Away from home for Christmas

I realize I've been neglecting this blog for a very long time now. Since my birthday really. And seeing as I'm not even going home for winter break, this is probably more necessary than ever. I haven't been home since fall break, I barely saw any of you guys who read this blog, and I won't see you most likely until spring break or even summer since spring breaks have a habit of not lining up.

Its been a long time, a really long time. I miss you guys, doubtless you've all changed in someway or another as I have. So I will now try to recount the last 2 months of my life. Hopefully the stuff I remember is actually the important stuff. Makes sense tho righ?

I think I should preface all this with the fact that I love Cornell. I was talking to Amanda Ko last night about college acceptances and how more people should've applied to Cornell for Engineering, its Eng is really much better than many other schools (I think) but when it came down to, "oh I guess Cal Tech probably has a better Eng program, and CMU would be nice too..." but really I would not give up what I have now for anything. I owe it a lot to the people in my (Christian) fellowship, for helping me to better understand God and improve my walk with Him...and of course the people themselves, I love them for who they are and the happiness I get from being part of a family.

So that's really what I've been doing for the past semester really, spending a lot of time with my fellowship, CBS (Chinese Bible Study), and working on car team, FSAE (Formula 1 racecar). But this post won't be dedicated to either of those things. It'll be dedicated to the small things in between.

Scratch that. It just had probably the most legit Christmas I've ever had. I had Christmas at my grandparents place, with all of my dad's sides aunts and uncles and cousins totaling 17 total. We had a dinner together, and afterwards we sang hymns and then my cousin whose going into seminary now, and he gave a short sermon on Philippians 1:21 To live is Christ, to die is gain. It was really good. Afterwards we went around and shared about things in our lives and caught up. It felt really family like. I've never experienced something like this before. The closeness of family and togetherness, this warm love.

Yet, I think what one of my cousins said was this, that throughout our (the kids) lives, our parents haven't put family first. They have put Christ first, and family is a means to that. And looking back, my dad has done just that. Although our family doesn't do very much tradition, or doesn't do that hanging out together thing, and all in all doesn't feel like family very often, my dad has put God first and I can now see that and am thankful for that, because I can see now how our family is united in Christ.

I lay here writing this happy knowing that my 18th Christmas was a joyous and full one, with some people I may never see for many years to come, and with some I may never see until the day I die. Merry Christmas everyone.