Shrimp Fishing

That's right, you read it correctly, Shrimp Fishing. This is by far one of the most unique Taiwanese experiences we have had. Zach's language exchange partner introduced it to us, and took us so we could experience it for ourselves. You may think that you can only fish in the ocean or a lake, but Taiwan goes against that stereotype. It is pretty much a small room, with a three foot deep swimming pool, which is taking up most of the area. You pay by the hour and the owner provides you with a miniature poll and mini-shrimp for bait (which is a little cannibalistic if you ask me). You bait up on two small hooks. Then you throw it in, watch the small bobber in the water, and wait for it to bob. Yong-Da showed us the secret techniques to catching the big ones. Once you see the bobber start to move, you know there is a big shrimp eating the little shrimp on your hook. You may think, "SET THE HOOK!!!" but you must wait and let the shrimp eat.

Once you have waited a significant time (30 secs), you pull it up and swing it out of the pool, so it cannot fall back in the water. This is when our nice friend Yong-Da proceeded to grab the shrimp and take out the hook. This was so nice of him, because these shrimp have killer claws of death and destruction. In our pictures on Picasa, you can see the bright blue death claws. Some shrimp fishers immediately rip off the claws, but Yond-Da doesn't like to hurt them (until later when we eat them). After two hours of fishing, we caught a whopping 15 shrimp. "What do you do with them now?", you may ask.

Now we are responsible for cleaning, de-clawing, and skewering each shrimp. You then HEAVILY salt them, and place them on a grill. After flipping for about five minutes, it is eatin time. The Taiwanese really like to eat the shrimp's brains, Yong-Da told us. We both tried them, decided they tasted like burnt peanuts and avoided them the rest of the time. It was an amazing experience that everyone should have.

Also, you can see more of the picture from shrimp fishing and our other adventures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/LauraRCarpenter/Taiwan#

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Just for Ryann!

New Pictures

We loaded some more pictures to our picasa page. Check them out!

http://picasaweb.google.com/LauraRCarpenter/Taiwan#

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Some Stories We Forgot to Tell

ALL YOU CAN DRINK BOTTLED SODA!?!?!?!?!?!? That is right my friends! We were invited by a friend of ours to go out to eat with her and some of her friends. It is called "hot pot". It is one of the best ways to eat in Taiwan. You have a big pot at your table, with boiling water in it. You then go up to the buffet of frozen raw meat, vegetables, and things we have never seen before (the mystery foods). We takes those back to our table and proceed to cook them in our boiling pot. Finish it off with some heavenly garlic and soy sauce mixture, you have perfection. When we did think it could get any better. Jenifer told us there was free ice cream and free soda. JACKPOT!!!


Although Laura and I were master chiefs back in America we had not had an opportunity to use our skills until one glorious night. We discovered a lonely box of pancake mix in our local grocery store. It was begging us to take it home. We said sure and it said we had to bring its friend Maple Syrup with it. SO WE DID! That night we had the ultimate pancake feast!





One thing that we have learned here is to never take anything for granted. This includes a lot of things, but one that you might not think of is weekly laundry. We were blessed with a washing machine, outside our apartment and down the hall. Sadly though, it is the Taiwanese way to hang your clothes up outside to dry. It is amazing how much you will appreciate the way your clothes used to fit after going through the dryer, when your entire t-shirt collection is two sizes larger than they used to be. This prompted us to have an exciting adventure to our local laundry mat. Good times were had.

Our final story we want to share with you is about our trip to the beach. Our wonderful friend, Terry, had invited us to ride up to the north coast with him on our scooter. It was a beautiful ride and we brought our swim suits for a grad adventure. Unfortunately, the beach we went to had a "no swimming" rule. Oh well. I built a sand castle around Laura's feet instead. It was a relaxing day, and it was nice to see the ocean and its vastness, compared to the forever busy Taipei.

Update from the church: Last night we attended the youth Christmas service. There was a great turn out of new students from the ages of 13 to 2oish. The Youth group presented Christ in an amazing way through song, skits, and games. Toward the end a local youth pastor spoke which is when many new people came to Christ. Please keep all of them in your prayers, and also thank you for your continued prayers for us.

Christmas Miracle

Here is the amazing Christmas miracle that happened to us this week. Laura and I were starting to feel like we were missing all of the Christmas fun back at home. This was beginning to make us a little sad. Amazingly, when we got home from teaching English at the church tonight our apartment had a Christmas tree and Christmas lights. IT WAS A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!... Okay it might have of been a surprise that I set up for Laura, but still a Christmas miracle all the same.

So, we had our tree and it came with a pack of blinking lights. We had to use our Mcgiver skills to think up some other decoration ideas. I had bought a thing of popcorn. It was sort of like Jiffy Pop, but no top to catch the kernels as they popped. It was a mix of excitement and fear. It was like war but with the smell of butter... Laura may have some butter burns. If you mix popcorn with our sowing kit we bought at 7-11 you get..... POPCORN STRINGS!!!!


Finally, we found some colored beads and string. With these two tools we fashioned ourselves some make-shift ordainments. They remind me a little of those bead keychains we made when we were in the 4th grade. The picture on the right is a picture of our first glorious Christmas tree together as husband and wife.

We are definitely going to miss our family a lot this Christmas season, but it is nice to have a little bit of Christmas here. We love and miss you all so much and we hope you have a wonderful Christmas season.

We Saw, We Ran, We Killed...

So apparently, when you live on the first floor of an apartment building, there are some things you should expect. First, there will be cockroaches. Second, you may see a cute little lizard running along your wall every once and awhile (we named him Frank). Finally, HUGE KILLER SPIDERS THAT TRY TO ATTACK YOU AND LAY THEIR EGGS IN YOUR TOWEL!!!!!! So here is what happened. Laura was casually drying off her hair, after her lovely shower. She looked up, and who was there to greet her? A HUGE KILLER SPIDER THAT TRIES TO ATTACK YOU AND LAY ITS EGGS IN YOUR TOWEL!!!! Now, on a normal day and with a normal spider, Laura would kill it herself, with her bare hands, but this was no ordinary spider. So, she tried to get Zach's attention. At this point, the spider decided to run across the wall into the kitchen. Conveniently, we have way too many doors in our apartment. So, we went to the kitchen through the shower/bedroom door, with mop and toilet brush in hand, ready for a fight. From a distance the spider saw we were coming and ran back into the bathroom, through the kitchen/bathroom door. The first attack was made here, but it was unsuccessful. The HUGE KILLER SPIDER THAT TRIES TO ATTACK YOU AND LAY ITS EGGS IN YOUR TOWEL continued to run. Attack number two and number three were still unsuccessful to kill this beast.

It then ran through our bathroom/shower door trapping Zach in a corner. In a panic state of rage Zach stabbed with the mop...
ONCE!
TWICE!
It charged!
Zach retreated then stabbed one last time...
The battle had ended with that blow. We were safe again... at least untill the next HUGE KILLER SPIDER THAT TRIES TO ATTACK YOU AND LAY ITS EGGS IN YOUR TOWEL comes around. The only advice we recieved from our Taiwanese friends was, "With the next spider, be careful, because it may be pregnate, and when you smash it the babies will run everywhere.".................. awesome.....