Ya know what, after the first half of this week, I’m in serious need of some cuteness:
That’s better.
A lot has happened in the past few day. Work, school, and relationships are all demanding my attention right now. Not to mention some internal things that I’m learning or trying to work on. I haven’t thought them out well enough to write about them, but I will leave you with a few things to think about:
Community is important. Fellowship, brotherhood, friendship, however you want to frame it.
Take some time out this week to build into your community. Make something better, spend some more time in it, or just let the people know how important they are to you.
If you’re not in a strong community, take some steps to getting there. It can be scary, it can hurt, but a good community is worth that.
I realize the term community may sound dry to some people (if you for instance, read teh introduction to Wikipedia’s entry on community.) But it means something more to me here.
Meditate. Take some time to write down a list of people around you, situations in the world, and personal concerns (things you need, like, want to change, or are thankful for).
Give yourself 20 minutes at the end or the beginning of your day (or both) to think about these things.
Express them all in words. It doesn’t have to be out loud, but using words can help you think about and process things.
If you are a praying person, then pray.
Try to set aside your concerns and realize that worrying won’t help, but giving them thought may help you reach a conclusion.
Try to focus on needs that you see around you. You are more likely to notice when good things happen and, more importantly, you will be more likely to help out.
Be thankful. Recognize the good things. Be greatful toward people or just for how things turned out. Try to see the good even in situations that you aren’t completely happy with.
When I was a freshman in high-school, there was a science teacher who helped lead a Fellowship of Christian Athelets group. It was a silly group since very few, if any, of us were atheletes. He told me that it takes three warm fuzzies to counter-act just one cold prickly. I still believe that.
Ok, I’m too tired to write much, so I’m just going to thinking about everything interesting that happened this week and direct my thoughts into this blank space for those of you with ESP.
For those of you with RSESP, you can subscribe to my ATOM feed and hear my thoughts as I think them.
Let’s Play Some Games!
Things you do when you’re tired:
Leave these things out overnight
milk
eggs
maple syrup
Things you do when you’re supposed to write a paper:
Hey guys – here’s a good tip for developing a habit: Start small. Don’t make the task overwhelming at first, just get the action into your routine and recent memory.
So here’s a cool video that everyone should watch. It’s called The Show with ZeFrank.
He’s funny, but also pretty insightful so he gets my recommendation.
Ok, I’ll be up front. I’m in the middle of a two-week tour of Europe after spending a semester in England, I’m sitting in a hotel in Paris, I just spend 8 hours at the Louvre, and I’m about to sing the praises of a TV show. Here it is:
Lalalala lala la lala
I just had some time to kill in my hotel room so I picked up my laptop and watched
a few episodes of Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60. I laughed, I c…well, I didn’t cry, but I felt emotional responses that I think are appropriate for a TV show. The most important thing is that I thought. I thought about our country and about relationships, about politics, about people, about culture, about religion. I love this show.
I’ve had a lot of very new experiences in the last four months. I’ve learned a lot of things, I’ve seen a lot of really amazing things. I have by no means processed everything, but one thing keeps coming to mind as the most important. It’s this idea of humanity – about us as a people and where we’re going. It’s a big concept, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. What will our legacy be? What will we change? What will we make better or worse?
More to the point: What will I change? More and more I see things that I don’t think are right and along side them I see things that are amazing or just downright wonderful and I feel this growing responsibility to create something for the wonderful category.
So what will that be? I’ll be thinking on this one.
Go do something that makes you think – that stretches you. Read TIME’s person of the year issue this year. Read about their Teddy Awards. Read this quotation which I’ve loved for many years:
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out howthe strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
I just got back yesterday from a long weekend in Amsterdam (made a bit longer because of a small mis-calculation on my part). The visual feel I got from Amsterdam was different than from any other place I’ve been. The sky was overcast most of the time, but there was still this intense sun that would shine through once in a while and give everything is weird misty brightness. At first I thought that maybe my pupils were just dilated. It was almost like looking at a slightly over-exposed photograph with a soft focus, but this picture is unaltered and the effect was even more intense in person.
Three other things struck me about the city fairly early on:
It’s growing. There’s construction going on everywhere. Huge cranes dot the skyline and main streets are being torn up. Shops sit with their doors and windows open while workers reshape the insides to suit the needs of the new owners. If you head north, past Central Station, you’ll see half-finished sky-scrapers jutting up from behind a large canal.
It’s dense. The streets are narrow and the buildings are all touching each other. The largest sense of space you’ll get is from waling next to a canal or through one of the city squares. Everywhere else is crammed full of restaurants, stores, bars, clubs, cheese shops, wine shops, bakeries, coffee shops (read: pot bars), cafés (read: coffee shops) and apartments on the levels above. Not to mention the 6 H&M stores you can pass on a 15-minute walk.
It’s a city of constrasts. Ominous black towers stretch into a white hazy sky, living spaces are shuffled in among the businesses, pedestrians, bikes, trams, and cars share the same roads, families take walks with their children through the red light district. Everything is jumbled in together into one place and it all just finds a way to exist together and create a community.
If you’re traveling about, add Amsterdam to you list. It’s such an experience. Soon, I’ll share some more pictures and some of my experiences. Until then, feel free to check out the pictures I posted on Picasa. For now, here are the highlights:
Yeah, so I haven’t been writing so much. It’s easy to get out of the habit when you’re in a new place. There’s lots to do and lots to see. Everything is so new that writing about it seems overwhelming, but I’ll try to give it a go – just little bits at a time.
I’ve been ejoying myself so far. My friends and flatmates are great. We’ve had lots of good times already. We’ve got about 10 people on the flat – all in single rooms. Most of us are North Americans – Canada and the US, but France, Germany, and London are represented as well. The girl next to me is from Iowa which I thought was geographically aproapriate.
Life around campus is fairly simple. Go to class once in a while, read a lot, and hang out in the pub. Actually, the pub here is the center for most social life. You’ll find people going for a pint right at 11 when the pub opens and when the pub closes at 11pm, festivities continue out on the steps in the square or in the LCR (which is a sort of multi-purpose room for the student union).
Our rooms have sinks and mirrors and we have a few WCs and a shower room for the floor. We also have a floor kitchen since there’s no meal plan. We do have a cafeteria called the Zest, but the food isn’t very good. The kitchen is stuffed full of everyone’s pots and pans and food. We try to be fairly lax about sharing food and whatnot. It’s a bit hard to keep track of everyone’s stuff anyway. If I’m feeling lazy, we also have a few coffee and sandwich shops on campus: Mango and The Blend, but most of my food comes from grocery stores in town or from the UFO which is a little grocery store on campus. By the by, if you’re ever doing any grocery shopping here, you’ll be bagging your own groceries. And bring your own bags because they’ll be likely to charge you for their bags. It may sound inconvenient, but it promotes reuse which I’m all for.
Well, I’ll give it a rest for now. More stories and good times to come later. If you’d like to see more of the campus, check out my album on Picasa or the UEA sites:
::This is from last Wednesday actually. I’m just lazy/busy::
I’m writing this from a train headed for Norwich (don’t pronounce the w). I’ve got a bit under an hour and a half on the train, so I’ve got some time to rest and collect some thoughts while being soothed by the sounds of the train and the three English businessmen to my right who frequently interrupt their friendly conversation to speak very forcefully to someone on their cell phone. I’m amused by this. Also, about 20 minutes into the trip, a kid ran into my car, stopped, and yelled back, “There’s another one coming this way!” Then he ran back through the door and another kid walked out real casual-like. He walked into the space between cars and disappeared around a corner until the conductor caught up with him. At the conductor’s instruction, he walked back up the isle and then back down again – this time followed by about 5 of his friends. Stow-aways. Sweet.
The flight on Air India was very bearable. Turns out, not a lot of people enjoy overnight flights so there was lots of space to stretch out (not to mention the extra airline pillows). I did manage to nod off for a bit in the middle of the flight, but otherwise I was kept company by a guy named Phil who was headed back to London after an extended stay with friends in the US. So we chatted for a while about travel and the differences between our countries and “What is that between the salad and the yogurt?” and “What in the world is going on with this Indian television they’re showing us?”
Side-note: We just passed between a water-treatment plant that looked exactly like one you might find in the US and a field of cows. Ah, home.
