Let Me Catch You Up: Part 1

Hey everyone! So I want to apologize at the front end of this post. I’ve not been good about updating you all on my life and what is happening on this trip and with our team. I hope to do better in the coming weeks. For now though, I want to give you all a quick update on all that has happened. Since it’s been awhile, my plan is to do this in two separate blogs since there seems to be a lot, so be on the lookout for part 2. With that, let’s catch up!

So, I last posted with one week left in Japan (shoot that happened fast, my bad). Our final week there was very bittersweet. As a squad we had a ton of fun working with J’s Cafe and teaching English. We built awesome relationships with the people and students and with Rich, Emmi, Cherry and Joe. It was a fun week and definitely hard to leave. Our final week included more English classes, a movie night (all 3 were Ironman movies. Found out I’m pretty far behind on Marvel movies. Definitely want to change this) and another concert. There were a few highlights that came out of that week for me. First was the opportunity to share my story at the concert, which was a super sweet moment. I also had the chance to sing and rap with Stone which was a ton of fun (I’ll give you one guess on which rapper).

From there we headed to Taipei, Taiwan for two weeks of debrief as a squad. We stayed in a sweet area with a cool night market nearby that had tons of people and great food. It was a great experience and this debrief time also served as an awesome opportunity for our squad to connect with each other and our leaders who joined us for that time. A few highlights from this time in Taipei included:

• Hiking up elephant mountain and spending the day at the top. We made some friends and sang some songs while also enjoying the beautiful view of the city (I also found a pull up bar on this mountain and probably spent 20 minutes trying to do a muscle up and couldn’t get it. So frustrating. I will keep you all updated, but I will have this by the end of the world race). 
• We had a number of opportunities to head down to the park and play basketball with a bunch of guys from the local University which was cool.
• Parker and I had the opportunity to workout with a bunch of guys at this really cool place up in the mountain near our hostel. Our last day, they invited us over to a pavilion and we got to have tea and snacks with them. It was so cool to make new friends and participate in something I’m passionate about while in a new city and in a very unique spot (One of my favorite moments).
• Our team also had another cool moment on this mountain. We went out exploring one day and began walking the trails, when we ran into a group of people doing karaoke. They invited us in for snacks and let us join them for the day. It was a ton of fun meeting them and hanging out as a team.
• Finally, just the moments we had to hang out in the market as a squad. This was such a blessing and gave us such a cool time to be together. We got to the explore, make new friends, and try some great food, including this awesome friend chicken, pigs blood, and the famous stinky tofu (the name fits, but you should try it).

Overall, our time spent in Japan and Taipei over the first month and a half was so cool and was such an awesome adventure for our squad. We had some awesome moments and got to do some cool things, which only continued into Toucheng, Hong Kong, and China. I will cover these and more in part 2 (and who knows, maybe a part 3 based on how much I just wrote). For now, thanks for joining me. It’s definitely been a wild ride so far. I’ll have you caught up soon, I promise.