Pigs Blood Cake, and what I've been up to.

Let me back up for a moment. Because I have been doing most of my "blogging" on Facebook, I've also been very careful about what information I put out. Specifically, telling the entire world that I am on vacation and that if they want to rob my house, now is the prime time to do it. Which leads me to a bit of a quandary here. I want to use my blog the same way that I did when I was in Chile, but when I was in Chile I had nothing to steal, and even if I did, I was living in my sister's basement and she was at home anyway. Fast forward 4 years and here I am, a respectable, married home owner who is not living in his sisters basement, and I find myself trying to share my life with the right people. So, if you are reading this blog, don't rob my house. I'm serious, don't do it, besides, we have a house sitter, who is a former Green Bay Linebacker who was kicked off the team due to anger issues and gun possession charges. You have been warned.
The reason that I have started this blog us again is because I am on the move one more time. This time I am in Taiwan, and guess what, I'm TEACHING ENGLISH!!!!!!
There are a few things that have changed. I'm with my wife, so instead of sending loving emails to her and telling her how much I love her, I can now ask her to stop hogging the bed. I think it's a decided improvement. Also, I don't have the freedom that I did in Chile. In Chile I went to Santiago for about 5 days to wander around and see the city and I had no one to really rely on. Here, I don't have the freedom of traveling around the country and have to move with a group, not quite as much fun.
That's not to say that it's not a good thing, but I just like the idea that I'm wandering around on my own, (queue dramatic music.)
Tami, my wife, and I are volunteering with the Footsteps Missions though our church. This is a group that provides English camps as outreach programs. Most of the English camps are in China, Taiwan and South Korea. They charge a fee and the money that they have after they cover the expenses are used for outreach programs in Honduras.
So, what do I get out of this? Besides from the pat answers of "serving God and spreading Word to the world" I have to say that I'm really trying to get an understanding about the role of missionary service in my service to God. Tami's family and therefore my family, have a long history of missionary service, if you go far enough back in my family tree, the Cameron's were suppose to be missionaries in Mexico as well, I think. I'm sure my mom can confirm or deny that. I'm not only getting a cultural view of Taiwan, but of missionary service. A two-for-one if you will.
Another awesome thing that I am getting through this, is the opportunity to stay with an actual Taiwanese family. The opportunity to do this is something that is just amazing, and makes the trip very unique. If you ever have the opportunity to spend time in a country living as a guest of a native, do it.

We had a unique opportunity that we certainly would not have had if we had toured the country on our own. This evening we had the opportunity to meet Tiffany's husband and see their rooftop garden. It was amazing to see the city below us and see the plants that her husband grew in a little rooftop garden. They also introduced us to something called an "amazing fruit", a little red berry type thing that when you eat it, it made everything you eat afterword taste sweet. They demonstrated it to us by giving us the berry and then giving us a lime. It was pretty amazing, the lime did taste sweet and like an orange. If anyone knows what the heck we were drugged with, please tell me.
After the rooftop garden we had the opportunity to meet Tiffany's in-laws, see her apartment, which looked pretty much like ours, but with more people in it, and her husband demonstrated that he was a gymnast in his youth by doing a hand stand and making all his change fly out of his pockets onto the stairwell.
After we had said our goodbyes to the extended family, we were taken to some of the local street food stalls and we had the opportunity to eat something called "stinky tofu." Stinky Tofu sounds exactly what you would think it would taste like, it stinks, almost like rotting garbage. The thing is, we were told that it didn't taste like it smelled. Well, the batch that we got did taste as bad as it smelled. The second questionable thing that we were served was the pig's blood cake. This is made with guess what???? Pig's blood, and rice, but mostly pig's blood. I have to say, as horrible as it sounds, it was pretty much tasteless. Gummy, sticky, probably exactly what you might expect a rice mixed blood clot consistency would be. However, it didn't make me gag, unlike the Stinky Tofu. The rest of the meal, a soup with chunks of intestine and pure cubes of pig's blood, not adulterated with rice, fried minnows, fried chicken parts, fried sweet potatoes and something else fried that I couldn't quite figure out, possibly pig's blood.
I'm not complaining, the experience was one that i'm glad to have under my belt, but I'll put it on the shelf along with Curried Fish Heads, Fried Chicken legs and black licorice; I'm glad to have tasted them and am glad that I know not to order them again. Besides, there are so many other things that are better to eat than pig's blood and stinky tofu, and after tonight, I know that for sure.