Sometimes timing is just BAD!!!!!!!

So what if I came back to Taiwan and I found that everyone is out of their minds?!!!!!!?!?!?!

I know blogs are only fun because of pictures, but I don't have any pictures that match my blog...so I will work on that. I'll try to get pictures up soon.

Yesterday was ghost day. Actually this entire month is ghost month, what made yesterday special was that it is the only day when everyone feeds the ghosts. They call the ghosts, their kind brothers. Maybe in their culture the ghosts could indeed be their brothers. But they don't want ghosts hanging around their homes. So they feed the ghosts on this one night of the year. They put a table outside and fill it with food. It could be packaged crackers, cookies, chip or soda or tea or specialty dishes of scrumptious home made food. It could be juice boxes, wine or even baby bottles full of milk. They set all of this on the table and place bowls of burning incense on the tables to attract the ghosts. The ghosts eat their fill and hopefully won't come back until the same day next year. I don't think everyone who sets food out believes these things, however this sort of thing is such a big part of their culture that they practice "feeding ghosts" more as tradition than actual conviction.

It was strange being there during ghost day. There were tables full of food lining the streets, a heavy smell of incense burning and to top it all off firecrackers!These things would only go off the moment you least expected them to go off. This place definitely keeps you on your toes.

We ate dinner at our family's house that night and were in sort of an awkward situation, because some of the food in front of us was the food they had offered to the ghosts. It's one of those things where you have to decide which is more morally wrong eating food offered to idols or offending our host family by not eating the yummy food they prepared. We ate it but did not ask any questions. We felt that if we asked about it and they knew we knew that we knew we were eating food offered to ghosts they would think we were okay with the custom.