Deaf in Kaohsiung

Do you remember Miriam and Aaron? They are two Deaf volunteers from Oregon who I met at the beginning of Deaflympics. Well they are traveling around Taiwan now and needed a place to stay in Kaohsiung. So they asked me if my friends, the Delaney family (where I'm staying for the next 10 days) would put them up for a night. The Delaneys were very welcoming and agreed.

So yesterday, shortly after I arrived we picked up Miriam and Aaron from the airport. And from then on I got to interpret the many interactions between them and the Delaney family. It was great fun! The Delaneys have not had much contact with Deaf people and had many questions.

Remember my train ride with Chiang? Well I found out that he attends a Deaf church here in Kaohsiung. The Deaf pastor lives in Taipei and holds services here every other week. It just happened that there was a Bible study last night! So Aaron, Miriam, several of the Delaneys and I went. It was all in Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL) so Chiang interpreted for us into ASL. Then I interpreted for the Delaneys into English. We had a wonderful time! This coming Sunday Chiang's church will not have a service so he is going to visit the Delaney's church and I will interpret for him.

This morning Mary Delaney took Aaron, Miriam and I to visit Lotus Pond, a famous sight in Kaohsiung. We climbed a pagoda, visited a temple, and walked through the little shops around the edge of the lake. Mary explained the Taiwanese beliefs and the reasons behind some of the things we saw. It was really interesting.

Then we had the grand adventure of trying to get Miriam and Aaron off to the bus station. First we didn't even know if the buses were running because of all the damage from the typhoons. But they were. We got them there, got their bus tickets, and found out the bus was leaving early. In just five minutes, in fact!

Tomorrow I'm going to visit the Deaf school where Chiang teaches. I'm really looking forward to that!

-Jen