Taijung

Or Taichung, or Taichoung, or however you care to romanize it.
(this is where my friend Charles would say pinyin takes care of all that, heh)

After the camp had wrapped up, we said our goodbyes to the kids, and had our post-camp staff meeting. The Chinese staff were given an opportunity to speak to the Aussies, and vice versa, and there were compliments and testimonies given all around. It was emotional at times, and also occasionally hilarious, as the inevitable errors in translation that arise when two languages meet were prevalent. Once, Ron had been translating the Chinese into English for everyone, and then one of the Chinese staff spoke in english. once they had finished, Ron began (in English) to paraphrase what had just been said, before realizing that it was in English. Everyone died laughing, and the undercurrent of joy that fellow servants of the gospel had was evident. Once the meeting was over, we had a while before the Aussies left, in which we were able to talk a bit more, and then it was time for them to go. We packed our own backpacks in preparation for a night's stay in Taijung at the Heinsman's, then piled into the Delica and drove down to Taijung. It is a decent drive from Dajia to Taijung, and so by the time we got there it was supper time. On the way, we got a call to ask for our drink requests. There is a little drink stand at a produce/meat market near the Heinsman's house, called Crazy Sue's. If you are in Taijung, it is -the- place to get cold or icy fruit drinks. Period. By the time we arrived, Teri Heinsman had run down and brought us back drinks from there, and an excellent meal was spread out for us. Chinese-style, there were several dishes from which we all loaded our plates. The mangoes were as good as I had remembered.
I had been totally exhausted when we arrived, but felt sufficiently rejuvenated after supper to go with the others to check out the Taijung nightmarket. This time, sadly, there was not much worth looking at. While you never know what you'll find there, that night we found mostly clothing, which was mainly either very cheap (in both price and design) or overpriced and inappropriate. This was not much to my liking, but the girls found a couple more interesting clothing shops, and somewhat ironically, Jacob and Mark Heinsman perused any place that sold earrings. (there were many)
We made our way back by bus, and in a humorous incident, Teri had the air conditioning unit leak on her.
Once back, we went to the rooms where we were sleeping. Due to space constraints, the Heinsman's apartment where we were spending the night has a small footprint, but spans several stories. The stairs become significant. The girls came in and we talked for a while, then crashed.

The next morning, we woke and went to visit the Heinsman's church. It was an interesting experience, singing worship songs (some familiar and some not) and listening to a sermon, all in English, after hearing so much Chinese. We ate pizza afterwards, but were forced to leave quickly because the camp staff needed the van. We changed clothes quickly at the Heinsmans, and headed back to the camp again. Just as we did, the typhoon-induced rain began to fall. It was forecasted to do this all week, but I prayed that God would help the weather to be clear. Constant rain would make things at our camp very difficult.
We arrived, and had the precamp meeting. The campers would be arriving later that afternoon, and so there was much to be done. We also talked about where we would be sleeping. The guys got to keep their current room, and the girls were moved due to the massive numbers of kids that were coming. In just a short while, they began to arrive in vans and buses. 153 in all. We had planned out a dramatic entrance with Ron to introduce ourselves to the kids, involving a human pyramid which Ron knocked over. We then jumped up and chased him around. Now that all the kids had arrived, they assembled in the Chapel, nearly filling it just by sitting in their rows. The camp started, as various staff introductions (including our pyramid skit, which went well) and camp rules were given, followed by some singing, led by Starcey and the activity team.
The kids went out to their rooms, and later we all assembled to eat. We were scheduled to be in the dining hall before every meal to help, and this sometimes became an adventure in and of itself, as I will explain later! We also found out that day that we had somewhat more responsibility in this camp than I had previously known. Apparently the Aussie's agenda had carried over and we were expected to do roughly the same things they had done in addition to what we already knew about. This was unexpected, and a little stressful, not least because we were still jetlagged and sleep-deprived. We had two more games to lead that night, and a song.
These went mostly well, Simon Says was a hit, and especially good because it only involved moving in place for the kids, since there was not enough room to do much more than that!
The other game, a variant of rock-paper-scissors that Rebecca had suggested, also went well, except at the end. Unlike previous camps, the Chinese staff had decided to introduce a point system to the games this year. Once the game was finished, they attempted to tally the scores of the 40-odd kids who had completed the game succesfully, and the scene approached chaos.
The song we had picked to teach the kids was "Praise ye the Lord", and this turned out to be a very good choice. The lyrics were simple, and we had a girls side and a boys side, who took turns singing "Hallelu" and "Praise ye the Lord", each standing for their part. We turned it into a competition for loudness, and the kids definitely got into it. Afterwards, Harry, a perennial at the camp, led the kids through some dancing. Harry is a very interesting fellow. I have only to explain that his job was as an aerobics instructor, and that probably conveys most of what is necessary. He is certainly talented, and apparently lacks joints. We joined in the dancing this year, for the most part. I felt rather foolish, but it was probably very good for me.
After the dancing, and a song or two led by the activity team, the drama team (consisting largely of the activity team, plus a few extra people) performed the first part of the Prodigal Son story that they had used last camp. A young woman whose english name was Sally, also the camp photographer, played the part of the Prodigal Son this time around. After everything in the Chapel was over, the kids went to their cabin times, and we had a meeting. I was rather stressed, both from trying to avoid problems from previous years, and from our additional expected participation in the camps, which I had not expected. It was a fairly simple matter of planning the extra activities, but everyone's exhausted state complicated things. After a sometimes tense and very long evening, we got the majority of our plans squared away, and Caleb put together the presentation that we were expected to do the following night. This took him some time, and he kept working after the rest of us had gone to bed.
This was probably the hardest night of the camps, when the heat, jetlag, exhaustion, stress, sheer number of kids, and difficulty of adapting to a constantly changing situation, all came down at once. But after much prayer, conversation, and planning, it was also the night that we got one step ahead. Everything was now mostly mapped out, except for the night of the Campfire. There was an extra bit of complication there, as the difficulty of planning a game with so many kids and so little room kept arising, along with the fact that we had to figure out something for both outside and inside, in case of rain. But this would be settled later...
I collapsed on my bed, which as I have said was surprisingly comfortable, especially given how tired I was. I set my alarm, all too early, as breakfast was at 7:20 and we needed to start helping out in the dining room by 7 at the latest. Soon I was out, dreaming of Taiwanese people as I usually did after being in Taiwan for a few days.

Next time: First full day of camp!

-Joseph