Aquariums and Ant Attacks
today we are going to an aquarium. I am so excited, it is supposed to be like the most awesome aquarium. Anyways, because we are going a long ways, we got permission to come email early. so my email is a couple hours early today.
Anyways, Brother Hong who was going to get baptized this Saturday has to wait a little while. He still has some problems with drinking tea and beer and stuff. so he agreed that we delay it a little until he has completely over come this problem. He is such a nice little man. He is a bout 45 unmarried and is a veteranarian. You can just really see his loving spirit from the way he talks about the animals he works with. I learned a new word from him yesterday. CHAOYINBO. which means ultrasonic waves. its the noise that dolphins and whales make. he had a heck of a time trying to explain it to me though. hahaha... he kept trying to make the noise and i didnt know what the heck he was doing. finally he just told me its how dolphins communicate and i knew what he meant. sometimes when people are trying to explain words, if they just used it in a sentence or explained it rather than acting it out, it would be a lot easier.
Hahaha... i remember in my first area there was this member who would try and do like sign language with me. But his sign language was terrible and he expected me to understand. LOL. he was a little different. anyways, i love chinese. that new word chao yin bo. when you break it down it makes so much sense. chao means exceed, yin means sound and bo means broadcast. so it is exceed sound broadcast. Chinese is the most amazing language in the world. every word is composed of 2 or 3 characters and then from those characters you have a meaning. so sometimes in lessons when we use a church word that isn't known to the general public we just write the characters out for them and that is basically like the equivalent of looking it up in the dictionary. almost.
we will be getting our move calls on friday. i hope i get to stay here. there are so many good investigators and i just love this place. the members are awesome and i have made so many good friends here. My chinese has improved so much here too. i love this place! Getting ready for the move call is always an exciting time because you don't know what is going to be your next assignment. you could stay you could go, you could get a new companion, you could train a new missionary. all sorts of exciting things. it always makes me a little nervous. I am safe from being called into the Mission office though, they call in those Elders a week early. wheeww that was a close one. i dont doubt though at sometime i will have to go serve in the office.
this week i felt like such an awesome missionary, just teaching lessons right and left and meeting new people and setting a time to meet with. i used to hesitate a couple months ago, but now i will say without any hesitations that i speak chinese. of course its not perfect but its at a point that i feel comfortable.
anyways, we have a lot of people on our ward list that no one has seen for a long time, so we have been trying to go and visit them, we have met a lot of them and have found out whats been going on in their lives, but there were others that the addresses were just impossible to find. they also dont have phone numbers so there is no way to get a hold of them. i was thinking about this a couple days ago, and i the spirit whispered an idea to me. Send them postcards! we dont think that some of these addresses even exist so we sent out about 10 post cards yesterday with our return address on them. if the cards come back to us then that means that the address doesnt exist and therefore we can cross that address off so future missionaries dont waste time trying to find it. it was a major break through. we told our zone leaders about it and they have been so excited telling everyone how to find out if addresses exist or not. its gonna be a huge time saver in the future.
well the never ending battle against the 8 leged foe continues. everyday i see a new kind of spider i have never seen before. there was a crazy flying spider that i saw yesterday. YIKES! how scary! not to mention the eternal battle between my rice and the platoon of ants that continually persist in their full scale invasion of my rice bag. they breached the hule this week and made it all the way into the heart of my bag. it is a big bag of rice about 10 pounds so i cant just through it away. i decided to bring out the nuclear bomb of my arsenal so i placed the big bag with those little suckers inside the freezer. hahaha who is laughing now ants. i hope they like being turned into little ant popsicles. my rice survived! the ants have been defeated. the only bad thing is that my rice has all this little black dots in it now. dont worry i wash it out and the ants wash away but the rice stays. i hope i get a young companion next move and then i will just tell him that the rice that i buy comes with a little pepper in it for flavor. ;)
well i got to go look at some fish swim around in a glass container. hope you all are doing well and are praying and reading your scriptures EVERY day.
love ya,
Elder Craig Anderson
Showing posts with label animals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animals. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Aug 5, 2008 Email
Well hello everybody. I hear grandpa isn't doing so well. the email that i recieved got chopped in half somewhere along the line. anyways, i hope you are all doing okay. i love ya gramps.
this week was an amazing week! first off, i think i am the luckiest person in the world. i won the Taiwan Lottery. I won 4000 taibi, which is the equivalent to about $150 USD. not to bad eh? the lottery here is different everytime you buy something, all the reciepts have a number on them. so if you save all your reciepts, then at the end of the month you check and see if you won. and i wone. i was only 2 more numbers away from winning a lot more too. its crazy. i am just gonna give the money to the Mission Office though, i would feel weird keeping it.
how crazy is that though? i won the lottery, i won a lot too!
well my new companion he is great. he is from Pleasant Grove, UT. We getting along great, we both love the outdoors and stuff. This is his 7 month on island, so he has been here for about 3 months more than me.
since he is new to the area i get so show him around and introduce him to all of our members and investigators. it is really fun, but a lot of responsibility. because this is my first time being in an area twice in a row. it is my responsibility to know all the streets and places to go and stuff. fun fun fun.
so this sunday we had a really cool experience. we went to a park to go and contact and see if we could talk to anyone there. we werent havent very much luck and were about to leave, but elder heder suggested that we go check out the back of the park. we went to the very back of the park and ran into a member and his friend just out for a walk. his friend was really scared of us at first, but we talked to him and joked with him a little and he warmed up. he then started to tell us how he is scared of white people! i almost laughed, i kept teasing him about it and then i think he realized how ridiculous it was. anyways, he had never really met an american before so we sat down and started talking.
he started talking about how every cultures are to different. i asked him why he thought cultures were so different and he went off about how we all look different and stuff. then i smiled and recited perfectly a chinese proverb that says "All men are brothers." directly translated it means, the 4 oceans are all siblings. in chinese it is "si hai zhinei jei xiongdi." he was a little suprised that we knew this idiom. but then he was like ok so if that is true what does that mean? we were able to teach him all about creation and his member friend bore testimony of it all. then we taught him how to pray and sent him home with a Book Of Mormon. it was so cool! especially because it was a completely unexpected awesome lesson, assisted by a member, in the middle of a public park, in a stinking huge city. i know for a fact that it was not by chance that we came acrossed them.
a cockroach tried to take over my bowl of curry a couple days ago. i laid my curry down for a minute to go get a drink and when i came back there was a cockroach attempting a hostile take over of my delicious bowl of curry. needless to say a battle of epic proportion took place which resulted in the death of my great and noble nemesis. but man was that some good curry. luckily i got to him before he had crawled inside the bowl. all is well, all is well.
love ya,
Elder Anderson
this week was an amazing week! first off, i think i am the luckiest person in the world. i won the Taiwan Lottery. I won 4000 taibi, which is the equivalent to about $150 USD. not to bad eh? the lottery here is different everytime you buy something, all the reciepts have a number on them. so if you save all your reciepts, then at the end of the month you check and see if you won. and i wone. i was only 2 more numbers away from winning a lot more too. its crazy. i am just gonna give the money to the Mission Office though, i would feel weird keeping it.
how crazy is that though? i won the lottery, i won a lot too!
well my new companion he is great. he is from Pleasant Grove, UT. We getting along great, we both love the outdoors and stuff. This is his 7 month on island, so he has been here for about 3 months more than me.
since he is new to the area i get so show him around and introduce him to all of our members and investigators. it is really fun, but a lot of responsibility. because this is my first time being in an area twice in a row. it is my responsibility to know all the streets and places to go and stuff. fun fun fun.
so this sunday we had a really cool experience. we went to a park to go and contact and see if we could talk to anyone there. we werent havent very much luck and were about to leave, but elder heder suggested that we go check out the back of the park. we went to the very back of the park and ran into a member and his friend just out for a walk. his friend was really scared of us at first, but we talked to him and joked with him a little and he warmed up. he then started to tell us how he is scared of white people! i almost laughed, i kept teasing him about it and then i think he realized how ridiculous it was. anyways, he had never really met an american before so we sat down and started talking.
he started talking about how every cultures are to different. i asked him why he thought cultures were so different and he went off about how we all look different and stuff. then i smiled and recited perfectly a chinese proverb that says "All men are brothers." directly translated it means, the 4 oceans are all siblings. in chinese it is "si hai zhinei jei xiongdi." he was a little suprised that we knew this idiom. but then he was like ok so if that is true what does that mean? we were able to teach him all about creation and his member friend bore testimony of it all. then we taught him how to pray and sent him home with a Book Of Mormon. it was so cool! especially because it was a completely unexpected awesome lesson, assisted by a member, in the middle of a public park, in a stinking huge city. i know for a fact that it was not by chance that we came acrossed them.
a cockroach tried to take over my bowl of curry a couple days ago. i laid my curry down for a minute to go get a drink and when i came back there was a cockroach attempting a hostile take over of my delicious bowl of curry. needless to say a battle of epic proportion took place which resulted in the death of my great and noble nemesis. but man was that some good curry. luckily i got to him before he had crawled inside the bowl. all is well, all is well.
love ya,
Elder Anderson
Thursday, June 26, 2008
June 25, 2008
hey everybody,
Ping Tung is stinking awesome! It is pretty big and the church members here are awesome. My companion is Elder Chen Wei Yang he is from Central Taiwan and he is awesome. We get along pretty good, occassionally we will come across some cultural differences, but for the most part its all good. He teaches me Chinese, my chinese has gotten so much better in the past 10 days its ridiculous. I feel like i can actually speak chinese now. i can't say everything, but i can always get my point across. Elder Chen has been helping me a lot with just express myself the way i want. i have pronunciation and tones down pretty good, so i will ask him how to say something and then he will tell me. its so convenient because the dictionaries dont have ways to say things they just have words. His english is really good, he has been studying it for 7 years so its way good.
i felt like i was going to get a native companion a couple weeks ago. i just knew i would get one and sure enough i did. i didn't think he would speak such good english, but i am glad he does because he can tell me how to say the chinese equivalent of what i want to say.
ping Tung is huge compared to my last area. they have a big old night market that we go to to contact people and its just awesome.
so yesterday i was riding down the street and i looked over and i saw an indoor swimming pool. and then i saw a bunch of old men sitting around the swimming pool with fishing pools. it was an indoor fish pong. i laughed for like 5 minutes, its was so cute. all these little old men in their lawn chairs, sitting inside an air conditioned building fishing. maybe i have just lived in utah for too long so i am just used to having nature right out the front door, but that doesn't count as fishing. i want to get a picture of it.
speaking of pictures here are a couple. they are all from me and fang liao, but the last one is of my new companion elder chen. he is a goof as i am sure you can tell from the picture. he is a little immmature, but thats because he is only 18. in taiwan since they have mandatory military service, the church will let them go when they are 18, so he is here and is probably one of if not the youngest missionary in the world.
i had to speak in church last sunday. you always have to when you move to a new area. believe it or not i made the congregation laugh, who would have ever thought that i could be funny in chinese. i am not sure if they were laughing at me or with me, but who cares they laughed.
it was really funny in priesthood i got up and introduced myself and the teacher asked me what my name was. my name is Zhang (which is a last name, but their first names are last) and he said "o that is the same as me." so jokingly i told him that "maybe we have the same ancestors." the whole roomed burst into laughter, because obviously my chinese last name has no heritage it is just a name.
anyways thats been my life for the past week. i hope you like the pictures.
the first pick is me picking mangoes, the second is fang liao with the fishing boats and the mountains, the third is the stinking huge spiders we found in the mountains, that no joke were bigger than my head. and just to let you know they are extremely poisonous even the natives are scared of them. one of the members from the fang liao branch took us into the mountains to take pictures of them. and the last picture is of elder chen.
love you all
craig
i own the computers in ping tung, haha :) i can send pictures a lot now so i will try every week.
Ping Tung is stinking awesome! It is pretty big and the church members here are awesome. My companion is Elder Chen Wei Yang he is from Central Taiwan and he is awesome. We get along pretty good, occassionally we will come across some cultural differences, but for the most part its all good. He teaches me Chinese, my chinese has gotten so much better in the past 10 days its ridiculous. I feel like i can actually speak chinese now. i can't say everything, but i can always get my point across. Elder Chen has been helping me a lot with just express myself the way i want. i have pronunciation and tones down pretty good, so i will ask him how to say something and then he will tell me. its so convenient because the dictionaries dont have ways to say things they just have words. His english is really good, he has been studying it for 7 years so its way good.
i felt like i was going to get a native companion a couple weeks ago. i just knew i would get one and sure enough i did. i didn't think he would speak such good english, but i am glad he does because he can tell me how to say the chinese equivalent of what i want to say.
ping Tung is huge compared to my last area. they have a big old night market that we go to to contact people and its just awesome.
so yesterday i was riding down the street and i looked over and i saw an indoor swimming pool. and then i saw a bunch of old men sitting around the swimming pool with fishing pools. it was an indoor fish pong. i laughed for like 5 minutes, its was so cute. all these little old men in their lawn chairs, sitting inside an air conditioned building fishing. maybe i have just lived in utah for too long so i am just used to having nature right out the front door, but that doesn't count as fishing. i want to get a picture of it.
speaking of pictures here are a couple. they are all from me and fang liao, but the last one is of my new companion elder chen. he is a goof as i am sure you can tell from the picture. he is a little immmature, but thats because he is only 18. in taiwan since they have mandatory military service, the church will let them go when they are 18, so he is here and is probably one of if not the youngest missionary in the world.
i had to speak in church last sunday. you always have to when you move to a new area. believe it or not i made the congregation laugh, who would have ever thought that i could be funny in chinese. i am not sure if they were laughing at me or with me, but who cares they laughed.
it was really funny in priesthood i got up and introduced myself and the teacher asked me what my name was. my name is Zhang (which is a last name, but their first names are last) and he said "o that is the same as me." so jokingly i told him that "maybe we have the same ancestors." the whole roomed burst into laughter, because obviously my chinese last name has no heritage it is just a name.
anyways thats been my life for the past week. i hope you like the pictures.
the first pick is me picking mangoes, the second is fang liao with the fishing boats and the mountains, the third is the stinking huge spiders we found in the mountains, that no joke were bigger than my head. and just to let you know they are extremely poisonous even the natives are scared of them. one of the members from the fang liao branch took us into the mountains to take pictures of them. and the last picture is of elder chen.
love you all
craig
i own the computers in ping tung, haha :) i can send pictures a lot now so i will try every week.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
June 11, 2008 Email
well the internet cafe we are in, is kicking my butt. i cant use the usb, i get booted off the email server all the time. wow, asian computers dont like me, once i started reading these characters though i am gonna own em hahaha
well this week was a good week. good and hot. it was 39 degrees celcius a couple days ago. my arms are like black from the tan. we went 78km (48 miles) on our bikes on monday. thats pretty far. so far i have biked 1483.4km (922 miles) this transfer. not bad eh? i still am not in shape though because i eat some much of the delicious food over here.
so this week, i dog tried to bite me in the leg as we were biking, but i horsed kicked it in the face. hahaha that will teach them to chase white guys wearing business attire. the dogs hear are like rats so i didn't feel bad.
it was a hot week this week. there wasn't any rain so everything was just scorching.
well i am running out of funny stories, i needed to start taking notes through out the week of things i want to tell you all. we haven't got to teach many lessons this week, actually i think we only taught 2, that is pretty standard for taiwan. most of our time is spent just trying to find people to teach. we also spend a lot of time trying to get less active members to come back to church, so we try and find them and let them know that we still care about them and want them to come back.
i saw a centipide that was about 10 inches long! i didnt have my camera, but i almost wet my pants it was so big. scary creeping stinking thing. ewww. i am starting to get over the fear of bugs though. taiwan will do that do you in a hurry. they have some of the weirdest creepy crawlies. i am just glad that i didn't go to thailand or vietnam i hear they have even scary bugs.
chinese characters are coming good. i dont know how to type them on the computer yet, but once i figure it out, i will write you all a letter in chinese. that probably won't be for a long time though. there are about 3000 characters that you have to learn to be a fluent reader and i just finished about 700 hundred of them yesterday. once you know the characters supposedly the language gets a lot easier and things make more sense so i am looking forward to that.
i dont sweat a lot, but in taiwan my radiator has been working extra hard. my skin was raining yesterday, literally, i walked into our house for lunch and i was dripping all over the floor, my companion is worse. its so gross. we cant turn on the AC either because its to expensive, we can only turn it on at night when we got to sleep.
my next email will be more fun i promise. love you all.
well this week was a good week. good and hot. it was 39 degrees celcius a couple days ago. my arms are like black from the tan. we went 78km (48 miles) on our bikes on monday. thats pretty far. so far i have biked 1483.4km (922 miles) this transfer. not bad eh? i still am not in shape though because i eat some much of the delicious food over here.
so this week, i dog tried to bite me in the leg as we were biking, but i horsed kicked it in the face. hahaha that will teach them to chase white guys wearing business attire. the dogs hear are like rats so i didn't feel bad.
it was a hot week this week. there wasn't any rain so everything was just scorching.
well i am running out of funny stories, i needed to start taking notes through out the week of things i want to tell you all. we haven't got to teach many lessons this week, actually i think we only taught 2, that is pretty standard for taiwan. most of our time is spent just trying to find people to teach. we also spend a lot of time trying to get less active members to come back to church, so we try and find them and let them know that we still care about them and want them to come back.
i saw a centipide that was about 10 inches long! i didnt have my camera, but i almost wet my pants it was so big. scary creeping stinking thing. ewww. i am starting to get over the fear of bugs though. taiwan will do that do you in a hurry. they have some of the weirdest creepy crawlies. i am just glad that i didn't go to thailand or vietnam i hear they have even scary bugs.
chinese characters are coming good. i dont know how to type them on the computer yet, but once i figure it out, i will write you all a letter in chinese. that probably won't be for a long time though. there are about 3000 characters that you have to learn to be a fluent reader and i just finished about 700 hundred of them yesterday. once you know the characters supposedly the language gets a lot easier and things make more sense so i am looking forward to that.
i dont sweat a lot, but in taiwan my radiator has been working extra hard. my skin was raining yesterday, literally, i walked into our house for lunch and i was dripping all over the floor, my companion is worse. its so gross. we cant turn on the AC either because its to expensive, we can only turn it on at night when we got to sleep.
my next email will be more fun i promise. love you all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
