July 20

Today we went to the national science museum. We had been planning for this for a long time. The museum had been closed for a couple of years for renovations and today was the first day they were fully open again. We got breakfast with Tianna and James in the morning and then sent them off to the airport. Then we made our way by subway to the museum. It was pretty cheap to get in – only $3.33 for Rebecca and I and $2.33 for Julia, Ethan, and Christian, and then the younger three were all free. The museum was huge and all the typical exhibits for a science center. We started off in a human body room. The kids spent a while learning about DNA and how our bodies work. The highlight of that floor though was a digestive system that you could walk through. It started with a large mouth and then went to the stomach and on through the intestines. Each spot had short videos and facts about what happens to the food at each stage. I don’t think the children paid any attention to any of that though. Instead, they were fascinated by the end of the trail where you walked out a whole in what was shaped like a giant bottom. And when you walked out it made farting and toilet flushing sounds. I think they probably went through that like 50 times. Before we knew it, we had been in the museum for 3 hours already and it was time for lunch. After lunch we had three more floors to cover and only 2.5 hours to do it. We started on the next floor up, which was all about human interactions with our environment – pollution and things like that. It was mainly just reading and looking at things. While the children were there I walked up to the fifth and sixth floors to see how we could prioritize the rest of our visit. Those two floors were awesome and had all of the interactive things, so we rushed up there. The children got to ride a bike with square wheels, get spun around in a centrifugal force room, float balls in the air, lift a car with pulleys, learn about force and motion with pool balls on strings, and more fun things like that. Time flew on that floor and we never even made it up to the sixth floor of the museum. We had to leave though because Rebecca and I really wanted to have plenty of time to visit the Grand Hotel with the children. The Grand Hotel is a fancy hotel that is set up on a hill that overlooks the rest of the city. It has a really traditional Chinese design to it and is very large, so it is seen from all over the city and really well known. We really wanted to go there because the island of Taiwan was dedicated for the sharing of the gospel on the hotel’s grounds. The island was dedicated back in the 1950s by Elder Mark E. Peterson. When I was a missionary our very first night we went there and read the dedication prayer and had a testimony meeting. That is probably one of the strongest spiritual memories from my mission, so we wanted to recreate that some for our children. We found the spot where the dedication happened and then had a devotional there as a family. We read the dedicatory prayer and then each of us shared our testimonies. Rebecca and I then shared a lot about how awesome missions are and then the benefits and that can come to others and to yourself from serving a mission. We also invited them to start preparing for a mission right now and promised that great blessings would come if they did. We also sang a couple songs and said a prayer. I thought it was a really cool experience, and I think they all felt the Spirit at some point during it. That evening we made our way to the night market that was in the area – the Shilin Night Market. We had been there before, but missed a couple of the sections, so we decided to go back. It was fun to see the crowds and try some of the delicious street food for one of the last times.


At the science museum.












They had this cool mirror thing where every other strip was part of your face and the others were the parts of the face of the person standing on the other side. This doesn't look like it matches up as well because I am holding the camera at an angle. Me and Ethan.



A little closer of a match.


Me and Christian.




We had the hardest time getting all of the organs back in this person. Not sure we have any future doctors in the family.













At the Grand Hotel. Site of the island dedication.











Making a fried cheese and hot dog on a stick.

Agnes, really excited to get a bite.



Fried squid and tiny crabs still in their shells.