Week 2: Hanging in there **Updated with photos

May 28, 2018

Just finished my second week of training and it's gotten increasingly harder. I moved up from the kitchen to the front making drinks and it's a fast paced environment with even more information to memorize. Sometimes I feel like a bartender or a casino worker with the specific hand movements I have to make to pass the tests. It's also hard to memorize how to make drinks that customers don't order often.

On my day off the other day I went to Danshui, an old port in the north of Taipei where the Dutch used to have a fort and an ancient Canadian missionary named Mackay started a college, hospital, and the first school for girls in Taiwan.

Here's a statue of Mackay:

I had fun walking around eating traditional snacks and I strayed away from the tourist area to visit a Catholic Church. On the way I saw an old lady sweeping leaves around a small temple and she told me who the gods were inside. I honestly had no idea who they were from their names but I felt such gratitude to be able to communicate with just about anybody in Chinese... In contrast to when I first came to Taiwan and had to rely on other people to have the patience to translate for me.

PS- That's the old lady.

The church I found was small with Chinese style decorations and no AC. It was unbearable after a few minutes and I had a headache the rest of the day but I'm glad I went.