Questions and Answers

Tustins responses to questions from his Dad about the mission..

1. What is the weather like? Humid? Cool at night?
During the day, hot and humid (although I think it has been pretty dry recently). This winter has been unusually warm and it rains less which is nice because winter rain at night can get pretty cold to bike in. The last couple days have been really really nice. If you check the weather in Taipei right now you'll see it's a pretty great day. Pretty much any day with out rain is nice. It can get pretty cool when the sun is not out though and sometimes it gets kind of windy. That might just be the city though.

2. How are the people? Mostly friendly? What has surprised you most about the Taiwanese?
The people are really nice and friendly. Probably the meanest people we find are the middle aged women/moms. Kind of glad President told us (sort of) not to talk to them! I was really surprised at first how well the people can speak English. It seems like most of the people in my area can speak basic English (that's not true outside the city though). The old people are super funny too. It's not out of the question to see some random old guy peeing in the street or rolling around in a field. Also all the old people are very worried about health so they are always getting up early to go hike up mountains or do funny exercises (sometimes on top of mountians). The old lady's especially will gather at parks and do group exercise routines just slapping their arms or legs and doing funny stretches to music.

3. How does church compare? Same carpet? Same hymns? Do they have a favorite? (In Chile, we sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic and Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy every week!!!) 
Church is pretty similar, there just isnt as many people. My ward only has 60ish active members. Our chapel is too small for a basket ball court in the cultural hall but we do have two ping Pong tables. Perhaps the weirdest thing was during election season when the stake put out a bunch of notices and had bishops anounce in sacrament (sort of quote) "the church has no policical stance but we do have doctrine on all the LGBT stuff..." and then basically they went on to announce all the people not to vote for! Probably bending the rules a little there. I haven't noticed too much in terms of favorite hymns. I have heard it's very much a thing but since I don't really understand anything we are singing its a little hard to catch patterns. Maybe ask again in a year? 😂

4. Do you ever play the piano? Practice hymns?
No. Sometimes I try to sit and play something but Elder Bunn isn't too down. 😔

5. What do you like best about the language? What is the most frustrating?
I think characters and how the language is built around them is super cool. Chinese can be really simple in some ways. There isn't really such thing as a crazy big hard to pronounce word in Chinese since you just build big words out of a few characters to express the meaning of the big concept. For example, the other day I learned suicide which is "Zi Sha" or "self kill." there is also this really cool Grammer called resultatative verbs. I probably can't explain it super well in an email but it's super cool and let's you express concepts in a cool way. For example, the idea of not being able to handle something can be expressed simply as, "Shou Bu Liao," or to take upon oneself but not be able to complete. Kind of complicated to explain but trust me it is cool. The Language is still really hard though because Chinese has weird sounds that are hard to pronounce and understand. The romanization (Pinyin) can also be frustratingly inadequate.

6. Any Taiwanese customs you enjoy? Taking shoes off? Holidays? Crafts? Games? (In Chile there was lots of kite flying and battles and lots of tops and ping pong) 
The garbage trucks travel around the city and blast ice cream truck music to announce when you should come down and throw your trash in. That's pretty fun.

7. Where do you do most of your shopping? Laundry? 
Shopping is mostly at convinience stores like 7-Eleven or Family Mart, and sometimes grocery/department stores. Taiwan also has these stores called "dongxi dian" or "things store" that sell basically everything. We do laundry in our apartment. We have a washer and dryer

8. Do you have a favorite native dessert or candy? 
Pretty much anything with red beans is good. Red or green bean soup are both pretty good. The best dessert is probably the shaved ice though.

9. Do you mostly ride bikes or take buses/subways? Is there a subway?
Mostly bikes. There is a subway called the MRT. We take that pretty often to get up to the mission office / temple or just to go to cool places on pday. Buses are less common but on pday we use them sometimes.