Not that long...

I wake up and think It's less than three weeks.

To finish my classwork and to pack and to say goodbyes and to meet my team in LAX.  And that doesn't feel long at all.

Some random thoughts:

This Thursday makes the fourth Thursday I've been in a different state.  I'm back in Pennsylvania now; last week I was in Oklahoma, the week before I was in Texas, and the week before that I was in Indiana.  I've had a lot of great adventures this summer.

While I haven't really done much yet in the way of planning/packing, I know a few things that are going... my family gave me an ipod touch for graduation.  It runs a $5 app called qingwen, which is pretty much one of the most useful things in the world when in China (or Hong Kong, for that matter).  You draw a character on the screen (it can be pretty sloppy, always an advantage if you are just driving past it on the bus) and it translates the character.  How cool is that?  Also, a friend of my mom's sent me a ton of postcards from all over the US.  Talking about different places in the states just got a lot more fun.  :)

I was really encouraged the other day when Adam, who goes to my church and whose family I'm currently horse-sitting for, said to me, "When we went on our missions trip, we each picked someone to pray for that week... and I picked you."  It's amazing to me that people pray for me whether or not I know that they are doing it, that my friends are interceding with the Creator of the universe on my behalf.  Stephen Altrogge just posted about how we can come before God with confidence over here, on the Blazing Center, and it blows my mind to know that I can come confidently to God with everything... that other people can do the same... and that Christ also stands before God, pleading my case.

This coming year is full of crazy adventures, I am certain.  So please keep praying for God to be guiding all of it, and to be preparing me, my team, and our students.  It means way more than you can know.

Face of Love

There are a number of things in life that I strongly dislike. 

This list includes, but is not limited to, being hit by cold water in the shower, forgetting to do half of a poli sci assignment, and pretty much anything related to money.  Also asking for help.

As you can imagine, these last two do not really make for me enjoying fundraising.  Ask people to pray for me?  No problem.  Ask for them to give money?  Uh... Remind me why I didn't get a job at a gas station for this next year again?

And I could discuss how this probably reveals that I have very skewed ideas of the relative values of prayer and money, but that really isn't my point.  Not in this post, anyway.

Here's the short list of things that I scribbled in my journal the other day of things that I am learning about, and that I am glad that I'm learning, much as I dislike the process.

humility
boldness
how to experience generosity
being part of a body
the Father's abundant provision for needs


Knowing that He provides for all of my physical needs reminds me that He will provide just as abundantly for all of the needs that I don't even know about.

Knowing that I rely on others to be able to go and serve this coming year challenges me, because I'm not in it alone.  It reminds me that when I do the work to get my certification, others have invested in me and I want to uphold their trust.  So much for awesome lone ranger-y things.

And so...

I am so thankful for everyone who is enabling me to go.  You're already showing me what Sanctus Real called "the face of Love" -- which is what all this going is about, after all.

Thank you.

The Face Of Love :

I've seen your face on stained glass, in colored lights
In pictures of you looking to the sky

You've been portrayed a thousand different ways
But my heart can see you better than my eyes
'Cause it's love that points the portrait of your life

The face of love
The face of love
You look more like love everyday

I've read your words in the pages of your life
And I've imagined what you were like
I may not know the shape of your face
But I can feel your heart changing mine
And your love still proves that you're alive

The face of love
The face of love
You look more like love everyday

You are the face that changed the whole world
No one too lost for you love
No one too low for you to serve
So give us the grace to change the world
No one too lost for me to love
No one too low for me to serve

Let us see...
Let us be your face

Adventure on Campus! (and other updates)

Today something really fun happened -- Dr. Jay, who ran the program that I was with before in China, and his wife were on campus because their daughter is starting school in the fall!  It was cool to get to show them around my world a bit.  They all were feeling like they were in a major information overload stage... and I felt like it was a role reversal.  Anyway, it was great to have a chance to reconnect on the other side of the world.


I finished doing the pre-China classwork for one of my three classes and have started on the second, so I just read Teaching to Change Lives by Howard Hendricks.  It was a great (and quick) read, and I enjoyed thinking through how what he talks about was demonstrated by various teachers I've had.  It's really exciting (and a bit nerve-wracking!) to think that I am going to be a teacher myself in not that long.  I just finished being a student!


In other news, I've had the opportunity to do a few conference calls with other future teachers.  Those have been good chances to connect with each other, hear about where we are all at in the process of preparing to go, and lifting each other up before the Father.  In a month and a half, we'll all be meeting each other in LAX.  Amazing.  


Annnnnd, finally... the new newsletters came to me from the printer today, so I am slipping them into envelopes and will be getting them dispersed out to y'all soon.  If you're not on my mailing list and would like to be, drop me an email/comment/something.  :)

Back to China!

So here is the deal. I really wish that I could sit down with all of you and just tell you the stories of what's been going on with China, but here is the gist of it: I'm going back to China for 11 months to teach English. I don't know yet where in China I'll be (although I am really excited to find out!) If you want to hear more stories, feel free to leave me a comment or email or whatever! :) We're scheduled to fly out on July 30th. Until that time, I have work to do getting my certification to teach English (through Wheaton) and fundraising.

Here's what I need from you to make this happen.

Prayer. It's going to a time full of crazy adventures (as anyone from my CSP group knows!) that I can't even anticipate.

Money. Going to China, and getting certification to teach, and all that jazz is expensive and I need to raise about $1400 for each month that I'm going to be there. Here's my suggestion... think about committing to giving a manageable amount each month, something like $30 or $50. That's like a tank of gas. :) If you would be willing to partner with me this way, or want to talk more about what your money would be going towards, again, shoot me a message. I'd be glad to talk more... I really cannot do this without you.  Following this link will take you to a site to donate online.

Ideas. Especially once I find out what age and area I'm going to be working in, I would love to have your input on what things I ought to be taking/cool ideas for teaching/activities.  (The current list is under the tab called China packing list/ideas.)

And that, my friends, is that! (Until next time. ^_^)

Tuesday thoughts

Well, I don't have a super-coherent line of thought for this post, but here goes.


We're flying out of Hong Kong to Xiamen tomorrow afternoon.  I'm pretty excited to be back at a college taking classes; this has been a very cool week, but I haven't changed that much since orientation week of freshman year -- I'm ready for school to start!


Tonight some of the others and I are going to the Mid-October Festival.  Becky and I want to see the sky lanterns... especially after watching Tangled.  :)  


We also have our first quiz tomorrow.  I always get nervous about first quizzes (since you don't really know what the professor considers "a quiz" until that point) but I think it will be okay.  Today we had a class on reading pinyin -- that was enough to leave my head spinning and to decide that if I ever become Supreme Dictator of the World (or am put in a position to make these kinds of decisions), all languages are going to use IPA.  It's not especially beautiful for handwriting, but it is consistent and can be applied to all languages, and I am too much of a linguistics-freak to not appreciate that.  


Tim protested, but Dr. Jay agreed.  We also want to convert the US to using Celsius and metric systems.  


(I would probably even let languages keep another mode of writing!  But IPA would have to be learned by everyone... and commonly used... it would make sense with computers, too.  *sigh*)


It's way less humid today than it was when we first got here a week ago, which is lovely... although it's still quite warm.  Apparently the weather suddenly gets very pleasant around the first week of October -- good by me!


It has been interesting to be a lot of places where I am in a minority as a caucasian; it happens all the time when I'm on the MTR.  It doesn't really freak me out... I guess I have just always wondered how it would feel, and now I find out that (in Hong Kong at least) it really doesn't feel any different than anywhere else.


One of the biggest pains of being in a foreign country:  being perpetually paranoid about having my passport where I feel it at any given moment.  Life would be so much simpler if pickpockets weren't a concern.


I can't remember if I've mentioned it here before or not, but we have a pretty awesome group of students this semester.  It feels small to me (maybe because the Israel trip was double this size) but I like it.


I also like cargo shorts.  ^_^


My tan is fading rapidly.  That is a note irrelevant to pretty much everything, I just keep noticing it, because it is not fading all that evenly and so my fingers and the edges of my hands are now much whiter than the tops of my hands and arms, and it looks weird.  Oh well.


I have Plain White T's 1,2,3,4 stuck in my head.  


So, the advantage of coming outside to get the internet during the middle of the day is that there are not mosquitoes.  The disadvantages are that no one is online to talk to, except friends in Japan, and that it is much warmer.


Annnd... I think that is about all the randomness that I have to write about.  


*crash* [that was a branch falling off a small palm tree across the road]


Adios!


Or... as I really should say... Zai jian!

Singapore!

On Sunday afternoon, some of the other girls and I went down to the harbor to swim/wade/take pictures.  There were a lot of young kids with their parents.

A little boy was wading near where I was wading.  "Why is it so sharp?" he asked, probably rhetorically.

"I think it's because of all the shells stuck on the rocks," I said.  The ground below the waves was sharp indeed; we had decided to leave our shoes on, and I had cut my finger on a shell.

He looked at me with some interest.  "You from the US?"

"Yup," I told him.  "Where are you from?"

"Singapore," he said.

He lives in Hong Kong, but it sounded like they moved here from Singapore.

Anyway -- not a very important interaction, but it was fun.  I love how kids are so much readier to ask random questions.

Friday and Saturday Adventures in HK

Well, what to write about tonight? Other than the fact that, sad as it is, I'd be perfectly content to head to bed right now... and it's only 7. Oh well.

It's crazy to realize that it's Saturday. We've only been in Hong Kong since Wednesday, and I have no problem going adventuring all over the... city... country... whatever you want to call it. :)

Friday evening I was coming back from the library when I ran into a bunch of the rest of the group heading out to Kowloon. “Wanna come?” they asked, and I agreed, because hey, how often do I get the chance to run off to the downtown of Hong Kong? So we took the MTR (which I love, and I'm extremely grateful for practice on the DC metro system...) and went first to the Space Museum (LOVE! It has virtual hang-gliding... enough said?) and then watched the Symphony of Lights. That was spectacular and... everything is kind of made epic right now by the fact that it's in Hong Kong (which I remember Jess telling me about Rome...) but I think it was epic in its own right.

Then, since a bunch of people wanted to get dinner, and Tim was in Explore! mode, we ended up catching the Star Ferry (again, it's pretty cool, and if you think I'm exaggerating, you'll have to check it out yourself). We wandered around Hong Kong Island for a while, trying to find a place to eat, and we ended up in a random Chinese restaurant. It was good... except that we managed to lose one guy from the group along the way.

Skipping over much of the angst and whatnot that this provoked, everyone did make it home (albeit that we were on the last train to Ma On Shan, and had to get the guys at the gate of the YMCA camp to unlock it and let us in... oops) and then it was time for bed.

Then Saturday!

This was our very lovely “free day” to do whatever in Hong Kong. A bunch of the group ended up heading to Macau but I (liking to do things by myself) headed back downtown after getting in some story-writing with people who are 12 hours off. So first, I hit the Jade Market, at the suggestion of Dr. K. It was fun, and I was rather proud of not getting crazily lost (although Hong Kong is very well marked with signs and whatnot, and the MTR goes everywhere... so I'm just going to be embarrassed if I do get really lost in Hong Kong) and managed a little bit of bartering.

It is much less creepy to barter with women than it was with guys who were dropping marriage proposals like spare change in the Arab Quarter in old Jerusalem. It also saves my sanity to do it by putting in numbers on a calculator rather than arguing between languages that we certainly don't both speak.

Anyway. Then I headed back to the museums. I was (silly me) thinking of hitting quite a few of the museums. This did not end up happening; I went into the Hong Kong history museum. Which was awesome. And I spent the entire afternoon there. Also, it cost me $5 to get in. Hong Kong dollars, that is... and that's under a dollar US. Very much worth it. grin

Then I was hungry... so I came back to the camp. And here I am.

In one other piece of news, which hopefully is completely irrelevant to anyone in the US – 7-11's here sell various bottled drinks, one of of which is called “Longan and Chinese Wolfberry Drink”. It is very high on the list of nastiest things I've ever drank, but I was thirsty, so I did drink it.

One other thought – living in a country where it's safe to drink tap out of the water is lovely. I'm missing that right now.