Last week, after the Sunday touring and the night market trip, young Lydia’s mom (Jessica), invited me, Whitney, and Joy (the female teachers), over to their house for dinner. She wanted to show us a nice Taiwanese home and culture and food. And it was incredible.

So, Wednesday evening, she picked us up, and took us over to her house. This is a picture of Lydia and her younger brother Elijah, excited for us to come to their house. they are adorable!

Jessica told us she had invited several of her Taiwanese friends from church who also spoke english. It  ended up being sort of a potluck dinner, where everyone brought something different. It was so cool! Especially because I always have potluck dinners in Texas for all my international friends… It was really awesome to be on the other side of it!

So, this is a picture of a lychee fruit. My friends from Singapore first introduced me to them when they were living in Texas. But, since lychees don’t grow in Texas, the only ones I’ve ever seen or eaten are ones from a can that have been pre-peeled and have been sitting in cans for who knows how long. So, it was really exciting to see the real thing. And they are DELICIOUS.

So, here’s a picture of all the different kinds of food that everyone brought (And Elijah too – he LOVES to be in pictures). So exciting! Home made Taiwanese food! Something I hadn’t had in this country so far. Awesome! I can’t remember what everything is, but there was ma po tofu. Yum! Bamboo root. Several kinds of noodles, and fried rice, and fruits and vegetables, and lots of other delicious things.

And eel was one of the dishes. I’ll be honest, I was genuinely scared. After that eel fishing in Japan, I swore I would never eat eel. Haha. Well, here I was, being offered this great meal by my new Taiwanese friends, so there was no way I could possibly turn it down.  Especially since everyone was raving that this was by far the best dish on the table.  A famous dish that was created in this city of Tainan.  So, I took the plunge.  And it was actually really good.  I enjoyed it.  The sauce was really sweet.  And the eel was much more tender than I had expected.  Quite a pleasant surprise!

This is our new friend, Ellen. She’s around my age, and is studying for her Bachelors degree. We had some cool conversations about the differences in universities and studies and law school and medical school and all that. It was fun!

One of the guests was a Taiwanese woman who has been living in the states for like 12 years. She went to Juliard and is a professional violinist in California. But she was back home for the summer. So, she hopped on the piano after dinner, and the kids crowded around to sing some kids’ worship songs. It was really cool. During one song, Elijah even followed along on his violin. Wow. That’s impressive.

It was more of a blessing than I can say with words to have met all these wonderful people who were so willing to let us be even a tiny part of their lives for our short time in Tainan… Who share Jesus as the common factor… And who gave up their time and money to make us feel at home. It was incredible. I felt as if anything I did to repay them would be inadequate to thoroughly show my gratitude.

Lastly, here’s a picture of older Lydia (in the middle) and her dad (on the left), who didn’t speak much english, but drove us around many places, and Jessica (on the right), young Lydia’s mom, and her younger brother Elijah. I realize I knew them for less than a week, but they were, in a way, kind of my family away from home… who gave me a home away from home. Which was really cool. And a really cool picture of the body of Christ working acrsos cultures to serve and encourage each other.