More good times

Sometimes it seems like my life is simply a series of amusing events that I must somehow navigate. It usually helps to keep a sense of humor in any case. Here are the stories from the weekend:

SURPRISE!: On Friday night the church prepared birthday cake and fruit for my class, only forgot to tell me! They assumed I knew, and I didn't think anyone even knew it was my birthday. I stopped in at the office before my class and they didn't mention anything, and then when class was over, I was the last one to come down as usual and the guy who works on the first floor came looking for me. He asked where everyone was, and why we hadn't come down to eat cake. Uhhhh...what cake? Oh like the massive cake (that could have fed 50 people!) that he'd been asked by someone (it's a mystery to all) to go buy and cut. So here I was at 9:30pm with a giant cake on my hands... it all turned out ok, as I got to go around and bless the students doing their homework and the Sunday worship team who were still hanging around the church. Then I brought some to my good friend Lily who also happened to have guests.

TRANSLATION FIASCO: Saturday night, as you may recall I was supposed to be translating for a missionary team from the Doulos that was coming to one of my churches. I reluctantly agreed, and was really happy when I arrived and found that my friend Su-wan was already getting ready for it. One of the speakers had written out her testimony and I went over it with Su-wan so that she understood it all. She said all I had to do was sit beside her and help her if she was unsure of something. We did some introductions and then the first person got up to speak, so far so good. But somewhere in the middle, Su-wan decided that maybe she couldn't do it, and as they transitioned into introducing a video they were going to show, she abruptly handed me the microphone! Well I did my best, but there was one little thing I'd been worried about. You see there are a couple of sets of words in Chinese that I mix up often. One is chuan1 (to put on clothes), chuan2 (boat/ship), and chuang2 (bed). Being aware of this I tried to be careful, but in my slightly nervous state, I ended up telling a room full of teenagers that the video they were about to see shows what the missionaries do on the bed. Fortunately they all knew what I was trying to say, but it was quite bu hao yi se (embarrassing)! Later on another guy shared his life story which included words I haven't quite incorporated into my vocabulary for daily use, including empty, heroin, addicted, and rehabilitation center...

Clothes shopping: On Sunday night I was looking around some stores with A-hsiang and we found a cool store that had sales AND a plus-sized section. While I was trying on skirts I heard the following conversation from the change room:
Sales lady: Can you speak Chinese?
A: Yes
Sales: Oh your Chinese is so good! Are you Korean?
A: Uh no, I'm Taiwanese

This all reminds me of a quote by a fun but not so famous Christian band called Hocus Pick... it went something like this: God is serious, but everything else is HILARIOUS

BTW the above pics are from my visit to the actual Doulos, really cool, though waay too many people so I didn't buy anything. It was my first trip to Keelung, and I DID get rained on, and the strap of my bag broke, so that day wasn't quite so humorous...