Taiwanese Religion

OK, in answer to Tammy's question, this is a little complicated. Taiwan is an interesting mix of daoism, bhuddism, and random other things combined into a traditional religion, which most people in Taiwan refer to as bhuddism, but is probably closer to Taoism, but isn't really very close to either. If you ask a real bhuddist, they will say the traditional taiwanese religion is Taoism, if you ask a real Taoist, then will say it is bhuddism. Real bhuddism and Taoism are apparantly more focused on philosophy and meditation, while the religion in taiwan is more focused on ritual. They (traditional taiwanese religion) believe in many different gods, and that famous people become gods, and everyone chooses a god that they particularly like to worship (the fat happy bhudda that everyone knows is actually a lesser god, but he is the god of money so a lot of people choose him) Yaping's family worships the earth god, I believe. Anyway, worshiping takes the form of burning incense and bowing and maybe praying. The incense is to get the gods attention. Incense burning happens on a daily basis. Yaping's family has an alter room with the idol they worship on the fourth floor. On holidays and such they also offer food (by burning incense in front of real food, which they believe gives the spirit of the food to the gods) and burning fake money, which gives it to the gods. There are also lots of temples, where there are really big alters and often prophets or other methods of divining the future for bigger questions/problems. The once-every-three-years holiday that I attended is a ritual of protection for the city, where all the gods from all the temples come out and parade around the city in order to chase the evil spirits out and protect the city for the next three years. Oh, and anscestor worship. It's a big part of all of this somehow.

Anyways, as far as recent happenings, my biggest sub tutoring job got extended for a week because the teacher got sick as soon as she got back, so I've had multiple "this is my last day" days with these kids, which is kinda awkward.

Preston is running a fever right now, which means we had to cancel our zoo trip, but he's a real trooper and I think all of this is harder on Yaping than it is on him.