Eighteen.

Today is September 18th and thus I have decided to break down this post into 18 points. No particular reason why, just thought it'd be kind of nifty/easier to break down my thoughts this way.

1. Although I'm not quite at the point where I love LA so much that I want to live here forever, God's given me a lot of peace about my current living situation. I feel much more at home in our apartment and our neighborhood in comparison to how I felt when first moving in. I know I'll never blend in, but I'm at peace with that.

2. I submitted my Servant Partners internship application for Bangkok this week. Servant Partners is an organization that is focused on grass-roots community transformation and seeks to do so by living incarnationally among the poor. I'm nervous about there not being any available placements or not being accepted at all. I'll have to continue praying about it to see if God opens or closes doors for me to go to Bangkok. Maybe I'm supposed to go somewhere else.

3.

As silly as this sounds, doing laundry was a cultural experience. I went to an actual laundromat (aka lavanderia in Spanish) for the first time last week and it was pretty fun! We got to hang out and  watch cartoons while waiting for our clothes to wash/dry. There were also massage chairs, vending machines, and the like there too

4. I'm thankful that the USC campus is nearby. My roommate Kelly and I have been going there to walk/jog around the track. I would still prefer if the beach or some nature-y trails were nearby though. Just saying. But I'm really grateful to have somewhere to exercise. Even if it is intended for USC students... It feels weird when being back on a college campus. I don't know if I should feel old or young or just out of place because I actually don't go there. The campus is pretty fancy and regal-looking though.

5.

There are a plethora of ice cream trucks that frequent our neighborhood. This particular ice cream truck plays the "It's a Small World" tune except instead of children singing, there are meows and barks. It's quite silly. I ran out after this truck the other day to get ice cream with my roommate, Erika, and felt like a small child because I was so excited. There are no ice cream trucks in my neighborhood back at home in Fremont. Is it because people just buy their own ice cream? I don't know. 

6. My mind is blown after every class. I'm learning so much. I love it. Right now we're taking three courses: Writings/Reign/Urban Reality, Urban Spirituality, and Building Faith Communities. So much new information that my brain is exploding a little bit (in a good way).

7. I love that we have worship at the beginning of every class.

8. I had my Psych testing yesterday for MATUL at the APU Counseling Center. It took about 4 hours and consisted of an hour long interview and then about 750 questions of T/F or T/?/F. Some questions were really weird. I hope the results don't indicate that I'm too crazy. I think it takes a few weeks to process/analyze the results and then we return for a follow up appointment.

9. I am thankful that it has cooled down significantly here in LA. The weather's still around high 70s right now, so pretty warm for September, but feels oodles cooler than it did when first moving down here.

10.

A good friend took me out for breakfast one morning in Koreatown. We got beef noodle soup! It was delicious. I don't think I've ever had Korean food that wasn't Korean BBQ or those rice stone bowls.

11. Microwaves and stoves are hard to live without. The 3 girls (who are also in MATUL) living next door don't have a functioning stove so they've been coming over to use it every now and then. It's hard to cook things without a stove! I heard they've been making variations of quesadillas in their toaster oven. We thought our microwave was broken a couple days ago, but just discovered that just the outlet is not working. Having to boil water in a pot to make tea vs. popping your mug into the microwave for a minute or two seems like such a first world problem, right? I was really annoyed that our microwave wasn't working. Sometimes it's the little (or not so little) things we take for granted.

12.

This is what my APU ID looks like. Gotta keep getting those students discounts, yeah?

13. I've been going to a different church every Sunday, but really liked the one I went to last Sunday. It's a bilingual service (English/Spanish) and so half of the worship songs are in English and half are in Spanish. Some people share testimonies in Spanish. And during the English sermon, you can hear someone translating it into Spanish in the back of the congregation for non-English speakers. It feels home-y there. The church is walking distance from our apartment and the service is held in the multipurpose room of an elementary school.

14.

I am really grateful for technology and Google hangout. 

15. I am also really grateful for my amazing roommates. We can talk about anything and everything. So blessed.

16/17. These are my Meyers Briggs results. Not sure if you particularly care, but I am an ISFJ. As silly as personality tests may seem, I feel that it describes me really well in terms of personality and what stresses me out. I really don't like to be rushed and I'm not a fan of loud noise (which is one of the reasons why Kolkata was particularly stressful last summer). Maybe you're an ISFJ too and can relate?

18. This quote:
"Go to the people: live with them, learn from them, love them, start with what they know, build with what they have. But of the best leaders, when the job is done, the task accomplished, the people will say we have done it ourselves" -Lao Tzu

A professor shared this quote with us in class the other day. It resonates with the heart of MATUL. We are not to be merely in the community, but be with the community in their struggles. There is so much that we have to learn from the people residing within the community, instead of coming in with a particular agenda/project/plan to "fix" things. We don't know their struggles firsthand and by coming in with a learning posture, we will be able to love people in more of a Christ-like way.

Moving In, Orientations, and the First Day of Class

I just moved into my new apartment on Friday. It was the day that I was looking forward to and at the same time dreading for months. Most of summer had been a struggle to find and arrange affordable housing for the 3ish month long Fall semester of MATUL and an attempt to spend quality time with friends and family before starting school. All the anticipation that had built up since being accepted in the Spring had resulted in a combination of excitement, nervousness, and worries. But alas, it was here!

Driving down and moving in was a little bit hectic, as expected, but nonetheless good. I was surprised by how hot and humid LA was. It's been difficult to sleep at night with the heat and with the sound of fans, but I trust that I'll get used to it and the weather will eventually cool down too. It's pretty cozy with the 3 of us in a small one bedroom apartment, but it works. We have a functioning kitchen, living room, and bathroom, and I know that it's much more spacious than where we'll be living in a few months. The neighborhood we live in is predominantly Latino and Black and I obviously don't blend in too well, which is slightly uncomfortable to be honest because I've noticed that I get a lot of double takes when I'm walking around the neighborhood. But then I think of all the division that exists in where we choose to live based on ethnicity, class, wealth, etc. and it makes me sad that I feel so distant from people who are different from me, but at the same time, not all that different. We may have vastly different life stories, but in the end we're really not all that different. On the other hand, I love my new roommates. They're both really sweet girls and I know we're going to have a really great time living together this semester. (:

MATUL Cohort #4! We're the biggest one yet. 

Orientation took up most of the day on Saturday. Azusa Pacific's LA Regional Center is located in Koreatown and occupies a couple of floors in a tall office-y building. This is also where we'll be having our classes three days a week. Orientation consisted of an overview/introduction about the program, discussion of the different sites overseas, sharing from some of the students from the very first MATUL cohort that just returned a couple weeks ago, Q&A, etc. Throughout the course of the orientation, I experienced a bit of a roller coaster of emotions as I fluctuated between feeling overwhelmed by all the information and hearing of returnees' experiences & feeling assured that this is what God had called me to do because the program deals with issues of poverty that are near and dear to my heart. Yes, I am nervous about being uncomfortable, dealing with the weight of sharing a community's pain that results from extreme poverty, and being a foreigner and feeling vulnerable. But I am so, so looking forward to learning more about the theology of the poor and seeing how believers trust God for their daily provisions as well as learning how I can be used by God to help set people free.

Something that Dr.Viv Grigg, one of our professors and the director of MATUL, said during the orientation about the risks involved in living in these hard places really struck me. "At the end of the day, following Jesus is always risky." Dr. Grigg has lived in places such as Manila and Kolkata for years doing ministry among the poor. He is a gentle soul and has such a huge heart. I look forward to learning from him throughout MATUL.

After orientation was done for the day, we all headed to Grand Park via the Metro (I had no idea that LA had a metro system...did you?!). We got dinner from some food trucks and then hung out until the movie, "The Neverending Story," came on. It was really cool. (:

Watching a movie in Grand Park in front of City Hall w/ MATUL friends.

Today (Tuesday) we had a second part to our orientation on the APU campus in Azusa. We got to meet some professors, meet the president, talk about finances, etc. We got to hear about how MATUL was founded and how a very large donation helped to jumpstart the idea for a program similar to a Christian peace corps. The other professor who helped found the MATUL program and helped write most of the curriculum really challenged us in how we thought about MATUL. So often, education and higher academia is seen as something that is used for upward mobility, to better ourselves and to get higher pay in our careers. But MATUL is different. It's intended to challenge the way we think about about ourselves, our lives, and the world around us. It's not about getting the degree and the good job and moving to a suburb to live our comfortable lives. MATUL changes people radically and wherever they may end up, overseas or stateside, their paradigm on so many things is never the same again. In addition, he said we may ask ourselves the question, "If we do not see transformation, will we continue to choose faithfulness?"; Will we continue to do the work that we feel God has called us to? We'll be taking some of our courses with this professor once we're overseas and I'm excited to hear more of his thoughts.

First day of classes was tonight. It was really good, but very obvious that this is graduate level material. Also, I am not a big fan of night classes because I'm more of a morning person so it'll be another thing for me to adjust to. For 2 hours at the beginning of class, we went around and told our stories about what motivated us to choose MATUL. It was super good. Everyone has such diverse backgrounds and stories, but at the same time most of us had similar themes. Redemption. A desire to learn how to serve the poor. A desire to learn more about ourselves and how Jesus walked alongside the marginalized. And of course, the biggest commonality: obedience.  

Sunset. 

In all honesty, I was not looking forward to having to live in Los Angeles. From the handful of times that I've been in LA, I strongly disliked how crowded it is, how terrible the traffic is, and how overly "city-ish" it is for my tastes. But when I look at the sunset along the skyline or from the front steps of my new apartment, I am reminded of how God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is faithful in all circumstances and I just need to trust that there is so much to be learned and gained in this city.