We got a text message Wednesday morning as we were traveling to the glass-bottom gondolas stating that at least one of us (Elder Anderton and I) would be transferred and giving us an IBON code to print out the transfer instructions at a 7-11. Since there were none nearby, we had to wait!
We had lots of fun that day though, taking the glass-bottom gondolas up to Maokong on top of the mountains, stopping to eat some lunch, and then taking them back down to the Taipei Zoo Station. From there we had to rush to the temple and quickly change clothes before going in to do a session.
That night (Wednesday night), we also had our English party! We made it Night at the Museum themed and did a bunch of awesome stuff! It turned out perfect…except by the time we finally got home that night, I had to stay up until 11:30pm or so to pack all of my stuff to move the next morning to TianMu at 7:25am. (Thanks again to Kevin Yang for more amazing pictures of our Elder’s adventures!)
My new companion is Elder Chia! It’s cool because I actually met him before when Elder Anderton and I went to a kaorou chidaobao (all you can eat barbecue place) with a bunch of other missionaries and I sat next to him. We also have two other elders in the apartment: Elder Huntsman and Elder Johnson. Elder Johnson is still in training; he came to Taiwan 6 weeks after I did. Elder Huntsman was Assistant to the President when I arrived in Taiwan, so I met him at the airport! (And yes, he is from the “Huntsman family” that donated a private jet to the Quorum of the Twelve so it would be easier for them to travel – that aside though, he’s super fun to be with and is awesome!)
We’ve got a lot of amazing people here in TianMu already. There’s a ton of foreigners here – this area is actually a very expensive area. There’s a school here called TAS which teaches only in English, so it’s where all the foreigners go to school. We’ve already met people from there – actually, it’s where our Mission President’s kids go to school, which is pretty cool as well.

The definition of repetitive: A picture of someone taking a picture of someone taking a picture…
…or was it a picture of the two missionaries in the distance?
It’s awesome here and I’m looking forward to more in the future!
– Elder Austin Simonson
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(A few more photos from the English party)