simple lessons from the week

So I've been working at Kumon and the hospital a good amount (~30 hours a week) but making this post has made me realize how many things I've learned this week without even really realizing it.

Here's some things I've learned this week so far:

1. God's judgment is so necessary to understand his character and his goodness. Just a greater understanding of how serious God is about justice and why that isn't just mean (learned this through our college Sunday school and reading Amos). Sorry would expand more, but tired/can't really explain everything.

2. My ability/talent? to do nothing and not be bored (at work I mean). Also the importance of having Internet on your phone (even though I don't have a smartphone and my Internet is poopy)

3. Lots of things about cancer. That Jewish-Ashkenazis have a much higher cancer risk than the general population. That oral contraceptives are sometimes used to lower the risk of ovarian cancer. About BRCA mutations. That there is such a thing as a genetic counselor. That stuff like when you first got your period and got  menopause can affect your risk level for breast/ovarian cancer. How important it is to get your family history to know what your risk is. And much more..

4. Catered Panera is so good. Mm. Salad, sandwich, bread (if you want), GIANT cookie (so thick omg I can't believe I ate that), iced tea, yum. (got to sit in on a meeting at the hospital with 6 nurse practitioners, a genetic counselor, and me hehe)

5. The beauty of the church, what the church is, and why we should be committed to and love the church (and this means our local churches, not just the generic body of believers). Click here to download the sermon from our Tuesday night college fellowship! It's super worth it I promise you.

6. Giving away old toys (even the ones I didn't like that much) and stuffed animals and books is emotionally draining and difficult.

Some of my toys from when I was little.
So many little dolls (this is just a very small portion).
Of course I couldn't donate any of the Hello Kitty stuff. 

The coolest bracelet ever. Some little girl will be very lucky :)

Polly Pockets!!! My favoritee :) Keeping all of these

Look, the fountain lights up!! Bunny bride and groom. So cute! Keeping this.

More random toys that are mostly being donated.

7. Doing algebra is about "setting the x free". (-kid from Kumon)

8. I can survive pretty well without my usual 12 hours of sleep during the summer. Wow!

9. I should write more (and not just essays/papers!). I was cleaning my bookshelf and found some poems and short stories I wrote and they weren't too bad  :) Here's something I wrote in elementary school. Very silly :P

bound for home

So tonight is our last full day in Taiwan after three weeks here. It's been so much fun traveling around this country and learning more about Taiwan and just spending time with family. At the same time, I've felt pretty homesick, especially this last week. My parents and my brother are here, but I've missed my home and the comfort of living there and even small things like having clean bathrooms everywhere and Internet access all the time and sleeping on a bed every night.

But I think what I've really been missing is something more. I've been reading Tim Keller's Prodigal God and learning a lot about God, myself, what I believe, and what I have not fully come to believe yet. The book basically takes the parable of the lost son (Luke 15) and uses it to basically tell the gospel and point out really insightful and crazy things about God, what it means to be lost, what our hope is, etc.

One of the sections is called "Our Longing for Home" and it talks about Jesus' parable and how the younger son wanders off and begins to long for home. Tim Keller calls home "a powerful but elusive concept"...basically that we have strong memories and attachment to what we call home but at the same time we are often disappointed when our memories don't line up with reality.

The book says that "the strong feelings that surround [home] reveal some deep longing within us for a place that absolutely fits and suits us, where we can be, or perhaps find, our true selves". And that's a feeling I can really relate to. In Taiwan, I'm homesick and I long for somewhere that I really belong that I really feel comfortable in. But even in America, being in college has kind of messed up my sense of belonging. Even though I spend most of my year in Michigan and I love my school and the people there, my home in New Jersey still feels like my real home...where my house and parents are, where I grew up, where I fit in the best. And yet this year I've begun to feel more alienated from home...just living away for two years now, old friends not always around when I'm home, and of course being away from James. There's a kind of uneasy tension of really never feeling like I'm at home...there's always something that's missing wherever I am. And that is something that oftentimes makes me feel incredibly lost.

And the thing is I think that's normal. Keller talks about how we all have a sense of being like the younger brother in the parable who longs for home, that we may feel like we are exiles always traveling, but never really arriving. That our longing for home is a deep reflection of where our souls are at. Using examples from Adam and Eve's exile from the garden of Eden to the Israelites' exile from their own nation, Keller writes that "the message of the Bible is that the human race is a band of exiles trying to come home".

And the message of the gospel is this: that though our world is broken and the return home is difficult,  Jesus came down and experienced the exile that we feel...coming in weakness, removed from the Father, so that he could bring us Home. And writing this and hearing this again seems really lofty and unreal, but I really believe that there is a reason we long for a place of deep belonging. There is a reason we are unsatisfied with what we feel or have now. (How can we long for something we do not know of?) We were created for an ultimate home and we try to feel at home but we are never satisfied until we realize we are as lost as the younger son in the parable and realize the profound grace and really amazing love of God as Jesus came to bring us home.

I hope that made some sense. If not (or if it did), I really recommend you to read the book for yourself. It talks about a bunch of other stuff too and just really points to God the whole way which isn't always true of every Christian book.

Time to walk around Taipei for the last time in awhile. Thanks for reading and I can't wait to go home :)

mountain adventures.

So these past few weeks, our family has been traveling and seeing a lot of Taiwan. We started in Taipei, then went to Taichung, Puli, Kaohsiung, Kenting, Meilong, (any other places?) and now we're in Tainan. We didn't really get Internet for a few days (my grandma has no computer and the only Internet we could find was at a McDonald's we drove to one day) but here's a short post with some pictures from a mountain region we lived in for two days!

I had no idea what landmarks, scenery, different kinds of people, etc existed in Taiwan until this year. We took this cable car above the mountains and over Sun Moon Lake...so beautiful. Pretty scary (my mom closed her eyes the whole time) but an amazing experience :)

Amazing view :)

We lived in my mom's college friend's house converted into bed and breakfast which was super nice and really big. Their family grows all kinds of stuff and it's amazing to see how people live and make a living on these mountains. Here's Caleb in one of their greenhouses with some crazy cacti.

I love seeing different kinds of flowers :) I think this one is especially cute. (It's from one of the greenhouses too).

We drove a super long while to see this place but it was super amazing. An old man (who passed away) made all these little crafts in a  bottle from ages 74 to 82. I'm so amazed at this place and all the handmade things we've seen in Taiwan so far...no idea how he was able to make these things 

The same old man also made a lot of cool things out of beer cans and coke cans. Here's a giant dragon he made!

Then we went to this really cool outdoor museum/exhibit/amusement park place about nine tribes of natives in Taiwan. They had a performance and this was part of the warrior dance. So awkward lol

And then just a random other sign in the park....

There's been a lot going through my mind lately and I've been learning a lot about the gospel and about myself  and the amazingness of God's grace through reading Tim Keller's Prodigal God... but I'm kinda tired so I'll post about that stuff later. Enjoy the pictures for now! 

i like art.

So I used to draw a lot when I was little...mostly flowers and little girls and Hello Kitty and rainbows and stuff, but I loved drawing. In middle school I did Creative Arts where you didn't go to certain classes on a certain day or something (wait, really?) and just did art projects like paintings of flowers and collage magnets for an hour or so. It was something you had to make a portfolio to get into...and I remember putting together all my best works from art class in elementary school to get in....lol. I also used to design and make cards a lot with my mom...we have all this ribbon and paper and stuff and I'd love just sitting at the desk thinking and matching colors and putting things together.

We've been super blessed to get to see tons of art in Taiwan this vacation...and it reminded me of how much I love looking at and making art. And I was trying to think of why I never really do much with visual art anymore...'cause it used to be a decently big part of my life. I think it might be because art class is no longer required, so I don't really have a set time and place to paint and do crafts (which I really like). Or it might be because I'm lazy (that's probably a big one). Or that I don't have enough time. Or it might be because other things are more interesting to me now (I didn't really sing when I was younger, there wasn't all this computer stuff).

But really I think I stopped doing much with art because I don't think I'm good enough at it and so I stopped. I don't know about high school but in college you only have so much time and you can't do everything. Even though I think college provides a lot of opportunities and people say you can explore lots of things, I feel like if you aren't really (or pretty) good at something it's really hard to be a part of that thing (in general). Like you may like dancing, but there are tons of people who love dancing and there are so many ridiculously talented people...so if you can't get into a dance group it's a lot harder to do much with dancing right? I really like art, and I think I'm pretty creative with certain things...but I don't really have time for an art class and if something needed to be drawn I would never volunteer because I know I wouldn't be the best.

Not that that's all a bad thing. We want the best person for the job...but that makes me wonder how many people stop doing something just because they aren't "the best". I feel like there's a lot of lost talent if only people who excel at something get to do it. If you're kind of just average you don't really get to maximize your average-ness do you? You just kind of stop doing what you're average at if it's not really something you're being pushed to do (like schoolwork or stuff like that).

I don't know. I'm not blaming anyone or offering any solutions. Just observing. Cause seeing some beautiful pieces of art has reminded me of how much I love art and how I want to be able to enjoy it even if I'm not the most artsy fartsy person around. I used to write a lot of poetry when I was younger too...silly rhyming couplets with terrible rhythm. But I stopped doing that too cause I realized (or other people told me) my poems weren't that good...and even today I always tell people I'm an English major but bad at creative writing. Maybe I should give that another try.

Okay enough ranting. Hopefully I made some sense. Here are a few pictures of artwork in Taiwan...really awesome things we've seen and some other stuff. Enjoy :)

My aunt owns a quilt/craft shop  in Taipei called Patchwork Garden.
Here are a few quilts she made hanging on the wall in her store.
She also makes purses and tons of other stuff and sells fabric, kits, and has classes.

Me and Caleb making some pottery in Ying-ge. The clay felt super nice.

The flowerpot I made :)

At the ceramics museum in Ying-ge. So pretty!

From the same museum. Don't remember the title
but it's Chinese yoyo's and something about relationships

Another of my favorites from the ceramics museum.
This one's about visiting a beautiful place
 and bringing the memories back with you.

Giant plates and sculptures outside.
 It's hard to tell but the sculpture back there  is maybe 20 to 30 feet high?

Not just a sculpture...it's a lantern!! In a park in Taichung

Everything in this store was made from paper...
these sculptures, the lights (not the bulbs themselves),
the chairs, the tables...

Giant tower of lights made from paper.
It's taller than the store next to it!

I have a ton of other pictures of beautiful artwork but that's it for now! I hope these pictures capture how beautiful these things are :) I really like art. It's amazing what people can make. 

only in asia.

So I'm in Taipei, Taiwan right now with my family. We got here Wednesday and we'll be here for three weeks. So far it's been really fun walking around, shopping, and spending time with family and it's also been pretty tiring just being jet-lagged and also not having much time to myself to relax or pray or go online and just chill.

But anyway I figured I'd make my first post about some funny things we've seen here in Taiwan even just in the first few days here. Hope you enjoy :)

At the Taipei airport, the first thing we see after we get all our luggage. Bunny (?) with a unibrow and nosehairs....so creepy.

A brand of toothpaste. If you can't read this, it's probably better that way.

Not something you see everyday, especially in Taiwan ...

"Jesus is coming soon!"

Metro? I wish I had more pictures of the mobs of people we see everywhere. Everyone needs to calm down....you'll make it in no need to crowd. And if you don't I'm sure it'll be okay

At a government office where my parents were getting some ID...

"Breastfeeding room". 4th floor.

At a ceramics museum in Yingge...

 

 Oh some more Asian crowding outside this really famous Shanghai bun restaurant we went to.

At Grace Baptist Church (biggest church in Taipei or Taiwan?)

"plane water". Way to go Jesus!

Okay that's it for now. Sorry this isn't very thoughtful and it took me many days to make a post...but sometimes when you only get to go on the Internet an hour or two a day there are more important things to do :) Oh and these aren't really things you only see in Asia either but oh well sorry for the bad title. Still learning how to blog haha. Going to lose the Internet maybe for a week but I'll try to post more later! Byebye

hello!

So I created this blog last summer just so in the future I could remember everything that happens in life and cause writing stuff out always helps me think. But...maybe because I'm an English major or maybe because sometimes I'm a perfectionist, I never wrote any posts cause it was just too much pressure to make an awesome blog.

But I'm going to Taiwan tomorrow and I'd really like to remember what happens this summer and to be able to share that with other people...so here is my first post!

Oh and here's something I'm excited about: my new Bible! Isn't it pretty?

Anyway I'll post more later but I have to get back to packing for Taiwan. Mixed feelings about going. Bye!