A feeling of spring

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”

Classes and Midterms

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”

Speaking in Tongues

Dear Friends and Family,

Sigh, every time I write to you I want to burst into the typing of exotic and foreign words that come so often from my mouth during the week. I just wish you all could understand them. You know, when God confused the languages at Babel, it was because the people were united against him in rebellion by one language. Now, in this present age, would God want all the world to speak one tongue? What would change if the whole world all spoke the same language? What would it be? Arabic? Chinese? English? (See I’ve planned it all out, either way I come out on the top since I’ll be able to speak all those languages :)>

But now, the language barrier is a barrier for the spreading of God’s word as well. Think of all the millions of hours and thousands of days spent by committed missionaries to translate God’s word into a different language so that those people can be saved. Communication is a funny thing, and that’s one reason I like it so much.

With communication in mind, I’d like to tell you a little bit about my last potluck at the IFI’s Friday night bible study. I met some new people (as always), and we had a wonderful bible study. After the bible study we broke up into our small discussion groups. My discussion group happens to be composed of Tom, the leader (American), me (American), and then four Chinese and one person from Singapore. We were discussing in Luke 9 where Christ asks Peter who Peter thought he was, and Peter says “The Christ of God.” And Jesus told him not to tell anyone. So we started discussing Continue reading “Speaking in Tongues”

Contemplating foreign stuffs :)>

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 :)>”

Cute picture

I just thought everyone would like this, since we are pretty much all Narnia fans. A girl on my hall printed this out real big and put it on her door, that’s how I found out about it. Enjoy!narnia.jpg

Lydia

The first week of 2008

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”

The Obvious … isn’t

Eagle F-16 with ONE WINGTake a close look at this fighter plane. Do you see anything unusual?

One of the things that makes living in America in the 21st century a challenge is something I’ll call inscrutible complexity. That is, some things seem simple or manageable, but when you actually try to do them, you get lost. I have business clients, for instance, who look at a computer screen as they try to figure out how to do something, and they’re toast. They are looking at the same screen I am, but they are overwhelmed by all the information and can’t make sense of it. Something like that has, I believe, happened with US foreign policy in the last decade. So many things are going on, and they seem so complex and dangerous, that the average voter just wants to “get the troops out of there”, come home and be done with it.

I recently read at article at EjectEjectEject.com that is Continue reading “The Obvious … isn’t”

Post of praise

A funny thing happened on the way to graduation (my daughter’s, not mine). We got her a Nikon D50 for a graduation present, and she started taking lots of pictures. The pictures are great, the camera is great, we should be happy. Ah… I, specifically, should be happy. Not happy- exactly- because now the camera’s doing the talking (metaphorically, shall we say) and the long posts about what’s going on in the head have become leaves, and such. Therefore, I was majorly pleased to find this post, which is about work, words and CSI Las Vegas. Having been to her house, sat on the couch and tried to Continue reading “Post of praise”

Danger in the leaves…

Authorities are warning leaf-rakers in the north-central KY to be on the lookout for a man-eating tarp. Last spotted in the ShelbyvilleMan-eating tarp area, it approaches from the rear and quickly engulfs it’s victim before anyone can react. This poor soul, for instance, was gobbled up in a matter of seconds; rescuers only recovered the boots and a few tuffs of hair. The tarp apparently slinks along the ground on the edges of a yard, and jumps out from behind when the raker is walking away. One expert on the subject of man-eating tarps has done some research which suggests that if rakers periodically swing their arms in a circle above their heads and “woop-woop” like wild savages, the disoriented tarp will wander into the nearest ravine and get tangled up in the bushes.

A reward is being offered for the capture of this particular tarp. If and when it is spotted, everyone should immediately surround it, wave their arms frantically, woop in their most frightening voices and keep up the din while someone else calls 911 on their cell phone. If, while waiting for the police, it approaches anyone in an aggressive manner, all present must join hands, howl like wolves and stomp on the tarp with all of their collective feet. Since it can only swallow one victim at a time, this will stun it and prevent a disastrous outcome.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The End of School

Dear family and friends,

I hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving. I am thinking about whether or not to write during Christmas break, and I think I will at least twice, since break is all of December. I have one final left, Arabic, which is at 7:30 AM on Monday morning. This, contrary to some expectations, is not early for me, since I usually get up at 6:30 anyway. It is a problem, however, for many of my classmates, who are used to sleeping till 10 am, or getting up to go to a class and then going back to sleep again. After my final I’ll be done with school and homeward bound.

This being the last week of classes, a lot of parties and various celebrations went on. Thursday night I Continue reading “The End of School”