Break

I guess when I said I was going back home for Winter Break, I really did mean a break from everything. I've dipped into somewhat of a spiritual low in terms of praying, reading the Bible, and sometimes I even find myself wandering for days without a drop of Christ in my thoughts. It's terrible, but somewhat relieving that this will all end once I'm back in Boston.

It's nice to know that I'm still spiritually strong after being away from my home church for so long. A lot of brothers and sisters from Boon have definitely been praying for my spiritual strength away from college since many others who go away for college tend to stray away from the faith. I've definitely put in the strength and time to go out and look for a church to settle in Boston, and I think after this nice somewhat long break, I know what I'm looking for. I just have to go to a few more sermons in the different churches and see where I'm growing the most.

It's odd though, that now that I have so much time on my hands, I'm not devoting any of it to God. I feel like I only go to him in times of trouble--which is wrong; I am aware of that. But at least I have the assurance that I have people keeping me accountable back in Boston and I'll be able to get back on my feet in two weeks' time. I still have to finish Isaiah 40+ challenge which I will do soon, preferably sometime in Florida.

Bring it on second semester.

The Isaiah 40+ Challenge

Northeastern Intervarsity staff have given us a challenge over winter break: to read Isaiah chapter 40 and onwards. It was so that we could continue to understand who God really is and what power he truly has. I flipped Isaiah 40 for the first time while commuting to and from Manhattan on a busy day, and it took a while for the words to sink in. I think what truly struck me the most were the following verses:

Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary
they will walk and not be faint

Isaiah 40:28-31

What an amazing way Isaiah described God. Sometimes, I lose sight of what an amazing powerful God He really is. His understanding no one can fathom. I CRIED at retreat because of how much I didn't understand God's love. I am a sinful person. I have sinful thoughts. I do sinful things. His love, I cannot grasp at all. It's so amazing, so divine. After all that I've done, all that I've disobeyed, he still continues to show love by giving me everything I would ever need.

Even though I'm kind of going through a rough patch right now, I feel like this challenge is really helping me through. I haven't flipped open my Bible in a really long time, and I love it when I find applicable stuff just waiting to be discovered. It's as if God KNEW I needed some spiritual renewal. Just in time for Christmas.

Holiday Hatred

I’m so jealous of the families that are able to hug and kiss each other like nothing is wrong. I’m so jealous that they all WANT to be home with their families and spend time with each other because they genuinely love each other. I’m so jealous of the families that can spend vacations with each other and legitimately have fun. I can feel the love coming out of these Facebook pictures where they all love each other and celebrate holidays like none other.

Since my parents don’t know how to celebrate the holidays, I feel like none of these breaks I come home to are worth it. I don’t even know what I’m doing tomorrow for Christmas. We don’t even have a damn tree up, and I don’t think my parents have bought any gifts. None of us bought anything for each other. The only person who got anything for anyone was me giving my sister earrings because I felt bad that she constantly gives me things and I never get her anything. Because she’s literally the only person in my family I can tolerate and love. My god, tears are streaming down my face.

I hate being in this family so god damn much. We’re so messed up and I hate it back at home. I hate that we can never express anything to each other but pure hatred and the lack of tolerance for each other. I want to be that typical family who can love each other during the holidays and wear uncomfortably ugly sweaters with each other. Just ONCE I want a nice family picture with a Christmas tree and gifts underneath. And the gifts given not because we’re expected to, but because we want to.

Sometimes, I really just want to run away and stay with my godfamily for a while. They legitimately love each other and they always spend the holidays with each other. They have this family bond that you can see from the outside at every angle. You can tell they do everything together and love each other unconditionally. They all know each others birthdays and celebrate it with one another. My god damn mother didn’t even remember when my birthday was until my godmother brought it up. Shows how messed up my family is.

I hate it here. I hate my family. I hate being home. I just want to go back to Northeastern. THAT’S where my REAL family is. That’s where everybody I love is. That’s where I plan on being for the next four and a half years, and maybe even longer because that’s how much I hate being back home. If everybody were back on campus right now, I would go back in a heartbeat.

Reflections on the First Semester of Freshman Year

It's definitely been a ride transitioning from Senior Year of HS to Freshman Year of College. There's been so much to adjust to, from a completely different social life to a completely different learning style.

Social Life
I definitely stressed this a lot more than I should've in the beginning of the year. I knew that if I didn't find my group of friends NOW, I'd never have an accepting group that'll feel the same as the ones that start in the beginning of the year. I constantly jumped group to group trying to find a group of friends that would accept me for who I am. I constantly got paranoid every time they had something planned but never told me about it. I forgot that friendships required a two-way street, but fortunately, those friendships didn't last long anyway. Waiting around for them to text me wasn't worth it. Eventually, like all things in God's hands, everything fell into place; I found my group of friends, and I was able to focus on grades more which led to a dramatic increase in my test scores.

Learning Styles
What also struck me hard was the fact that professors aren't going to be holding your hand throughout the semester making sure you knew everything. They weren't going to set out an entire hour just to go over practice final questions during class when there was tons of material to cover. That's why they have office hours. Unfortunately, I did not see the usefulness of office hours until the last week of classes when finals started rolling around, but at least next semester will be a lot easier.

I feel like now that I have a solid base of friends and support that I need, I have everything I need to succeed for college. I know who my roommates are going to be next year. I have the best "best friend" I could ever ask for, being that I haven't had a close friendship like this since elementary school. And I feel like throughout my struggle adjusting to college, I realized that there's a reason why God put me here. There's a reason why I got such an amazing scholarship opportunity at a pretty good school. I'm at a nice comfortable pace in my work, I'm not working as hard as my friends in other schools, and I'm enjoying the city life so much. It's awesome!

I love being closer to my sister both physically and socially. It's awesome that I get to visit her every so often (every other week?) and just be able to catch up with each other in her cozy apartment with a huge bed, even if it just means watching a movie and

I love my mentor and what she's done for me, both in guiding me in the food adventures and knowing how to calm me down during my ridiculously anxious control-freak days.

Thanks to everyone who helped guide me through my first semester as a freshman in college, whether it be through tumblr replies or just simple texts of encouragement. Couldn't have done it without you guys :)

Trying to be Someone Who I'm Not

The one thing that somebody once told me not to do during college was to try and be someone who I'm not; but that's exactly what I did. I'm not gonna lie; I experimented with multiple things like alcohol and smoking since I've been here and needless to say, they're not exactly things I enjoy. I try and do these things to socialize and get to know the people around me, but almost every time, I never enjoy it as much I do staying at friend's apartment playing card games or board games. I feel like I'm constantly trying to do things that I was never able to do in high school, because they were things my parents would never allow. But now I realize that there are good reasons why I didn't. It's just simply something that I, as an individual, do not do.

Now the question is if I'm going to continue doing these "bad" things and continue being somebody I'm not. Honestly, I don't really know. I don't know if people consider me as a person who parties now, or if they still have this facade of me as not a party person. I constantly got the phrase "I didn't think you were that type of person" at parties but that's exactly it: I'm not. I guess I'll just go at whatever comes to me and remember to always be responsible for my actions.

Reflections on a 365

Looking at other friends' flickrs makes me so inspired by the level of artistic ability within their cameras. I always admire it and hope to one day be able to capture something just as beautiful just as well ast they did. Perhaps I'm underestimating the capability of my standard Nikon lens can do and am not making full use of it. Either way, I looked at some past pictures on my flickr and realized some sort of progression: the level of editing on my pictures.

Ever since I (illegally) downloaded Adobe Lightroom, I've been loving the editing process more and more. Sometimes, I'm in a rush to edit the pictures and just lazily press "auto" on the lighting and whatnot, but sometimes I like playing around with the colors and the brush that is being used. I love what the program allows me to do and it definitely helps out with things that my camera can't do alone without the computer.

I can't wait until I have electives available to me. I'm definitely going to take digital photography and learn so much more than I already do on my own. I learned so much just from the experience of others as well as the internet, but at this point, I just feel limited by the size of the camera and the lack of aperture in my lenses. I want to be able to experiment with expensive lenses and learn how to fully use Lightroom instead of just pressing "auto". Too bad this won't happen until my fourth year here at Northeastern.

Studying in the Morning

I guess you could call me a morning person. I love silent and quiet mornings when nobody's awake and all you can hear is the tranquil clicks of your keyboard or the wrinkling of the most recent textbook you spit hot water all over from laughter in the library. Nobody's awake at this hour because it would be absolutely absurd for somebody to wake up this early for any reason but to go to church, and by this time, they're already gone and I'm just left alone in this dorm room.

Still, of the people who are still in the dorm, nobody is awake. No lights are on except for my desk light, waiting for my organic chemistry textbook to be cracked open for some sort of intelligent realization in combining organic compounds with multiple reactants; magically both in the chemical way and in my brain processes. I guess I should start studying if nobody's going to bother me at this hour. Get as much studying done as I possibly can while everybody's asleep.

Office Hours

I walked into the Math department today to look for some peer tutoring on a question I had on a calculus problem. But since these tutors are all so accelerated, they don't remember anything from Calculus 2. I went to three different tutors and none of them knew how to do the questions.

As I was walking through the hallway on my way down, I bumped into my calc professor and spontaneously walked into his office asking him for help. I don't even know if he had office hours then, but he was wiling to help. He was so much more helpful than the other tutors and I don't even understand why I didn't go earlier. It's kind of a shame that I realized this now and today was the last day of class. It's almost useless...

He was a great professor though. It's hard to find a good calculus teacher, and Professor Lupi was it. I can confidently say that I will be able to do pretty well on the final exam on Monday.

On a more current note, in terms of church hopping... I went to CCFC (Cambridge Community Fellowship Church) and I really love the people there. They all seem so friendly and warm, and they're all in the exact age range I'm comfortable around. Granted, I haven't met them all yet, but I'm really excited too and I feel really comfortable that I'll be able to know all of them soon enough. Except I'm not exactly sure how the ethics play out in this situation. I feel like the other church I'm deciding between (BCEC) is SO CLOSE to my church's theology that it's just a no-brainer. It just feels TOO MUCH like my home church so I don't really want that. I've decided against Citylife only because I feel like it's so inconvenient. I can't make it to CG or FNF so I wouldn't be able to form any sort of community there, and the messages don't really hit me as hard as other speaker's messages do. It's just not the right church for me at the moment...