Austin's Adventures in Taiwan: A Taiwan Thanksgiving... with a twist

Ok... so I think now is about the time to write this blog post... I have had it created with nothing written for a couple of days. So here goes the story of the first Taiwanese Thanksgiving (not to be confused with the first Thanksgiving).
This is the first year that Austin has been away from the people he loves for Thanksgiving. I was thinking about it the other day and my family has been getting together in some sort of fashion for about 12 or 13 years... that would make it be since I was about 8. That seems like close to an eternity for my small mind. To be honest with you, I was starting to get very homesick when I was thinking on this matter. So I talked it out with my fellow living buddies... our conclusion. Lets have our Taiwanese "family" over for Thanksgiving dinner. This was very exciting for many of the because they had never had turkey (pwo-gee) before. They had also never had many of the other delectable things that accompany Thanksgiving.
So, each of us decided to split up the Thanksgiving staples.

The Menu

Main Course:
Turkey
Dressing
Mashed Potatoes
Green Beans
Corn (compliments of someone)
Sweet Potatoes
Biscuits
Fruit Salad
Deviled Eggs
Gravy
Cranberry Sauce

Dessert:
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Pie
Peach Cobbler

Lemon Meringue Pie

Egg Tarts (compliments of our friend Phoebe)

So, in order to get everything that we needed... many things needed to be done. First, we needed to find a turkey. We had our friend Hannah to look around to see if she could find one. She could not... so that led her to the internet... she found a mail-order turkey place in Taipei... they Turkey would arrive by the next day... of course you had to pay... which we did. Second, we needed to make a trip to Hualien City to go to Carefore which is a big supermarket that has lots of things that we can't get in Yuli. So we took a train to Hualien... Sarah, Lauren, Jonathan, Michelle (part of our "family"), and I. We had decided to leave home early so that we could do some shopping. But shopping led to Starbucks (a must while in Hualien city), which led to more shopping, which led to dinner... which led to about 45 minutes at Carefore. Needless to say, we did not get everything that we had set out to get. Third, Carefore trip number two. Lauren, Sarah, and I decided that we would go on Wednesday to Carefore again because we all had a half day and so it would give us a little time there. Well, much like the first visit, we decided to do some shopping... and some Starbucks... oh yeah... and we went to this little coffee shop that we found one say when we went to Hualien City a couple weeks ago. Well... by the time we called Johnny (our English speaking taxi driver) and by the time we got to Carefore (I didn't mention that President Chen of Taiwan was in Hualien City) we only had like 20 minutes to get the things that we needed. Praise God that it was not very much. And Johnny helped us do our shopping, kept us under time, and got us to the train station on time. Needless to say, he got a good tip. And finally, Fourth, we needed a place to cook our turkey. We had asked one of our friends and she said that one of her students had a big oven... well apparently there was some miscommunication but what we ended up with was barely big enough to cook the pies. The Lo

rd was faithful to our cry for help in the last hours. He provided us with an oven at some people that we go to churches with house (does that make sense?). Anyway, this oven was big enough to cook both turkeys. The only down side was Hannah had to take us there by car. The people said that they would watch it for us (they even decided to taste some of it).
It was a blessing that the that the turkeys even came out. None of us had ever done a turkey before. We had all seen it done plenty of times... but had never been the ones doing it. It worked out... everything worked out without a hitch. It was an amazing night just fellowshipping together and thanking the Lord for everything that He has done for us in the last year... but just in general. The Lord is so amazing! It is evident in His creation. I am bombarded with it everyday as I go out to school... actually everywhere I go. This weekend we will kick off our Bible study. We are all very excited. We are inviting our friends and teachers. I invited one of mine today and she said that she would tell others about it as well. It is amazing to watch the Lord work right in front of your eyes.

Our Guest List:
(from left and around)
Mary (Hannah's Daughter)
Sam (Hannah's Son)
Esther (Hannah's Daughter)
Hannah (Our "Mother")
Dr. Chen (Hannah's Husband)
Phoebe (Robert's Wife)
Echo (Robert's Daughter)
Peter (Yah Mama's Grandson)
Yah Ma (Hannah's hired help)
Brian (Sarah and Lauren's friend)
Sarah
April (Robert's Daughter)
Michelle (Our very good friend)
Robert
Susanna
Lauren
Me
(Jonathan is taking the picture)

This is our Taiwan family. Robert owns a cram school here and that is where we go and do Chinese class. He is a Christian and so are most of the people that work there. All of these people are very special to us. There are many more... but some could not make it... and others... would not have been able to fit at the table.