Thursday, March 29, 2007
such a good day...
today was a field trip day for most of my school but i had done my field trip for this week already, so i took the day off and headed to the beach the day before.... the drive (through the 91!) was painless and i didn’t encounter any traffic! can you believe it?!?! rita and i enjoyed taco tuesday at great mex =) and then just chilled in her brand new apartment…
and when i woke up today i biked 7.2 miles today on the beach. not a lot, i know, but it was basically from one end of the bike path to the other (all the way to 50th street), i even did 10 blocks off the beach before i decided to turn around.
i then took a book to the shore and read on the sand, overlooking the ocean…
put the book down and enjoyed the scenery…
then i drove to LA to eat with susan at this taco stand i haven’t been to in a while…
and then we hit up the griffith park observatory with my parents, my brother, and andy. i actually got to see saturn AND see its rings and 4 of its moons! it’s nice that it’s finally open again…
then the family had dinner together at this great vietnamese restaurant nearby. LOVED their ginger clover ginger ale. i’m gonna try to make it here at home…
it was a nice full day, at the beach, in LA, and seeing the stars, and such good food… ‘twas just the best day off work!
Sunday, March 25, 2007
i remember doing mission trips...
and i’d have to get up in front of the church, and in my wavering-cuz-i-get-nervous-doing-public-speaking, i’d have to talk about what we were going to do. sometimes i had to sing special music
but it was always a good experience for me to have to talk about it. i was always nervous about it, but i learned how to get past that and share my experiences with everyone.
then after church service was over, uncles and aunties from the congregation would come up to me and give me warm wishes for my upcoming trip, and i never understood why they were so generous. i didn’t go up there to ask for money - yet, they just kept coming up to me donating for my upcoming trip. i think what they ended up telling me was that they wished they could go on mission trips but they didn’t have the time, so they were blessed by being able to contribute towards my trip.
now the tables have turned and i’m the older person hearing about the mission trips of my students. i teach at a public school, but i still get to hear from my students about their various mission trips, which i think is really cool.
anyways, if you haven’t yet figured it out yet, i’m just really proud of my student sarah who IS going on a mission trip this coming summer. it’s a different forum for asking (which makes me feel really old!) but it’s still sharing her experience with everyone. the other cool thing is that this isn’t her first trip. during the Christmas holidays her family went to new orleans and helped rebuild the damaged city. she also went to mexico on a mission trip with her family last summer… the thing i’m trying to say is that this is not for fun or for traveling, but helping others is a way of life for her.
and i know she’ll have a blast and learn so much doing it! i’m so excited for her!
Friday, March 23, 2007
looking for God
so… there’s so many thoughts that i’ve been writing down and that have been on my mind lately, but i think it all boils down to this:
what type of relationship am I -supposed- to have with God?
i’ve been working on my definition of everything else, such as:
- what role does attending church play in my relationship with God? (is it really that important to sit in a room for an hour to have my relationship with God grow?)
- or what do i think about the Adventist set of beliefs? lemme just say that i’m not quite adventist… but don’t really know why
- or what do i think of the Bible being “God’s way of communicating with us”, but it is full of stories of God speaking directly with people? i think this might be the ironic joke that sometimes keeps me from wanting to read, yet i keep on going back to it
- while we’re on that topic, who decided what went into the Bible anyways? wouldn’t other people’s accounts of their relationship with God be just as good as a testimony to Him? couldn’t their writings be considered another type of “gospel” aka “good news” that can help bring someone closer to God? is it so important that i read the Bible or just that i keep on reading about people’s relationships with Him?
- how important is it that my definition of God is the same as anyone else’s? this is the part that is most disconcerting because IF God can be different things for different people, IF people of different religions can make it to heaven (which i totally believe that Jews, Buddhists, Christians, etc will all make it there), IF you can even have different rules for different people (as suggested in romans 14), then what’s the point? of me defining it, i mean. cuz obviously there is no set answer like the Adventists would like you to believe.
the scary part about God being whatever you make of him? it’s that maybe i feel slightly marxist… that i’m creating a God to fulfill a need. that the concept of God can change to fill the human need. like it’s one giant band-aid to fill the longing inside of me. funny that i worry about that, cuz i really do truly believe that God exists. yet.... i just can’t come to answers for all my questions. at least, i can’t come up with answers that are satisfying enough.
and maybe the most difficult part is doing this search alone. i’m not relying on my parents to tell me how it is. i’m not listening to my boyfriend telling me what God told him. i am not asking the church what i should believe. i am figuring it out for myself.
it makes for long sleepless nights, but at least when (if) i get answers it will be answers that -will- work for me.
and the good news is that once i’ve written this post, i can finally go to sleep tonight! shweet! i like those short term rewards =)
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
this is me, disgusted
thank you, mandy, for making me laugh.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
i don't like you
i’ve told you straight to your face....
i don’t want to talk right now.
i don’t need to be called 3 times a day so you can hang out with me.
i don’t want to be called 3 times a day so you can try to get me to talk.
i would just like to be left alone, simply cuz i’m feeling particlarly un-social right now. maybe i would like you better if you could realize that about me and STOP calling me and STOP texting me.
and for you, which part of “i don’t like you” don’t you understand?
someone won’t leave me alone… and i don’t know what else to say to make it happen. other than post this and vent on my blog. just so i don’t end up yelling when i finally do talk…
the sad thing is, this applies to more than one person in my life....
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
taking control of my life!
- so, today was the third day in a row that we worked out. turbo kickboxing followed by a run up the hill behind our house! i am -so- gonna get my BMI back down where it should be!
- and i also am changing things up at my job. i haven’t talked to my boss in oh, like, forever… it’s one of those i-grew-up-not-talking-to-authority-figures thingies. (y’know, since i was raised to be the typical polite (aka quiet) asian female. hah! haven’t stuck to that one!) but at any rate i thought it’d be a good idea to start communicating so that we’d be on the same page. and so at lunch i just walked up to his office and said, “hey, i need to talk to you” and then told him how i’m feeling and asked questions so i could understand stuff better. which is SO totally a new thing for me to do. -grin-
- and this week marks the third week i’ve gone back to church. still not quite sure what i think about it, and i probably paid less attention than the last two weeks cuz i was pretty distracted, but i -did- go. AND i even wore a dress. and heels. wow.
yeah, so basically everything in my life that hasn’t been working for me i’m doing my bit to change it and take control of my life. a couple o’ weeks ago or more, i was chatting with a friend online and figured out that all the stuff i don’t like i have the power to change. and i’ve been changing it up since. it seems like i’m on a good roll....
Monday, March 12, 2007
run, kimi, run!
so on the way home i got the brilliant idea of working out… but when i got home rita was napping and i felt like napping too....
but we changed despite our tiredness, and then neither of us wanted to drive there.
so, we ended up jogging there!!!!
yeah, that’s right, i haven’t worked out in ages, but this time i made the initial effort, convinced rita to go, and then ended up jogging the 1.5 miles there! then we did some free weights to work on our arms, did some ab exercises, and then jogged the 1.5 miles back home.
such a great workout! and we’re going again tomorrow!
but i’m pretty sure we’ll drive there tomorrow =)
Sunday, March 04, 2007
you'll shoot yer eye out, kid!
several months ago, when i was talking to the guys from the japanese church, i heard them discussing a potential men’s ministry activity - they were gonna go duck hunting or something cool like that!
“oooh! i wanna go!” i begged them.
“dude, it’s MEN’s ministry!” they rebutted. “you can go to the WOMEN’s ministry.”
yeah, and drink tea, eh? that’s what the ladies had scheduled.... tea and crumpets or something else like that.... SOOOO not as cool as hunting, at least to me =)
when i went to school that week some of my students and i were talking about the injustice of it all, and they decided to invite me to go with them! they invited me last weekend but i couldn’t go because of all the hot air ballooning and festivities, so we rescheduled for this sunday. i met them at school and then had to go back to their house to pick up the guns cuz they couldn’t have a gun without me in the car =) and then we went to inland fish and game.
that’s me! and that’s john to my left and seth to my right!
so they’re REALLY good, i think they missed 5 or less while i only hit 3 total. out of a box of 25 bullets. i guess really, i hit 6 out of 2 25 rounds, so i was consistently bad =) hahahha… but i had so much fun doing it. i realized AFTER the whole affair that i was shooting right handed and using my dominant left eye to aim and that’s why my eyesight was off! hahahhaha! silly me…
so then we went over to the other side where all the rifles were at and i tried shooting at the gong all the way in the back and i used my -right- eye this time and was way more accurate. although that could also be because i had a stationary target.
but man it was so fun! even though i only got 3 clays each time, i -did- hit the gong several times. and i don’t think i bruised my shoulder =) so tx seth and john for bringing me!
Saturday, March 03, 2007
went to joe's....
and what an experience it was! laurie got real excited when i said (erroneously) that there was a joe’s crab shack on hospitality. so then we had to go find the closest one, which was in rancho cucamonga. and she really wanted me to try eating crab legs… -shudder- so even though i didn’t really want to, i went ahead and tried it. i just tried to not think about it too much, and then i discovered that i really enjoyed it!
see?
besides the messiness of it, it was pretty fun working to find the edible parts =) hahhahah! yeah, it’d be a great first date - no pretentiousness at all as you pull the legs apart and dig out the meat =) i’m pretty proud of myself for eating it - not just tasting it, but -actually- eating it. pretty good for someone who was taught to be a picky vegetarian for the first 16 years of life, eh?
Friday, March 02, 2007
i'm creating a new club!
such a great idea - why don’t we have a club full of the type of people that i like to hang out with! then even though my closest and dearest friends live far away, i would have a group of people with whom i could talk late into the night, philosophizing, theorizing, discussing (aka arguing a la merv), and making each other laugh.
funny thing is, there’s no way to create that. i’ve met people that are exactly those type of people but for some reason there’s no chemistry between us. and then again, i’ve met people who have fallen into that category the second i meet them (hi susan!).
even funnier, i know that even if i could make that club, i’d be the first one to ditch the meetings, sitting at the coffeehouse outside chilling and talking with my friends.
but wouldn’t it be so great??? =)