able to help explain anything to Alex, who I heard whispering to Big Bro behind us. I chalked that up to perfect, because it was a chance for Big Bro to take a crack at explaining things to a newbie. I don't think in the time that Alex met with the missionaries, that he ever went to a church meeting.....

Anyway, AFTER the meeting, there was a nice member who gave Stew some food, and then perhaps because the kids looked so jealously at him, gave us all more food - a dry pastry with dehydrated pork inside (not a hit) and a fruit that is similar to a grapefruit but green, with a thicker skin, pear shaped, dryer and more bland. The kids liked that pretty well. Aside from this woman, and a Brother Liu who I shared a mission with (but probably only recognized from my friend's blog) I only spoke for any length of time with an American who had recently been reactivated and his half-Chinese daughter. We interfaced with the missionaries some, as Big Bro's post mentioned. (I can't believe how YOUNG missionaries are!) That was pretty much it. Maybe the friendly faces had whining kids they had to get home to get food into. (We certainly know about that!) Or maybe they were caught up in what looked very much like a sales presentation going on the cultural hall. (I don't know much about that at all, but I'd be only half surprised....)

It all translated to us being able to go sight-see a bit earlier than we thought we would, which probably was better for Alex acting as our guide.

Our next stop in Anping, after church, was lunch. Alex knew the perfect place. I remember the food was good, though I don't now remember what it was. The PLACE was incredible. LOVED eating in this Japanese era (or older) structure. This shot was the upstairs!

Next: the Anping Fort. Again, built by the Dutch. I'll let the pics explain.

A formidable Dutch force under Q's supervision.

Does this come to YOUR mind? We weren't especially moved.

Or WERE we?

The "beaut and sadness of olden days" in all it's glory. Chinese are such suckers for the olden-day beauty and sadness!

Don't know why, but we like this guy, Kongxinga. And we think his Dutch nemesis looks Mexican

And we were STILL running below full energy capacity and it was hot and muggy, so our next and final stop was to the Anping Merchant House/Tree House. On the way there, we approached two "metalic" street performers. Veeve had never seen their kind before and was intrigued by the randomly placed "statue." So she walked right up to one and touched it's hand. She was a bit surprised it felt like a human hand. So she reached out to touch it again and HE MOVED! I wish we could have captured the shock on her face at that moment. It was CLASSIC. He performed quite a bit for her, and Rachel put money in his box so the performance went on. We did get this shot when he finished!

Big Bro's face captures best their crappy attitudes.

We had all anticipated our final destination to see the banyan tree strangling the building, but the entry signs talked about the spirit and respect and symbolism due the banyan tree (who in being worthless for wood, is left to grow, and therefore provides shade, it's roots being like the hairs of an old man's beard, yada-yada) so that pretty much killed our ability to go crazy exploring the tree and ruins of the building. (I was bummed. The kids were gripey-bummed. They griped about not being able to do anything FUN. They griped about not getting to have ice cream because the only available flavor was "black tea.") All the griping helped me to feel A LOT better about expediting us OUT of there.

Veeve at the TOP of the building

An interior shot of the building.

But we did stop off to let Stew play on a playground, he never having quite the time he wants to have on the random (and mostly in disrepair) playgrounds we wander across. While the kids finally got the climb they apparently were all aching for, I grabbed various ice cream bars at the 7-11 and hoped to make peace.

Judging by the change in expression, I think my peace-making was a success!

When we were all sticky from those, I went to hunt down a sink - we were at the grounds of an elementary school - and discovered a group of young men break-dancing. Like most young men break-dancing, they were mostly doing tricks, which had very little to do with the music, so it hardly seemed right to call it dancing. But the tricks were WAY cool. I tried to get Big Bro to whip out one of his combinations from jazz class, but he wouldn't have it. So aside from his brief "groovin'" moments, and Weese trying to ape what she saw and throwing in a few cart-wheels for good measure, mostly we were spectators. (No pics sadly. Just video of this.)

Finally we got back to the car and after confirming with Alex's help that the GPS simply does not like addresses, even if they ARE entered in Chinese, I routed us to the Kenting National Recreation area and our 2 hours and 40 minute journey began. After we stopped again for gas. And again for food. And to pee...

I hoped traffic would be light for a Sunday evening at 5:30 pm (by the time we got serious about being on the road). Once again, the rain started up. Perhaps it's standard to rain in the evening, but it seems our trip truly has been graced by perfect weather! Thank you, primary class!

The other miracle of the trip is that we drove nearly directly to our destination. In small towns, not getting turned around IS a bit easier because there are fewer roads to choose from. BUT our destination, Julie's Garden, booked on Airbnb, was in such a tiny place that there were no street names at all, either on the streets or completely zoomed in on google maps. I DID confirm this time that I had the right phone number! But we went with faith that we'd "figure it out," and that we did is nothing short of a miracle.

The first miracle came in the form of a red light. We had relied on our GPS to get us most of the way there, but I knew at some point that we needed to leave it's navigation to turn off the main road and go another way. I had the romanized name of the road on google maps, and I knew it had a 7-11 on the corner. (But what corner DOESN'T have one here!?) I was doing my best to follow our location on google maps, but my phone battery was nearly dead and it wasn't taking the charge from the back-ups we had, so I was turning it off periodically, and trying to sync up when I turned it back on. All the while I was hunting for land-marks but by the time we got that far south, it was utterly dark outside. (The sun sets at about 6: 20 here.)

Anyway, I was figuring we were close and had just rebooted the phone and was waiting for google to load when we hit a red light. In that pause, I was able to look around. Set back from the street (which they almost NEVER are) and angled better to be seen from the opposite side of the road was a 7-11. Before the light turned green, I was able to instruct Q that this might be the place and to pull over so I could show employees the address and get directions. Once I stepped out of the car, however, I saw the hotel that appeared the first time I looked up directions (not loaded on my phone at that time for some mysterious reason) so I knew we were in the right place and miraculously did NOT miss our turn-off. (The street, by the way, had no sign that I remember. Or if there was a sign, the name was either different or in Chinese. Maybe both.)

So we left the main road and then REALLY were without any sense of where we were. There was nothing to see, no street lights, no street names. I did my best to keep up by counting intersections on google maps but I often couldn't tell what was a long driveway or a narrow ally and what google thought it might be. I was struggling to get our bearings and asked Q to slow down as we approached another possible place to turn. The road wasn't marked and there was one sign in Chinese that I couldn't read. But I was looking for ANYTHING at that point, and so for that reason, probably read the number on the sign.

Quite a few businesses put their numbers on their signage. I never read the numbers. I really struggle to memorize numbers here at all because they are a garbled string with no hyphens or breaks. I think they are about 10 digits long, so a Taiwan phone number might look like 8839857323. How does one memorize THAT! I don't have my own cell phone number memorized!

BUT, for some odd reason, when I had called this destination earlier in the day, I thought to take a moment to put the number to memory. It helped that it was an easy one too - something like 666688899. (Don't try it, I doubt my memory now.) Anyway, this number, that I KNEW what it was, was the second miracle, because though I couldn't read Chinese, and in fact only know the English name for our BnB, there was the number, right on the sign, and I knew we needed to turn. Ahead was another sign that guided us in, and then I mostly recognized the place from pictures, though it was much larger than I had imagined. Truly, we were led by the grace of God, not knowing before hand where we should turn! Blessings, blessings!

And what a graceful blessing accommodations at Julie's Garden are! Up to that point, they were Q's favorite! Evinn, the boss, was a FANTASTIC host. She gave us a free room upgrade from a room for 6 to a room for 10! That meant everyone had their OWN BED! (Not counting Stew, because he wouldn't sleep by himself, or me or Q because we don't expect to either.) The view was AMAZING (we discovered the next morning). Evinn made sure we were taken care of, offering a tent and beach pad the next day. Breakfast was pretty dang good, and on our final day, because I had mentioned the kids' favorite eastern breakfast was danbing (which they didn't serve) they went out and BOUGHT us danbing! The whole place had a very laid-back island vibe. On our first morning they were playing cover songs by the artist, Olivia Ong. CHECK HER OUT! Such a nice sound, I almost didn't want to leave breakfast! But we DID! And that is for the next post!

Check out the window!

This was a GORGEOUS view!

Our window at the top, from below

AND the inside! Each on our lovely, SOFT mattresses. Stew LOVED running down the line of these, as you can imagine any rambunctious 3 year old boy would!