The ongoing adventures of the Thomas family at Chenoweth Farm
Dear friends and family,
Sorry about the delay, I’ve been filming a movie. Really. My Chinese class is making a short movie for the Asian Festival next Saturday, and we were filming most of today, from about 10 am -3pm. And then yesterday, I spent 13 hours at Continue reading “A New Experience”
In a few weeks the latest “Indiana Jones” movie will open at theaters. One of my memories of that series is the big, round boulders that keep careening out of some passageway at the hero, along with his nick-of-time escapes from being crushed. But how about boulders the size of the kitchen table, or your car, coming at you in real life?! Our cousin, John Graham, was in south central China the afternoon of the 7.9 earthquake, and he has an amazing story to tell: Continue reading “Danger & Heartache in China”
Greetings fellow conspirators (don’t ask, I just wanted to say something different),
I have had quite a week, and I’m sure your just withering away in your chair waiting to read about it since you were deprived of my brilliant and witty writing last week. Ahem……so anyway this week I got to meet General Abizaid, the recently retired CENTCOM commander (CENTCOM stands for Central Command, which is basically where all the top military decisions of the United States are made). He came to OSU to give a talk about the state of the Middle East and how Continue reading “An Exciting Week”
There… I’ve been struggling with this for months, and now I’ve said it. So, before you click past, aghast at such umbrage, may I point out a simple fact: Sen. Obama’s mother is white. Of course, his father is a black man from Africa, making him very precisely an “African-American”. Nevertheless, with inter-racial parentage, it stands to reason that he is just as much white as black. In truth, he is mulatto, a term I became more familiar with in the first stages of Sarah’s courtship with Dani Auguste. (In Haiti, by the way, these folks are typically from the upper classes and are given respect as a matter of course.) This tension was brought to mind while reading this article today from the Wall Street Journal, and I think it makes an excellent point. Somehow, Sen. Obama’s vision and Continue reading “Barack Obama is white!”
Happy New Year friends and family!
No, I have not mistaken the time, for the new year has just come around and up here there is much celebration. I am talking of course of the Chinese lunar new year which was on Thursday, Feb 7. The Asian community at OSU had many parties and it felt a lot like international new year, only all in Chinese ;)> This year is the year of the rat Continue reading “Happy New Year (Guo Nian Hao)”
It appears that I am the official recipient of a “fuss” (see below :-), and in response to both my news-aware daughter and anyone else who might be getting a daily dose of “liberal”, I offer World Magazine. It is an excellent source of news and commentary, both timely and with an eternal perspective, from a consistent, Christian worldview. It’s a natural fit for some of you; for others, who have no particular religious faith, I especially recommend it because it is a source you can trust to do one thing well– present an alternative perspective to the NYT and all other “mainstream” media. Why would you want this? If God is no more important in your life than the score of last week’s football game, why should you care? Oddly enough, there is a very good reason– civic responsibility. To be specific, the quality of life your grandchildren will experience will be directly affected by the cultural foundation we all lay today. If all you read is the NYT, your part of that foundation might well be rabidly, lopsidedly secular. In reality, the founders of this country, along with the majority of great men and women since, were not atheists and were either believers or at least church goers who had bought the Reformation worldview. Whether you agree with it or not, understanding the moral framework which produced the greatest democracy in human history is a goal worth spending some time to reach.
Here’s an example. Good from Bad… Homosexuality: The cultural mainstreaming of homosexuality is liberating those seeking to escape it is an article which addresses a failure of the church, an unexpected consequence for the radical left and good results which come from misguided (at best) intentions. You will never see this in the NYT, because they abhor it’s implications. You must have a subscription to read the whole thing, but “just a taste” for $5 online isn’t a big investment. It might make you mad, or it might really help you, but it will never parrot the NYT’s line of thought. Try it, then come back here to let me know what you think…
Friends and Family,
This week I had a wonderful conversation over dinner with a friend of mine, named Hongmei, who is native to Qingdao, China. I met her through IFI; she is a respiratory doctor in China and is at OSU as a visiting scholar doing research. She is not a Christian, but is interested and impressed with Christianity which is why she has been attending the potlucks on Friday nights. We got together at the cafe in the RPAC and had dinner and talked about ourselves and about Qingdao. She is very nice and has said she would love to have me visit her family while I’m in Qingdao, and she wants to take me around and show me the sights!
I had my first Math midterm this week and, Continue reading “A feeling of spring”
Busy week, and Midterms are coming up. I would say that this quarter is really my first quarter. Last summer and last fall were just a warm up, really. I don’t want to burden you with my woes (of which I have very few I’ll have you know, one of the few being sleep), but hopefully you’d like to hear about some more cheerful things.
This Tuesday I had to hand in my first draft of my report on Hu Jintao, the chairman of China. He is actually NOT president since that office does not exist in China. He is chairman of the three “branches” of the government: the political party chair, the military chair, and the legislative chair. It amounts up to about the same thing as president, but as I was very pointedly lectured by my illustrious Chinese professor Continue reading “Classes and Midterms”
Dear friends and family,
School is now in full swing. Classes have more or less straightened out and clubs and sports teems have started up again. I survived rugby practice from a not so unreasonable 11:00 pm to a questionable 12:30 am. The practice was very good, things just started going downhill when I had to ride home on my bike in the torrential wind and rain. Even more not good was not getting to sleep till 1:30 am, and then getting up at a glorious 6:45 the next morning for math class. Boy, you’ve just got to love college *grimace*.
As far as classes go, I just realized that I have had only one “american” teacher for the past three quarters. All my teachers have been Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Malaysian, Moroccan, Yemeni, and one from Ghana just to make things interesting (Ghana is on the Ivory Coast in Africa by the way). What does this mean? It means Continue reading “Contemplating foreign stuffs :)>”
Dear Friends and Family,
Wow, it has been an amazing week. I am very glad we started back school on a Thursday and just had two days of school before the weekend, because I don’t think I was ready to just jump back into school for a whole week.
I had a wonderful holiday, thank you, and I hope you did too. My family was here (meaning home in KY) from California, Colorado, and England, and we had a wonderful Christmas week. We ate out almost every night! I am surprised, or rather not suprised, at how tiring eating out can get when you do it all the time. If it was just me I wouldn’t of done it, but the point of eating out was to fellowship with each other, so it was worth it.
New Years Eve some members of my church hosted a Continue reading “The first week of 2008”