first homesick, now sick of home.

sigh.


I keep getting memory flashes of China, LSV...

it was only 11 days since i last saw them. it seems the only thing i can really hold a conversation with is anything to do with china and/or postmodernism. it's pretty sorry. i feel like a freaking nerd. i can't even seem to come up with any lame daniel puns. I don't feel like i should have left. it feels so crappy to go back into american life. i honestly can't stand it sometimes. a lot of times, i find myself caught up in this american anesthesia, and slap myself in hopes that i would never allow it to keep its drowsy spell. i actually understand when i hear people speak mandarin now... it's really weird.

sometimes i see the kids faces, and i just feel like finding a room to be by myself and just cry out for them- not out of pity, but out of anger and frustration that i am not able to get them out of their situations. and all i can do about it is talk about it. maybe donate more money. i looked back at my journal recently and found an entry during the trip that said, "talk is silence, and action is a megaphone; money is cheap, and action is priceless". what's the use of high ideals in a journal if they are not practiced...

and here i am in the ucsd. i'm supposed to focus on housing issues, iv prayer team, classes, bus training... they feel ridiculously distant all the time, but slowly drawing nearer to me as my mind forgets china. i don't want to forget. but i don't want to live in the past. how do i let the past affect my present?

anyways, maybe i need to talk more about it... maybe i should look over my final thoughts on china that i had and make something out of it... although it didn't feel very final at all. it felt like the beginning of a movie that ended right after the the main character was introduced.

well, i would love to talk about it with anybody. please call me if you want to hear. and don't accept 'it was good' or 'it was chinese' as an answer to the question on how china was. i do that too much.

and that's it. this entry is way too long and i have a lot of gas that the rest of the people in sun god lounge are bound to start noticing.

Confusions of the Heart

camp was extremely good. A lot of kids opened up. good awesome things happened... I'll have to write about it later.

Leaving in an hour to the airport.

I am so looking forward to home, but at the same time wishing I could stay longer. If there's anything i've learned first hand, it's that relationship is what defines true justice. It's not having a good deep conversation, it's not throwing out food at someone... it's RELATIONSHIP. the true nature of the KOG is about making people whole through the power of love.

But that's the hard part of doing things short term... I hate to be pessimistic, but i think that short term m trips have gotten out of hand- I fear it is becoming an excuse not to commit all your heart into something. And if you finally feel the commitment of relationship, it gets torn away from you much sooner than you wished.

anyways, i'm just rambling. I'm bordering on slightly anxious for next year- i still need to prepare for p-team, driving busses...

anyways, i miss my guitar.

I need to finish packing now.

Home for 6 days and then i'm off to the distant land of san diego.

Resting in Luxury.

When the kids told me the summer camp was nice, i believed them. In believing them, I mean, i thought they meant it was just better than LSV. I thought they were just saying that it was "nice".

wow. it's nice. Better than our hotel. They actually change the sheets every day. There's sitting toilets. The food is awesomeness. The swimming pool is open all the time. There's go-carts. Ther's a river.

It's completely ridiculous. Haha... I wonder how these kids will react to such luxury.

Anyways, meeting the rest of the people that will work with us has been fun. They come from all over the place- Texas, Australia, Japan, China, HK, England... it's pretty exciting. My favorite are 2 of the australians. They're having a blast with the firecracker shop outside the campground, and they're a mischevious pair. We played marco polo tonight and it was wild. I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun with them. And the texans look fun too... i can't wait for them to snap out of jet lag.

things to talk to dad about:
It's a little scary not having any team parents with us now and no poon daddy with us (he's returning to the US i think). It's a whole other dimension with meeting so many new people to work with. It's really easy to get prideful that we've been here so much longer than the rest and that we know the kids already. It's also a lot of pressure because we are now their translators, even we who have very limited mandarin know much more than them. So we are now their translators. Puts a lot of pressure on me and germs :). It's also been hard being put into different roles because we have to be put into a whole new leadership structure. Takes more humility and submission. That's a hard one. Also, for me personally, I feel like I've already reached the end of the trip. It's a little hard for me to focus for this last leg of the trip. tell dad to make sure i finish the race strong. I have been really wanting to go home, yet anxious about it too because i have to do so much in the five days before i go back to SD.

But it's been good. did some good p-walking today, bring us together like a family talking to dad. This summer camp looks awesome. I would be going crazy if i were one of the kids. Now i know why they are so excited.

anyways, more people should go online in the morning. I'm waiting here desperate for contact from the west, staring at my AIM buddylist.

foot blister

My foot is throbbing from me playing soccer barefoot. bad bad bad bad idea. I have a blister deep in my foot now. how wonderful.

Soccer has been great. But it's been getting me pooped each day. It was a good thing it was the last day today.

Tomorrow we go to summer camp. It will be my last week with the kids. I actually can't wait for us to go. It will be a great break from this past month of being our team of 15 versus 62 kids. During the camp, there will be almost 1 on 1.

The kids are really excited to go. They can't stop talking about the camp's bumper cars and swimming.

Okeeeee dokee. i'm out. bye.

I'm Still Alive

Hey everyone- sorry i haven't been able to update lately. Computer access has been hard to come by. I got kicked out of the internet bars because i don't have an ID card.

just letting you all know i'm alive and kicking. I have to go. I've been playing a lot of soccer lately. bye.

quotes

just some quotes in my head lately.

"It seemed the more we traveled, the more the land seemed to change... or was it us?"
"Each moment seems to be split in two- One part is regret for leaving every mile that is behind us, but the other is excitement for what is ahead"
-Motorcycle Diaries

"We of little faith... You of stubborn grace"
-The Normals

Team 2 should be here any minute. I fell asleep with the guitar in my lap. I'm trying to write a song, but nothing's coming out. There's an emotion that wants to be translated into a song, but i don't have the language or musical ability to translate it correctly... it results in several of my journal pages scribbled on and then crossed out.

anyways, i really miss playing Lucy. I miss my guitar. The ply-wood guitar we are using just doesn't cut it. it's almost soul-less to me sometimes. I miss you lucy.

motorcycle diaries

sigh. So I wrote this long analysis of motorcycle diaries and how much I related to it on this trip... but my computer died and I'm not going to do it again. All there is to say is that I watched the movie and it was beautiful. There were so many quotable things in the movie that sounded so inspiring even in the english translation. Makes me want to learn spanish just to understand the great quotes in their original language. It was even more beautiful because it really resonated with me.

However, this computer doesn't resonate with me. poop.

Yesterday, me josh and jeff came back to LSV to do a little PW before uncle Abe had a talk with the kids. It was scary going there without the team because every single person the kids used to hang on to had gone back to America. That means they hung onto me. I knew i was in trouble when I heard the kids chanting my name from the second floor and the sound of pattering to meet me at the stairs. Then came the mob that hung onto anything they could hang onto on my body. It was the most tiring experience I've had at LSV, but it really felt great to be back there. Uncle abe was pretty fun too. I forgot how much i miss hearing the guy talk. hahaha.

anyways, today was a long laborious day of shopping for a good writing pad for my computer for writing chinese (290 rmb... the most expensive purchase i've made on this trip...) and watching seven swords, the new big kung fu film in China and HK. anyways, it sucked. I feel really bad. The director was supposed to be really big for past movies like Once upon a time in China. This was supposed to be his response to movies like Hero. Well it sucked. badly. And the worst part was I told everyone that it'd be good, even convincing a mother to go. Well there were unnecesarrily prolonged sex scenes, unnecissarily extreme unaesthetic violence, a bad story line, and a scary gothic looking lesbian chinese chick. It was pretty sad that this director sacrificed a coherent story for stuff that sells in Hollywood. and it was worse that I told people it'd be a good movie. Anyways, i felt thoroughly guilty for making everyone watch it with me afterwards.

Well, team 2 is coming tomorrow. That will be fun. anyways, please be on your knees for me and please make sure dad makes sure i don't accidentally watch bad movies anymore during this trip. I've also been having problems in my heart lately with pride that I didn't have during the first team.

anyways, i'm slightly tired now. And I have to pee. bye.