Walked early on May 23rd but will be officially done in August 13. Will take me 4 yrs! It has been a fast four years of college life and been a great learning experience through the various classes I took and also living at different places and adjusting to different people. Being part of Koinonia for the past four years has been great and I'm happy to say my spiritual life has progressed that I know more about God's love for me and my relationship with him is better than it was four years ago. I accepted Christ when I was a sophomore and there was no huge transformation right away after that. I still have a lot of character flaws I need to work on. I worry about securing a job in this tight economy and being able to stay in SF. I worry whether or not I am able to serve in Sfstate ministry and work at the same time. I worry whether I will burn out. These are things I lift up to God and hope that everything will work out. So just finished helping out at Impact it was a great experience working with kids. I really like kids and teaching bridge-building though it seemed really difficult and unorganized at first turned out pretty well and worth it. Many kids are really smart and know what their doing and don't need very much instructions from the teachers. I will be teaching summer school next week for four weeks at a korean church I applied to two summers ago. It was amazing how I got the job I emailed the director of the program in end of march to ask her if the program was still on in the summer and showed my interest. Suprisingly she replied and gave me the dates. I didn't hear back until just recently two weeks ago asking me if I was still interested they needed a brother teacher to teach. At the time I didn't find any fulfillment in my unpaid internship at a green company so I took it. This would be a time to redeem myself after my lost opportunity two years ago. Two years ago, they offered me the job but I gave it up because I had to make a decision right before my interview for the teller position for wells fargo. I gambled and thought I could get the teller job and didn't get it ending with nothing for the summer. It was a poor choice that year considered that I promised God that I would take the first job offered to me and then backing out of the decision. Teaching, I realized is pretty hard and needs preparation more than I expected. I am thinking in the kids shoes and trying to guess what they might be interested. Thank God for a curriculum given to me otherwise there will be even more research to be done. I am excited about teaching 5th graders, 5 students including the pastor's son! I better do a good job. Also, there is a field trip to fun places each wednesday to places such as Academy of Science and Six Flags Vallejo. Fun indeed. It ends before my summer school so good timing. July will be crunch time for me for applying for jobs hoping to land one that will start in August. I will be learning bass during the summer. I have been trying out Chinese medicine for my eczema. The place is at Waverly place 101 and so far it has helped my neck improve. I'm still hoping it will help my hands. It doesn't taste bitter compared to the other medicine and I eat it with some pills supposedly used to absorb the herbs better. But what's cool is the medicine consists of bugs and snake skin. Anyway, i'm looking for a productive summer of 09'.
Going to Yosemite with Koinonia brought me back to the summer of 06' when I went to Yosemite for the first time with Auntie Julie and her family. It made me feel grateful again for being invited to be in Yosemite for a week and to see the beautiful place and the Sierra's nearby. The highlights of the trip was walking to the waterfall Yosemite Falls. Going to El Capitane. We lived in a big house with 50 people and sang classic songs. It was a joyous time. At night, it was difficult to sleep there was a lot of snorers. I have yet to get used to snorers like Derek! It's ok cause the next day there was snow time and people got a chance to rock him! haha. The snow time was definitely one of the highlights too. Being able to wrestle and take down staff and other students. A once in a lifetime chance! Going in the spring time is different than the summer. Fewer locations were closed. But Yosemite is still the most beautiful place in my books!
At the airport waiting with Jenn for the flight to Vancouver, I went up and decided to get a drink of water. On my way to the fountain I thought I saw someone who looked familiar but wasn't sure. Most of the time when that happens, that person is exactly the person I think that person is. I decided to ask that person if she was who I thought she was. "Excuse me... are you Stephanie?" She had a surprised look on her face but she later was able to say my name. I used to be at the same elementary school as her at Shaughnessey in Vancouver. The only reason I recognized her was because I added her on facebook. If not for facebook most likely I wouldn't have recognized her. So thank you facebook! My mom's eye doctor happened to be her father.
So here I am with Jenn at my parents place in Vancouver. It’s snowing and it feels a lot like Christmas. We were treated to our favorite restaurant late dinner at Hot Pot House where the food is really good and the workers there are really nice and friendly and know my parents for more than 10 years now. I feel really happy to be home.
For the past two days the family has been shoveling snow out with the tenants that live downstairs. It’s been a kind of fellowship event. We even shoveled out the driveway of our cousin’s huge place. A sense of accomplishment and a great workout. One of the fun things I did was dig a hole to crawl through instead of building a snowman. A day after Christmas day, our family and a family friend went up to Whistler. Jenn and I took a ski lesson for the first time. It was great, I learned quickly how to do turns and how to stop. Skiing is fun and you need strong arms and legs to walk around all day.
1/1/09
For new years day our family celebrated with other Taiwanese families at a friends house. This was the first time our family actually celebrated new years with other families so it was quite interesting and special. It was a potluck and lots of food. It happened to be the dad of the host family's birthday so everyone hid in the dark in his house and really surprised him when he arrived home. It was pretty nice. My dad brought his keyboard and it was like karaoke night. I played some alto sax too. It was weird cause all the kids were rather young, middle schoolers and a few high schoolers. Normally at family gatherings the children are either the same age as I am or older. But this was not the case. I was the oldest. We played an adults vs. kids game and I wasn't sure which group I should be in. I felt like a big kid, yet I wasn't a kid cause I'm technically an adult. I feel like I'm in the middle for now.
Looking back at this semester I felt like I didn’t really do much but I think I need to dig deeper and think more about it.
Koinonia
I remember Koinonia started the school year with a big bang. With the NSWN bringing in 500+ ppl, and pizza events where 100 people showed up. It was a signal that the group was getting larger. As the semester calmed down an average of 50 people came to the bible studies. I think my responsibilities in the group increased, I was responsible to help set up and take down events with the staff. At church the college bros jeffri, jeoff, paul, and I had new roles in committing to come set up every Sunday. After a couple of times it was no longer hard for me waking up early and not that big of deal. Discipleship training with Daemin was really interesting and helped us grow personally with our relationship with God and learning about how we can be more serious Christians. Lessons I’ve learned: loving our closer friends first before we love others outside. Our innate nature is to reach out to those outside but the thing is we may neglect those closest to us such as our own roommates. Also to serve others and do things you normally wouldn’t do. I saw my roommate Paul, fold clothes and make sandwiches, doing dishes for people, etc. He really stepped out of his comfort zone and really wanted to love his brothers around him and live his Christian faith seriously. One thing I will do is wash dishes even though they are not mine. I remember the arballo bros gave me a lot of candy in a stocking for Christmas. I knew I couldn’t finish it and somehow I felt like God told me to give it away at the bubble to those that were in the same situation as I was studying for our final final on the final day of finals. So I went and I tried. There were many rejections cause people probably thought I wanted money or something. Funny responses, “is it free?” When I say yes they grab the candy. “donation?” No no no it’s free please take some. To those that accepted the candy they were really appreciative about it. The holiday spirit. We ended the year by giving a care package to our leaders to show our appreciation for what they’ve done. I thought of how every Tuesday Dennis would take us to prayer meeting and one time Nancy made everyone Chun(Korean pancake). I asked her about where to buy the chun and she bought it for me to make someday for others. I took the opportunity to make it for everyone on Tuesday who rode with Dennis to Prayer meeting and also Arballo House. A show of appreciation. This was the first time I did something like that but I realized it was an important gesture. I also thought about the event where zone 3 took part of a gift box donation where we bought a bunch of stuff from target and sent it to a child in a developed country as a Christmas present. Originally I wanted to go watch a jazz concert featuring the big band but was convinced to not go and go the next day. At first I was bitter about it but looked at the big picture and realized that the jazz concert wasn’t all that important anyway. What was more meaningful? The jazz concert the next day, the Stevie Wonder concert turned out pretty good so everything turned out well. I remember at the beginning of the semester, academically I wasn’t doing so well. I got D’s in two of my classes for my exams and was really shaken up and shocked. I thought I was going to fail and asked for prayer to somehow pull through this tough time at school. It was really strange cause I spent a lot of time studying yet I didn’t get the results I was looking for. I decided to spend the same amount of time studying but not neglect other important activities like prayer meeting, or DT’s. Prayer actually worked and my grades improved. My favorite class this semester was nutrition class. I learned a lot of facts about nutrition and food and found it very interesting and useful. For instance food from 40-140 degrees is a danger zone for food to get bacteria. Babies should be breast fed for a higher chance of immunity to diseases and especially allergies.
Things I want to do for next semester
I want to assemble an intrammural basketball squad I think it will be a great bonding activity for the guys at Koinonia. Back in fall of 06 being a part of intrammural volleyball and basketball team was really fun!
Attempt to take 6 classes graduate on time. The thing is 5 are finance core courses and one of them is already pretty hard! If not take 4 core courses take two over the summer.
Apply for jobs. Considered that the job market is rather bleak, may consider more school MBA or additional accounting degree?
Spend more time with DT's.
To be a caring brother to others around me old and younger.
Whatever happens this semester may the holy Spirit lead me to wherever he wants me and I hope this spring semester will be a meaningful one that will really challenge me and help me grow in character.
It was really cool how I ended up going to the free warriors practice at Oracle Arena. Last time I was back was in Oracle Arena was in Spring of 05 when I watched a game vs. the rockets with my dad and Uncle Leslie. I subscribed to the warriors email list and they sent out an invitation. I thought it was cool and thought of who would be interested to go and Yee and Hanzen came up to mind. We went after church and everyone was pumped up and excited. We arrived 30 minutes early before the doors opened at 12:30 and already there were die hard fans waiting! It was a huge line that extended from the front door all the way beyond the parking lot. We got pretty impressive seats though, in the middle 6 rows from the court! Crazy! The practice started with an introduction introducing everyone fans went crazy for Stephen Jackson and Monta Ellis. There were passing drills, four man weave three man weave. Then the anticipated intra-squad game.
Blue team was stacked, Demarcus Nelson, Stephen Jackson, Kelenna Azubuike, Al Harrington, Andris Biedrins, Anthony Randolph.
White team Ronny Turiaf, Marco Belinelli, Marcus Williams, Brandan Wright. I have a feeling the blue team was the first unit.
Brandan Wright didn't play, Cmaggs was out, and Ellis was out.
It was nice to see Stephen Jackson rain his threes, and his signature post up moves. Azubuike can fly! Biedrins is developing nicely with his interior game blocking shots, grabbing a lot of rebounds and great post up moves. Anthony Randolph has great handles is probably the most exciting to watch out of everyone. He has great dunks and a soft touch in the air. Demarcus Nelson is playing well at pg and seems more consistent than Marcus Williams. It took Marcus Williams a while to find his game but when he was on in the 2nd half he was a scoring machine. Warriors are a really young team oldest guy is Jackson 30 yrs old! I think this team is pretty athletic though and will be able to run a lot with Ellis and Cmaggs coming back.
Three pretty crazy basketball fans SJax Marcus Williams vs. Demarcus Nelson Battle of the PG's. Notice the team captains are on the right side, Sjax and Al Harrington. Two oldest vets on the team. Sjax 8 yrs in league and Harrington 10 yrs.
Wow so just finished the first week of school. Sfstate is a big mess right now especially the library. There's construction going on and in a month or so we won't have a library but instead there will be tents that look like they are for a circus or something. I feel like this year there's far more students on campus. According to my friends, the incoming freshmen class is 5000 students. I especially noticed it in Cesar Chavez when I was lining up for food and the lines were really long. SFSU Koinonia has been flyering intensely for the NSWN coming up in 9/4.
Flyering I find flyering rather interesting because you actually can meet a lot of interesting people. There was one person who came up to me and asked, "is this a Christian club?" I was like yes. How did he know? He was actually looking for a fellowship to join so I was actually really happy he asked. He's seeking. Another girl after giving her a flyer asked, "do you know Makiko?" Yes I do! Makiko was someone I knew from church. The girl happened to babysit Makiko's kids and also many other church parents kids on Friday. What a coincidence. She said she would come check out the New Student Welcome Night. I think flyering is more effective so far. If we posted ads all they do is get blocked or get ripped up by other groups. Tabling is less effective too, because not many people approach the table seeking a christian group. Other than meeting new people, I saw a lot of old classmates or people I knew from before. It was cool to catch up. Sfstate is a rather small school so the chance of bumping into someone you know is quite big.
Getting into Classes Getting into classes this year is a lot harder! More students, budget cuts that's what sfstate has to deal with. No wonder it's so hard to graduate in 4 yrs. I had the hardest time getting into my seg 3 class Consumer family studies class. I basically need this GE class to graduate on time and they only offer this class once a school year! The class was filled with like 25 people wanting to add and only 5 spaces. That made me feel very fearful. He gave priority to the graduating seniors and still there were 15 people wanting to add. So he required us to get him a ton of paperwork, a note from the advisor stating we needed to take his class in order to graduate. Sounds easy? No especially when so many other students want to see advisors. I decided to get a note from my business advisor stating I was close to graduating and also a note from my GE advsior stating I needed the class. The GE advisor said he wasn't supposed to write notes for students it was against the school policy but would email my teacher. I waited for like three hours just to get notes from two advisors. I finally got the notes and then we had to show the emails we sent him. I happened to have an email dated the earliest so I got the 2nd spot out of the 5 spot, just really thankful however there's two more classes i'm waitlisted so hope i'll get into those. I'm planning on maxing out on units in order to graduate on time.
Koinonia On Wednesday, a lot of us helped out with the NSWN for Berkeley. There was a lot of work to do Will and I helped BBQ kalbi, prepare bento boxes, welcoming students at the registration table. It was big it seemed like 1000+ students showed up and many had to be turned away because there was simply no space! We had our own SFSU Koionnia first bible study yesterday at arballo one new student, Christian showed up. Tonight is a dinner welcoming the students and then gym night at sunset! Monday going to bike from Golden Gate Bridge to Fisherman's Wharf. Sounds like fun!
