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.