Gone

once something is gone, it's easier to realize what you really had.

Home Sweet Home

There really is something about home that makes it so . freaking awesome.
I thought that once I went off to college I wouldn't really wanna come back, cause I never really held anything to my room or my family or anything. We just wernt like that close or w/e but in a way this is nostalgic.

Everything is clean and tidy, things are half where I put them and half in different places, but the people are mostly the same, but they're so eager to see you.

I'm kinda sad im leaving in 2 more days, but I'm kinda also looking forward to being with ppl from college. Its all just weird...

Anyawys update on college life:
-babysitting drunk ppl is really tiring
-falling asleep on someone else's floor hurts ur back
-some people can really dota before a test, get A+, and also be so stupid as to get wasted and need 2 guys to carry home
-getting a 50 on a test might actually mean an A, unfortunately for me i got an 80 on a different test and that was really bad
-relationships really do start over a cup of...
-how are stupid ppl who copy work gonna pass those tests?

each of those points are a story in itself. but im lazy haha
maybe ill fill them in later ^^

Free Stuff

For all those not in college, or all those who simply havn't gone to a career fair, I'm just gonna say, holy crap free stuff.

Now I know that these career fairs are supposed to be... for people trying to get jobs, but hey I'm a little lowly freshmen without much of a resume. So I'm just here to get a feel for the place and...yes free stuff.

To the good part:
In the 2 days I went I now have...
8 shirts
a bunch of lights, comp lights, book lights, keychain lights
notepads...this one's leather too =O
a screwdriver 0.0.. with like 8 different screw heads
and a tape measure
and a pedometer!
and like 3 water bottles
and a lot more random trinkets

but really. 8 free shirts? I like never have to buy new clothes again
one of them was a legit american eagle shirt too haha

Anyways, more to the boring part:
I made it onto the FSAE team. This is a project team that builds a racecar every year for competition. A few interesting points:
The car goes 0 to 60 in 3.2 seconds
The time commitment is 10 hours a week req. 20 on average, and 30-40 on rough weeks
And me and another freshmen have been assigned this dashboard console that they failed to implement in 2007...
im gonna die. yea? yea

oh what else have i been up to?
making pancakes with friends at 1 in the morning
hurting my leg so that it limped for 2 days
playing spider web
getting piano lessons for a total of 30 dollars a SEMESTER
learning to dance...i dont mean at parties =P haha

oh yea. that thing. hw . i do a lot of that actually
so much its annoying

i actually don't remember all that much but thats ok cause theres so much more to come =]

oh yea i finally for the first time in my life put decorations on my wall.
not that my parents dont let me. i just never felt a white wall as being bad

anyways i can never make these things as funny as veds so im content with this lackadasical status updates yup ^^

Orientation week + more

So its been about 10 days since i last posted... and alot of stuff has happened since then...

I've met a lot of good people and made some good friends I think, we'll see how they take the test of time.
I've done some cool stuff, like listen to great performances, watch some legit bboy performances, hear an amazing lecture on sleep, and heard some great comedians.

Got lots of free food to boot too.

One of the big things i've been doing is looking around for a church and fellowship. I'm still looking but i hope ill be able to find the right match for me soon.

Classes overall have been dull but the pace will probably speed up soon. I tend to get really drowsy and blank out for moments during class...so i should probably sleep soon actually haha.

Just remembered, we played this really intense game of monopoly. Shoutout to arvind if you read this =P. It was full of deals and immunities your cup of tea heh.

Its nice being able to go around and find your friends just there, call them up for lunch and enjoy time together. Wish you guys were here haha.

I guess the reason im posting tonight is because im once again faced with the continuous problem of certain temptations i fall into

partying and drinking, drinking and partying.
I'm sure you have your opinions, I ... know what mine are, and yet, I constantly have my doubts, from people i respect, from people I trust, from people of experience.

Why is it that beyond all reasoning, I trust myself to the end, above all else.
Why am I so stubborn?
When did I get so irrational?

Massive Freshmen Orgy

I can describe it no other way.
All 3000 freshmen got out onto the lawn and had a massive orgy.
We ran around hugging as many ppl as we could. Sitting on each other in circles.
Lifting each other up on shoulders and shouting at the top of our lungs.
We jumped around and ran everywhere. We danced in a circle.
We danced with a partner back to back. And we switched partners.
We gave standing ovations and danced some more. All to blasting music.


The day started out slow with me being awkward and not talking to ppl. The day proceeded with me mustering the courage to talk to two random strangers off the street and have a decent convo. =]

College is shaping out quite interestingly.

Update Pending

haha... so while I am in the process of being lazy and thinking about updating the rest of my taiwan trip, i'll just put a filler here for now with a quote:

"Such is friendship, that through it we love places and seasons; for as ... flowers drop their sweet leaves on the ground around them, so friends impart favor even to the places where they dwell. With friends even poverty is pleasant....It would be better for us that the sun were exhausted than that we should be without friends."

John Chrysostom

Taiwan!

Jk

this is gonna take me a long time to draft out so please excuse the delay as i spend forever writing this

ill probably split it up by 'place i was at in taiwan'

for the record i wrote a page in my journal for every day there

have more than a thousand pictures

and 50 videos.

Alright Taiwan trip part 1 whoohooo

I’ll try to make this as interesting as possible so as to not bore you readers to death

First a disclaimer: a lot of my pictures were deleted by someone using my computer =( so a lot of the beginning part of the trip will be pictureless darn.

Part 1: Lorton VA à Aletheia University, Danshui

First tip of the day when going through airport security is: do not overload your box with all your items, your shoe may fall out and be difficult to retrieve.

Second tip of the day: Never expect to sit next to any pretty ladies while on the plane I am 0/6 and this was to Japan/Taiwan. Instead expect to sit next to a fat guy 2/6…

The plane ride to Minneapolis (I went DC to Minneapolis to Tokyo to Taipei) was actually really painful. Not only did my boxers ride up half the ride, but the second half the air pressure caused my ears to hurt like crap and by crap I mean burning like someone just stuck a soldering iron in there. I remembered to chew gum every time after that.

So in Minneapolis I found out that. My plane apparently got hit by lightning 0.o;; and theyre doing safety checks on it. So I had to wait till 7pm for departure instead of 3pm. That annoyed me a bit but what can I do, I’ll be late a couple of hours to the gathering. Too bad at 7pm they said the plane would be delayed till 8am the next morning G_G. At least I got a hotel, 2 meals, and a free shirt out of it … >.<

Dinner was actually really lonely sitting at this huge table by myself and I had a fist sized cup of soup for dinner. I was so angry for paying 17 dollars for it I was about to leave when they came up with this huge plate of chicken and pasta and said this was my actual meal. Oh. So I sat back down xD

Fast forward to next day in Japan, man stuff there is expensive. 2 cool things there: 1) vending machines were freaking sexy: heres one from the trip back:

The other cool things were the toilets, I mean I’ve heard of the hi tech toilets that clean ur butt.. but ive never Seen one before it was cool I took a picture of the regular toilet, hi tech toilet, and squat down toilet too. Too bad they were deleted. =(

So when I got to Taiwan I was gonna get picked up by the ppl from the I love Taiwan missions camp ppl, cept after I waited 10 mins they didn’t really show up… so I tried calling an admin person using a pay phone.. FAIL. Tried using my phone card to call home.. FAIL.. tried getting a cop to tell me how to use the phone.. he just looked at me funny FAIL.. tried to get on laptop to scream for help .. no wifi FAIL! After some frantic OHMYGOSHWATDOIDO, I got called on the intercom and picked up by 2 staff members. Yay

So finally the camp itself, it was really not what I expected. There were a lot of speakers and lectures that were really boring and everyone else thought so too. I thought we were gonna go pretty much to the local churches and start teaching some kids but apparently they felt it necessary to show us around Taiwan and stuff …so that’s cool too. There were ppl from Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, Wales, Thailand, Canada, Russia, etc. etc. it was pretty cool

A few things about Taiwan:

a) Food is freaking cheap. U can get a full course meal with so much good stuff for 3 US dollars wow, and later on I got an all you can eat seafood, steak, sushi, everything, shaved ice, ice cream, omygoshwtf buffet for only 370NT – that’s about 12-13 dollars US.

b) It smells like crap especially the city. The sewage is enough to make u gag but add smog from the like 50 mopeds on the street at once and I almost puked first time in the city.

c) there are a lot of good looking girls in Taiwan. Moving on

I spent the last 2 days we were supposed to be at the University kinda listening to speakers, chilling with friends I made there and kinda having fun. It was really not what I expected and it was actually pretty nice too. I got to go to a night market where stuff is dirt cheap and yea anyways all the nice amenities were about to change.

Right before we left we had this really intense ceremony. They huge this huge cross from the ceiling and had a 3D model of Taiwan with a string attached to each of the local churches we were supposed to go to in Taiwan:

We lit candles too dang

And afterwards =O they had a feet washing ceremony to send us off. Talk about intense.

Anyways we left for the local churches soon after so I’ll do that in the next update

To be continued: Part 2: Pan-Ding Church, Taichung