Tuesday, May 20, 2008

7 or 8 years later...

a friend of mine asked last nite about what my high school friends are up to these days. of the group i hung out with most, 2 graduated in 2000, the other 4 of us in 2001. so here's the breakdown, out of 6:
3 have master's degrees, 1 still in med school (almost there!), and i'm starting in the fall
4 have lived overseas for at least a 5-month stretch, another for 1 month, and the last for 2 weeks.
2 are married, 1 engaged, and 1 pregnant with her first
4 are closely using their degrees, and 1 used her degree for a few years but is now home to raise a family (and i ran from my degree!)
1 joined the army (to pay for med school)
1 (at least) has her dream job
collectively, we've traveled in at least 30 countries since high school (and incidentally, we became close because of high school mission trips to mexico!)

so there you have it: a relatively successful and fulfilled group of people! tho i have little professional ambition, i am thankful to have traveled so widely!


so, while i'm here (it's been a while, sorry), i'll add a bit more.
i'm still working on extending my nicaragua trip. there are a few more wrinkles on that one to iron out. and it's a bit more complicated since i'm not the one making travel plans for the whole group. but i'm trying!!

work is going pretty well. i've settled in fairly well to being a shift supervisor, and i like it! i'm certainly not bored! opening shifts go by so quickly, i feel like i don't have enough time to get everything done. and i don't close very much, so i am afraid i'll forget a lot the next time i do close, which isn't anytime soon! there have been a few frustrations, mostly dealing with lack of communication, but i'm learning to relax and not expect so much from people, and that helps. :-P

house church at scott's is awesome. i love it. it has become my "home church", pun not intended! it's the one event in my week i try my hardest not to miss. i love the people there: scott and michele (the hosts and leaders) and their 2 high school kids, another woman (in her 40s or 50s) with 2 adopted kids (11 and 12), a couple in their 30's who act like their 20's with a 2 year old, a couple in their 20's with a baby, a family of 12 with kids from 18 mos to college, and me! it has been SO fun to get to know them all, to have the kids running around and chasing the dog, and of course, great food every week! i'm the token single girl, but the oldest 2 of the big family are great girls, too, so we get along well. the wife of the couple in their 30's is also a good friend of mine (she saved my life in turkey in 2002), so it's great to get to know her husband, too. the conversation every week is so fun and inspiring, and i learn so much! this will probably be the group that i miss the most when i move to california!

so CA: i have a roommate!!! i'm so excited! a friend of mine from undergrad officially is accepted and wants to live with me! yay for courtney!! it's really funny: i wanted to live with courtney in college, but she had already made plans to live with audrey. then i met amanda, so i got to live with her. audrey and i graduated and went to "boot camp" at hgm, where we were roommates. courtney and amanda still had another year of school, so courtney took my place in the apt with amanda. now amanda is married and audrey will be this weekend, so now courtney and i are moving in together in california! how's that for a turn of events! woohoo!!

i'm very excited to be doing this program in CA. it's officially in MA in crosscultural studies at fuller theological seminary. there are some basic Bible classes i have to take (old testament survey, new testament survey, etc), some "core classes" (culture and transformation, church in mission, teamwork and leadership, communicating and serving cross-culturally, global evangelical movement, and spirituality and mission), a couple elective classes and concentration classes that i get to choose. it's these i'm most excited about. classes like poverty and development; children at risk; relief, refugees and conflict; incarnation and mission among the world's urban poor; immigration, religion and the american church; and advocating social justice. wow! talk about some options!! i'm so excited!!

Monday, May 05, 2008

frustrated...

sounds like the title of a lot of my posts... it's kinda interesting, this emotion of frustration. i'm realizing that i haven't really been that frustrated for a while. i wonder if i've actually grown in having patience, or if i've been more humbled by at at peace with my circumstances, or if my circumstances have just changed enough that i'm happy with them? i don't know. but it is interesting that this feeling is almost foreign to me, as opposed to being almost constant!

so right now, i'm so frustrated that i feel it in my gut. i wanted someone to do something for me, and they didn't do it. they just did it the way they wanted to do it. i asked them to do it for me, they said ok, and when it didn't work as easily as they thought it would, they just did it their way. they could have called me, or just asked me to do it in the first place, or they could have checked into it 4 days before it had to be done to double check it and then called me, or... yeah, it could have been different. i know that i don't understand how complicated it is on their side, and yes, they have a lot of other things going on, too, not just this one issue, but it will now cost me $300 extra to go fix it. when it should have been no charge at all. so yeah, i'm pretty frustrated. (and they waited until i called to ask about something else to tell me about it, instead of calling me right after it happened.)

this feeling sits in my gut, just below my rib cage, and it's like i can't get a full breath of air. it actually does help, physically to yell and kind of discharge some of the pressure built up. i wonder if other people physically feel frustration the way i do.

and now, because i'm already frustrated, little things that i would normally have patience for are very irritating. i know i still have the choice to let it go and not be irritated, but it's so much easier to be irritated than not when i'm already frustrated. (things like my computer being slow, a netflix dvd that my parents watched not being sent back right after they watched it - normal life stuff that shouldn't bother me this much.)

ok, it helps to process and i'm not quite as frustrated anymore. :-P