I’m still writing about my vacation.
In my backwards recall of our days in Taiwan, I am now back at the first weekend when we arrived there. We arrived on Friday, 7/8, but I’ll start with Sunday, 7/10 and go back from there.
Sunday, 7/10
We woke up early to make our way to worship at Grace Baptist Church, just a couple of MRT stops from our hotel. We started off a little late, but with some quick walking and the impressive efficient MRT, we were only a few minutes late for service. It’s a large church with the English congregation of about 400. The pastor is American, the assistant pastor is Australian. They sing the same songs we do at our church in US. It was a special Sunday with sharing from their short-term medical team who just came back from a mission trip to India. It ‘s always exciting to hear of God’s work in other places around the world, and good to know missionaries were being sent out from Taiwan.
After the service there were refreshments of muffins and cookies, which reminded us of home. But no one greeted us, to be expected of a large church I guess. I was most impressed with a large promotional display of their upcoming VBS. After grabbing a muffin and a drink, we head off to visit another church to visit my missionary acquaintances. They are white Americans who has been in Taiwan for 30 years. I would guess it’s about 1/2 their lives. They attend a Mandarin/Taiwanese speaking church, and that is why we didn’t go there for worship, but I wanted to drop by to say hi. The church is very small, feels very Chinese, especially when we compare it to the very western one we just attended.
If I were to live in Taipei someday, I don’t know where I would want to attend church. I can’t go to a “native” one without knowing the language, but going to an English speaking church seems to defeat the purpose of trying to be an influence to the locals. However, when we were in Vietnam, we did see how the international church with an American pastor was doing a great outreach among internationals. So it is not a bad idea to accept the fact of being a foreigner, and just reach other foreigners.
We took the rest of the day taking the MRT to walk around shopping areas. We went to Sogo 
shopping center that’s a typical American mall with prices about the same as US so we didn’t buy anything. However, Din Tai Fung (dumplings) was there! The hostess said the wait will be 1 hour 45 minutes. After walking around the mall for 1 hour, I said, “Let’s go back to check at the restaurant in case other people decide not to wait and we can get in sooner.” I was wrong. We were seated after 1 hour and 45 minutes. It was definitely worth the wait! The dumplings seem to be better than the one in 
Arcadia, and slightly cheaper.
We went to Chiang Kai-Shek’s residence, but the house closed at 3pm. We had a good time walking around the gardens.
More walking when we decided to go back to Shilin Night Market to give it another go at pushing the crowds and see if maybe we missed out on anything. Can you imagine looking at hundreds of stores selling all kinds of stuff, and not buying anything? Yeah, we didn’t buy anything. But it was fun, and tiring after a whole day walking.
Tomorrow we will check out of our hotel and start our 5-day tour of Taiwan island.