Day 6: A song that reminds you of a best friend

From Erica, lol. It's catchy sounding until she starts saying "US boy"? haha.

In other news, I have no idea how I'm going to survive having a schedule like this because those night classes on Tu/Th kill my brain and I don't have brains to do anything at night... and a lot needs to be done.

Day 5: A song that is often stuck in your head

So first of all, I'm starting to get nervous for this quarter. I need to stop psyching myself out. I have this hum reading due tomorrow. On Liberty, John Stuart Mill. It's a 100 page book, so dense and packed with political theory that it reminds me of Hobbes' Leviathan. Except 5 times shorter, thank God. So I read 25 pages in 2 hours. I'm normally a decently fast reader. This makes me nervous. I need to calm down. So I decided not to read over dinner because I needed a break, so I turned on my ipod and switched to the Christian playlist. The first song? Elise, the one that I listed in the last post as one that calms me. I don't even know why it's on that playlist, but haha, God knew that I needed to calm down. ...That is all.

Day 5: a song that is often stuck in your head.
I have phases and it switches around, but here's one that's been recent, maybe because the last week of last quarter, I wanted to hear it on a whim, and then I wanted to play it, so I've had a webpage with the chords open in my browser for a while, and every time I see the title, it starts playing in my head again.

Day 4: A song that calms you down

Ochem C counts as a bio elective. Interesting.

Rob Loomis: "Elise"
His style reminds me of my own and I find my own playing very therapeutic. Transitive property. Although it's richer to play it AND hear it than to just play it. 

Day 3: A song that reminds you of one/both of your parents

Day 2: A song that reminds you of your most recent ex-boyfriend/girlfriend. Not exactly applicable. You know when you press the skip button on your music player or whatever you use? *skip*


Day 3: A song that reminds you of one/both of your parents

I like this song. The lyrics are often exactly what I want to say, in the right language. Prayers in my heart seem more genuine and intimate when they're in Chinese (well, Chinglish). And I know this song because of my mom. 


Lord, You are my most understanding friend,
Lord, You are my dearest companion.
You are always on my mind, every day,
I long to see Your face.
At every stage of my life,
During each little pause in my life,
Your hand is always holding me,
Keeping me by Your side,
Telling me the path which I should take,
That I might not slide towards death!
How long, how wide, how deep and high is Your love!
From the depths of my heart, I am in awe!
With You, I need nothing else!
My heart is joined to Yours!
I have vowed to follow You and never change my mind!

Day 1: A song from your childhood

...from graceypoo. We'll see how long this lasts.

Day 1: A song from your childhood.

Every single week at church for offering when I was in elementary school... was this song. I still play it when I play piano for the kids, haha. Nothing's changed at all...

Well that was interesting

I did not mean to make such a big stir with the last post. I expected some misunderstandings, but not to this extent. Amazing how people misunderstand and get worked up over things I didn't even say. But I guess it's not completely there fault, because my hook ("it was partly my fault") was maybe a little too effective. I didn't mean it literally, sorry guys. Funny how what upset me most was the possibility that maybe I was getting all this crap for actually doing something wrong in God's eyes, rather than doing something right and being misunderstood/offending others. I am ok with being misunderstood and while I don't like offending people, I can't help it if they don't like what I believe. Or what they think I believe. I don't expect everyone to understand. I can take the crap. But for a moment I really thought I was going crazy because when I went back and read it, it seemed to be perfectly normal reasoning and not extraordinarily radical or offensive or theologically incorrect. I still don't think it's offensive if understood properly (which many fail to). And I'm pretty sure it's not theologically incorrect. But I guess it might be considered radical. What a difference between how Christians see the world and how others see the world. I was expecting a mostly Christian audience so I didn't bother to explain some background things that I probably should have. Sorry, nonchristian cyberspace community. That was my bad. Please read my explanations in the comments and on Facebook if you haven't already. It might make you feel better if I offended you.

So yes, even though I had a pretty rough weekend for it, I feel so much more complete now for having been through all that. I actually understand what Jesus/Paul mean when they talk about the "present sufferings" and "sharing in Christ's sufferings" and stuff. AND "the apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name." I'm not sure I'm jumping for joy yet, but I guess it is pretty cool to suffer for Jesus' sake. That is the one thing most worth suffering for. 

The natural disasters in Japan.....

... is partly my fault.

So I love Japan and want to see Japanese people come to know Jesus, right? I realized that one big problem with a lot of performance-driven Asian people is that they think they are self-sufficient and good if they perform well. I am was one of those people. Well that is most definitely not the case, as we are all to some degree morally deficient by God's standards. The point is, I've been praying for God to make Japanese people realize that they need him. And God is answering me by (literally) shaking up the nation to make them realize that they are not self-sufficient, and that everything that they're working for in this life is in vain. I was not expecting something of this magnitude when I prayed that prayer, but somehow I am not surprised. It's so like God to do something like that. I don't mean to sound cold, because this is very tragic and is shaking me up too, but rather I have great hopes as to what God can accomplish through this.

So now the reaction has started, but we have to make sure it goes to completion! It will have been the most useless thing ever if our current highly unstable transition state returns to starting material! After all that painful investment of energy! In other words, (for those of us who are not in the most ideal positions to directly reach out to them) we must pray them through this! We (at least I, but I can't be the only one) prayed, and it began, and now we need to keep praying for good to come of this! Because I see a lot of potential good, but I also see a lot of potential bad. Product, not starting material, guys. Shift the equilibrium to the product side!(Ochem final on Monday!) They have great physical need at the moment, but they have a much greater spiritual need that's been building up for decades and centuries now.

And if you remember, I've been supporting the Aoyagi family (aoyagifamily.wordpress.com) in their permanent missions trip to Japan. I've been praying for God to use them to further his kingdom in Japan. Well, they finally moved there less than a month ago. Within a month! Now do you see the extent of how drastically God is answering my prayers??? Anyway. They are ok, and I've heart a little about how they've been able to reach out to people unable to go home as trains shut down, even as they were unable to go home for the same reason. God clearly has them there for a very specific reason and purpose, and it's happening! As always, they could use our prayer support, if we would give it.

On a bigger scale, God is amazing. Amazing at how he listens to us and infinitely more amazing period. But at the same time I'm starting to realize how similarly potentially disastrous a lot of my other prayers have been. Wow, I'm almost scared to see what else is going to start happening. I could very well have been praying the same prayer for YOU. 

What a good quarter. I am very satisfied with the balance I have achieved between people/play and school. I love people. I like learning too, but studying somehow doesn't always equate to learning, and learning science is just not as cool as learning about people. Personally. I guess you could say that I like to learn about my God's creation, and my favorite thing to learn about is God's most beautiful creation.

Let that sink in.

So yes, work has picked up, and there's a price to pay for wanting to learn about people more than books, but God has made me rather rich in that area, and I don't mind paying that price. What's a couple of hours of discomfort after getting graded stuff back, compared to the eternal investment I hope I'm making in people?

But I've been having very frequent dizzy/lightheaded spells lately, for like the past week. I'm getting a little concerned. Several things are making me suspect high blood pressure. HIGH blood pressure???? I'm out of my mind. We'll see. My dear Elena, please feel better soon. We don't want any abnormal things to happen during our college career now, do we? Unless He wills it, but I guess then there's nothing we can do about that now, is there? But I would rather not, God.

Now, off to see Tangled with a Kevin and others. Sorry, Ochem. I've already spent so much time with you today.

This quarter has been so chill, somehow. I thought last quarter would be chill, but it wasn't chill, and I thought this quarter was going to be not chill, but it's so chill. I never thought I would say this. I love chem lab. It's my favorite class. And I love having all morning classes, because every afternoon I feel like I have no school and it's break. It felt like break for the first few weeks of school. This past week it kind of felt like school because I tried to sit and study for my midterms tomorrow. I haven't completely forgotten how to study, fortunately. But really, I wonder sometimes if I should be working harder, because I'm often reminded of the verse that says to work at everything with all your heart, as working for the Lord and not men. I work at other things, such as investing in people, with all my heart. And I work at school hard enough to do very well. What is all of my heart? Does this verse even apply to this situation? Because it's actually talking about how slaves should obey their masters. Can that be extended to the relationship that I have with school? .............maybe not.

Jesus is Everything to me

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ pleasurefungradeshealthcomfortsmartsmoneymusicfriendsfamily. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord <3, for whose sake I have lost (am losing) all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him... I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead! And don't forget that our citizenship is in heaven! (Phil 3:7-10, 20)

Facebook won't let me make my status more than 420 characters. This is 627 characters.

FAQ: How was Canada?

It was very good. I thought it'd be boring, but it wasn't. What did I do? Well, I hung out with family, a lot. (No picture for privacy reasons.) I ate a hecka lot. Vancouver seafood and stuff... unfortunately this seafood is cheaper when shipped to Cupertino than it is in Vancouver itself. Somehow. I ate a lot of money. This family knows how to spend money. Although I think paying $300-$500 for a little extra material at the bottom of your not-made-in-China dress shirts is a little excessive. But I fully approve of the food spending! Also, I had my first real drink, and it was legal.

The ironic thing is that the house there is very well heated. I walked around in a tshirt. But it's freezing outside. As in when you try to drink water that you left in the car overnight, it's full of ice, and your feet freeze numb after half an hour. Coming back here and walking out of the airport, I thought it very warm in comparison to Seattle. Very warm and comfortable. But the house I stayed at last night in cozy San Jose was freaking FREEZING. Anyway.

We also did a few touristy things. Nothing I haven't seen before, but seeing things in life is different than seeing them in decade (plus) old memories. For one, the Capilano Suspension Bridge with lights at night. This sidewalk-wide wooden bridge swings over a fat gorge/ravine thing with a river at the bottom. I love heights. Too bad it was night and hard to appreciate it... at least for me. My cousin's dog saw it too well.

\

I also saw some historical sights. Such as the hospital I was born in, and the first apartment I remember living in:

Hecka weird. Because I remember walking to a preschool from this apartment, and I thought I remembered how to get there. But I thought it couldn't be right because I was 4 or 5 at the time, and I haven't seen the place since. Well guess what, it's exactly where I remembered it to be. I can't believe I remembered how to get there. I still don't even know how to get to church when I'm in SD. Anyway.

They also have this cutesy poodle that looks like a lamb. He was very fun.

Anyhow. Got back at 12 last night after a day of travelling and still  managed to party hop and play until 7 something in the morning and still get home in one piece. The only allnighter I will ever pull is for new years (when else would you arrive at a party at 2AM?). In the morning, I found myself saying weird things that I don't mean. Also the only day of the year I actually need my glasses, and I'm proud to say that I had the foresight to bring them back this year (haha, foresight). And then up at 5AM tomorrow and on my way back to SD!! My sleep schedule will be fixed soon.

PS happy new year!! This year, I resolve to... not sure yet. I can't even remember what I resolved last year. I resolve to remember my resolution. jk.

HI FROM THE NORTH. I'm having a very good time here, and am sad to leave so soon, but also very happy to come home to whatever new year's plans end up happening, and then back to SD!!!!!!! It  has not been boring here at all. More later. And it will not be boring when I go home for one day. And it will NOT be boring when I go back to SD. I will NOT overstudy this quarter. However much I end up studying, I get the same grade anyway. Anyway. Life looks good. I plan on thoroughly enjoying my last night here, I plan on thoroughly enjoying my new year's, and I plan on thoroughly enjoying my classes and my friends when school starts up again. All the while thoroughly enjoying God, who gives my life meaning. Otherwise, life is extremely meaningless, as I am sure you have heard me complain about before. Really 没意思. How can one bear it. But anyhow! I'm excited for life!

I just realized that I still have the blog title from the summer. Oops I meant to change it when summer ended, and I forgot for a complete quarter. Good job, Elena. Anyway, so it's titled Hallelujah~ now. I decided on a simple title. Forget the clever profound ones. This is simple. Just simply, praise God. I feel very hallelujah these days. Yesterday I could not focus on reading because I was very aware of God for some reason. I felt the need to ... something. Praise him, hold out my arms and love him, worship him, stand up, dance around, bow down, cry out, be silent, soak him in, spill out adoration, I don't know. A book seemed too trivial to waste my time on. There's a big God out there to worship. And when I worship, I'm sooooo fulfilled. I think this sensation can be described as being in love. I think my heart is going to burst. Anyhow, hallelujah... just simple praise and adoration. God is so good.

PS happy birthday, dear Neilson. You have been a blessing in my life. :]

Today I went to two services...

... in two different languages. ... because I had nothing else to do, lol. It was very interesting. In the first one, Pastor Dean talked about the fall of man (which I see in a whole new light now, thanks to Paradise Lost), and the promise of the seed that will bruise the serpent's head, and how it's such a promise of hope for Adam and Eve after that nasty fall. In the second one, Pastor Kwan talked about the birth of Jesus and (briefly) about  how it was the answer to promise made 700 years ago through Isaiah... no, actually, many thousands of years ago at the very fall of man through God himself. And I was very hit by the amazing continuity of God's providence in human history, from the first Adam, to the second Adam Jesus, through us today who die and live because of the first and second Adams. Just as we can't get away from the curse of the first Adam, as surely as we are going to die (call it human nature or nature or evolutionary traits or whatever you want, you know humans are imperfect and die eventually), we also can't get away from the redemption of Jesus the second Adam, as surely as (or as long as?) we want to live.

That is all. Short and sweet. I'm not trying to be preachy but seriously, I cry myself awake many mornings because I want those in the first Adam to find the second Adam so bad.

I am having a freaking awesome break at school. My apartment is a magnet for people still left here. We have a ton of food and desserts. I actually get ochem and I actually like Paradise Lost. WE WENT TO FASHION VALLEY YESTERDAY AND GOT THE COOLEST THING EVER. I can't say what yet. And I swear, it is Christmas. For the first couple of days, I thought I was deluding myself because Lylan played Christmas music and it was freezing and there was no school, but then I went to the mall and everything actually was Christmas!!!!!!! So it must be Christmas. ^^ Except today felt like fall.

Note to self. Do not listen to what other people say about classes, because apparently I think differently than everyone else.

Usually this is a good thing. Supposedly hard classes and bad teachers are never as hard or bad as everyone says. This is the first time I've encountered this negatively. my physics lab is supposed to be an easy class and for some reason I'm having a really hard time with it. How is it that I can handle dr weare, but not physics lab. In MECHANICS. -_- i like physics in a book and i like it in real life but i don't like it in a lab anymore. i don't see how I'm going to handle the notorious chem lab next quarter. i'm aiming to pass.

I should stop complaining about physics lab because apparently it's the only class i ever talk about, and everyone knows i hate it already.

in other news, ochem is really cool and i love making reactions happen, except i'm starting to get lost with SN2, SN1, E2, and E1 reactions. they all look the same now. bad. extra ochem lectures and textbook date time.

I'M HAVING BRILLIANT PHYSICS LAB BREAKTHROUGH MOMENTS but i don't know what they mean. this is very frustrating.

It's a stressful time...

... with a humanities paper and ochem midterm coming up on Monday, on top of everything else. And Monday, of all days. I am determined to keep Sunday my playday, which means I have to finish everything by Saturday night. If I lock myself up and write my paper, I'm going to fail my midterm. If I study for my midterm, my paper will not be as polished. Not to mention hum reading, physics lab report (I plan on not failing any more of those), and physics quiz. It's a stressful time.

So this morning, I was trying to make myself relax a bit by preparing myself to fail everything. My usual method of stress relief. No expectations, no stress. It wasn't working, because I knew I wasn't going to fail. I was just driving myself hard even though I knew I was going to do well anyway. It doesn't make sense, but I couldn't stop. Embarrassing, because I like to pride myself on not stressing out about school. This is dumb.

And so it was in this state that I was reminded that God holds my future career in his hands (this is not a general statement for everybody. I mean quite literally for ME), so it REALLY doesn't matter what my grades look like. It's REALLY not worth it to allow any other part of my life to suffer so I can get those grades, so I can get that job, so whatever blahblahblah. Because whether I screw myself up or succeed now, God promises to intervene later. So it really, quite literally, doesn't matter. Oh yes, that felt good. Look, I should be writing my amazing essay right now, but I'm writing this instead to share with ya'll, if anybody still checks. Lol sorry I suck at updating now because I'm too busy with life. Hope you're all doing amazing, call if you wanna talk. I may be too busy to update, but it is extremely unlikely that I'm too busy to talk. Okiedokie that's all for now, have an amazing weekend guys oh wait it's only Thursday why do I keep thinking it's Friday.

Something you can die from

Hi real world, I'm back! The past week I've been at LSTP!!!!! Sort of like a retreat for LS. I won't go into too much detail, but there were a few things I learned that I wanted to share.

For one. The first night we walked up the mountain and watched the sunset. Or rather, we were late and watched the rainbow sky after the sun set. That's right, rainbow! HOC5ers, you know there's an Easyworship background that's like a hill with a post-sunset rainbow sky and the moon? It was almost exactly that. It was beautiful. So we were supposed to think about God's creation and God or something. So I thought about how God created everything. Ok, that's cool. I thought about the amazing design of everything. I thought about how big everything was. I thought about how beautiful everything was. Ok, that's all nice, but I've heard it all before. Uhm this is random, but I had part of this Skillet song stuck in my head for some reason. It goes something like, will you be there/my heart grows cold. Depressing. I was annoyed that it was in my head. Hearts aren't supposed to be cold. I looked at the moon. The moon is cold. Come to think of it, nature is cold. Even the mountain in front of me, which is on earth, is cold. I looked at a tree on top of the mountain and I thought about the coldness of the mountain. Not only physically, but also emotionally. I thought about if I was just dropped on that mountain somewhere, alone. I thought about the part of the mountain I was working on earlier in the day, collecting rocks to make a trail. That means there is no existing trail there. It's treacherous. If you're not careful, it's so easy just to slip on the leaves, fall down the mountain through acres of poison oak (just found out that I'm immune bwahahah), and crash into a beehive and get stung by a million bees (like our leader did that day) before you get eaten by a mountain lion. Or freeze to death or starve to death or a million other things. Cold. It's beautiful, but you can die from it. Fearsome. As God is: beautiful, but you can die from him. So beautiful beyond words, but you can REALLY die from him. Real fearsome, eh?

Second thing. On the schedule there was something titled LAX. The LA airport. What are we going to do there? They wouldn't tell me. Someone put the idea in my head that we might be evangelizing. The whole week, I thought maybe we were going to do cold evangelism there. That freaks me. I told myself not to worry until Thursday. And Thursday morning, I told God I was scared to death. He told me not to worry. So I took a step back and thought, what exactly was I afraid of anyway? It's just telling people the gospel. But for some reason, I have this deep, unshakeable fear of cold evangelizing. It's not because I'm ashamed; I can approach strangers and ask them if I can pray for them, I can tell anyone the gospel if such an oppurtunity naturally arises, but I cannot bring myself to be at peace with the idea of simply approaching a stranger for the purpose of telling them the gospel. I know it has something to do with my conception of cold evangelism. It's... cold. I felt like half of evangelizing is allowing people to see the hand of God in your life, in real life. Randomly approaching strangers and telling them the gospel doesn't really allow that. In fact, if such a person were to approach me and tried to tell me the gospel, even though I'm a Christian, I would be suspicious. I know from experience. So what exactly am I afraid of? I finally put my finger on it: I'm afraid of appearing loveless. Interesting how I have this gut reaction against being verbal for Jesus without attaching actions of love. That is a good sign: it shows that I understand in my heart (not just head) the fundamentality of love in the gospel (only by the grace of God). Not that cold evangelism is bad, it's just not really my thing, I guess....

Ok, that's all for now, I'M SUPER EXCITED TO MOVE IN TOMORROW AND SEE EVERYONEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

I woke myself up last night laughing... and you thought sleep-talking was weird.