Saw "House of Flying Daggers" tonight. It was good but lacked the well-woven plot of Crouching Tiger.

My sis got in an argument with a girl and her boyfriend sitting a seat away from us in the theater. That was crazy...apparently we were whispering too loudly. But if you ask me both June and that girl were way too combative.

Actually, it seemed that whole theater was full of interesting characters. Four rows ahead of us a pair of girls yelled out, "yes!" when what seemed like a sex scene started (unfortunately for those girls it was cut short) Then later in the movie some older guys behind us started talking loudly and laughing in an intense moment. The audience was also more reactive in surprise scenes than normal.

At one point I looked at my sister and whispered that this crowd was wacko...of course, hoping that girl wouldn't go off on me for whispering again. :-)

I'm in SD right now because I have to finish the Community Economic Development program I'm in. So I'll be coming back to SD every other weekend until April.

I've just gotten settled in LA. It took me a while to gather the furniture I needed and now I've finally got all my stuff off the floor. I have my orientation next week and I don't start classes until the 31st.

So I still feel like my life is in slow motion just punctuated by cleaning and moving. The month before I left SD I was cleaning and decorating my grams house. And now I'm cleaning and organizing again. To be honest, I just feel like my life is never going to have the same sense of meaning again. Seems like it's just a never-ending river of mundane nothingness.

Part of me wishes that the audience of my blog wasn't so big (big for me). It's definitely expanded beyond my close friends. That's cool and everything but I guess I write this blog like I'm talking to really close friends. The knowledge that people I don't know are reading sometimes taints my view of my entries....instead of seeing them in light of the meaning I intend I start to look at them the way others might perceive them. But oh well, I think I have to blog that way and if I look like a big whiner...well, that's probably true anyway. :-)

By the way, I'm going to be writing people back from my back-logged emails now that I know where my underwear is.

I'm on the move!

Yup, I'm driving up to LA tomorrow (technically today) with my car stuffed full of my loosely boxed clothes and stuff. That's one of the many weird things about moving to a city so close. I don't really have to pack my stuff up in boxes and suitcases. Definitely not the way I have to if I'm moving to another state or country. I've never lived this close to San Diego. It's going to be different to be able to say, "I'm going to San Diego for the weekend."

By the way, for those that I haven't emailed back. I haven't forgotten...I'm going to email soon!

Didn't want to share this while I was in a grumpy mood but I can't sleep. So here I am. I'm grumpy because my grandma and uncle are making me crazy! They are so overly independent. They think they don't need anybody, that they're just dandy on their own. Well, they are SO wrong.

This next announcement is not directly related to my late night grumpiness. Are you ready? Are you sitting down?

I'm moving to LA in the next two weeks.....to start my M.A. in Intercultural Studies at Biola University.

Surprise! And it was kind of a surprise to me, too. It all came together rather quickly. Another pleasant surprise is that I'm going to be living with Margaret whom I had only met briefly at Sandy's wedding and bridal shower.

It's funny because even while we were in Korea Sandy would tell me that I had to read Margaret's xanga because Margaret and I had so much in common. Unfortunately, I didn't heed Sandy's advice until after the wedding when I read her ad for a roommate in LA on her xanga. However, at that time I had no plan to go to Biola this semester. Yet I kept reading her site and to be honest (don't be embarrassed, Margaret) I was so fascinated by her thoughts and realized that Sandy was so right.

So long story short about 3 weeks ago I met my future roommates Annie and Margaret over some Japanese food. We were all three so amazed at how similar our passions are. (Annie will be starting her M.A. in Intercultural Studies at Fuller next semester.)

So meanwhile I'm trying to prepare my grandma and uncle to have someone live with them but that's getting sticky. I'm also redecorating and putting up pictures like a mad woman. Within the next couple days I'm going to start packing up my stuff to drive it up to LA.

To be honest, now that going to Biola is a reality I'm feeling more fear about going back to school. It's been a long time. I guess I just feel nervous about everything. Starting over in a new city, feeling afraid that the dull meaninglessness I've felt here in SD is going to somehow follow me wherever I go.

Ro and I were talking on the phone the other day about our next semesters. Both her and I have struggled with a dull, lifeless boredom swallowing up our lives. However, she shared with me how she eventually reached a breaking point and came to an understanding with God about what He was doing in her life. And ya know, that understanding is so key-isn't it? It's usually the beginning of the end of a lesson God is teaching you.

I realized when she was telling me this that I hadn't come to that point of understanding yet. I know in my mind and even believe in my heart that God truly loves me and is involved in my life. But I have often felt this semester that God has left me to my own devices, that He isn't guiding me but is just letting me wander blindly even though I have semi-consistently called out to Him.

Reaching an understanding is not necessarily having my questions answered or knowing God's reasons but is having peace despite not having those answers. I'm not there yet but I look forward to the maturity I'll have hopefully gained through this.

It's 2005. Wow. 10 years since I graduated from high school. 5 years since I graduated from college.

Wow

Some 2005 hopes and prayers...

Speedy restoration and relief as well as hope in Christ for survivors in South East Asia

Stability and self-rule in Iraq

(this one's a stretch but I want to hope anyway) A Nelson Mandela type to replace Arafat as the leader of the Palestinian people

My niece accepted into the Spanish/English immersion elementary school

All my Uzbek friends to know the Lord

My mother to find peace of mind and peace with God

To move a couple more feet away from my one-dimensional understanding of God and closer to knowing the depths of His character and love

Find an awesome church and community in the US of A

All my friends to prosper in all the right ways

Greater maturity and depth as well as more self-acceptance

Learn how to make a website for myself and my students

Mentor inner city/refugee youth

Fall in love with my partner in life and ministry

Somehow today I acquired a strange anger that grew more pronounced as the day wore on. An underground, subtle anger undetectable to the naked eye but it was there nonetheless.

I just felt fed up with everything. Fed up with people wasting their lives. Fed up with poverty.

Will everyone just get their act together?!

Fed up with my family particularly my grandma and uncle. Realizing more and more that they've wasted their lives in so many ways, hiding away from life...taking the easy way instead of facing life with strength.

Fed up with hearing "thousands of lives would have been spared if the countries surrounding the Indian ocean would have had an alarm system set up like the fat, wealthy, greedy Western countries that don't give a d**n about anybody but alas South East Asia doesn't have the technology or the money. " Oh well for them! Who cares anyway? We're in our nice, clean homes driving our SUVs listening to our stupid shallow music.

Later I was reading statistics for at-risk youth in Pasadena. It's always the same. The patterns of poverty, ignorance and abuse taking their toll on youth. I've seen it again and again in my neighborhood, my church, the inner city mentoring program I worked for. We should all have the lyrics of this song memorized but still it goes on playing. I'm so tired of it.

At the end of the day I was so angry at it all and I knew all my musings we're slowly growing more personal. It's not just about the patterns of injustice in the world but it's about me. I feel angry about my own personal legacy of injustice. That my parents dropped the ball, that my grandmother doesn't have more common sense, that I've been to left pick up the pieces of this family atomic bomb.

Dead Are Put at 57,000 as Bodies Wash Ashore — Many Missing


woman mourning for deceased children

rendered homeless

woman mourning at burial site in Cuddalore, India


"The world's most powerful earthquake in more than 40 years erupted underwater off of the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Dec. 26. It sent walls of water barreling thousands of miles, killing a reported 57,000 people in almost a dozen countries." (Sources: New York Times reporters; The Associated Press; LandScan population database)

I wish it would have never happened.

I wish it wouldn't have happened on my b-day. (Sounds self-centered...I know. But it's the truth.)

Let's help out our fellow human beings in this incredible tragedy...

Donate:
(here are some organizations I recommend because they've been recommended to me by reliable sources)
World Relief

UNICEF

Christian Aid

Mercy Corp.

Gospel for Asia
(An organization that I regularly donate to that is very reliable. They are primarily an evangelistic organization; however, because they have so many missionaries in India they are involved in the relief effort.)

Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas party with some old school SD friends..


Speaking of cookie monster...Jewl, Joshua, June, Katrin and I all collaborated on making a ginger bread house. The walls kept falling down so alas we had to tie licorice ropes around the four walls to keep them up. But ours was still the coolest love shack with the most candy decorating its iced walls...thanks to Jewliet and Joshua.

Every now and then I just want to do weird, random things that crack me up in my own "joyce world".

But then I think, "Joyce, get a grip. After you've had your little fun you're going to turn around and no one's going to be laughing and everyone's going to have the "awe struck...we don't get it and you're weird" face."

Things like putting my blog in the "New York Asians" and "Black College Students" blogrings. Oh man, that strikes me as so funny. Especially, if I had the whitest, dorkiest close up nerdy white girl pic of myself on my blog. hahahhaaaaaa

Uh... Nobody's laughing.

I can just see it now. Someone scrolling through the pics and descriptions then seeing my overeager shiny white face. What the heck is this?

hahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahaa

A-hem...anyway...

I once heard a comedian share some thoughts along this line and I thought, "Oh my gosh, I always wonder stuff like that, too!" He said something like, "I wonder what would happen if you growled, "I'm a cookie monster" at a cop out your window as he drove by. What could the cop say? I'm pulling you over....because you said, "I'm a cookie monster" in a funny voice."

hahhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..... I totally wonder stuff like that and wish I had the guts to do it sometimes because it would be so funny. Sometimes I'll totally crack up to myself because I'll think what if I said this in the grocery store out loud. Haha That would be so funny because everyone would be so confused.

But anyway, I put an invisible stat tracker on my blog yesterday. It's the kind of tracker where I can see when people visit my site as well as what state/city they're viewing my blog from. So far that's been kind of trippy for me.

Someone's visiting my site from Delaware. Delaware. Where is Delaware, anyway? :-)

Sometimes I feel like I'm in God's Special Ed. program. Another person could do so many of things I've done and so many of the things I'm going to attempt so much better. I actually know people who would be much more effective and efficient than me in so many of my dreams.

I was finishing my application/essay for Biola and thinking about my dreams and aspirations for the future as I emailed the last of the documents. And I thought, "My dreams are SO much bigger than my ability to accomplish them. Who am I kidding? Who do I think I am?"

Then the thought occurred to me that this a good thing, so that God's power could be that much clearer. That's definitely the case in my life. I feel like I'm always pulling off these amazing things but it's just totally luck. Secretly, God and I are always having a good laugh at the folly of it all. That someone like me could have so many opportunities. It doesn't make sense. But God's equation doesn't make sense, when you add Him into the picture all the numbers go crazy.

For example:
poor carpentar+no training+poor unimportant family+3 years preaching=most influential world figure ever

But here's the real equation:
poor carpentar+no training+poor unimportant family+3 years preaching(God factor)=most influential world figure ever

Even though I know that in my weakness He is strong I still can't help feeling guilty sometimes that He has entrusted me with so much when I know others would do better than me with the resources He's given. However, at the same time I know God's program doesn't work that way. His program often doesn't work with the strong/talented but enlists the weak and broken that He may shine brighter.

So I go on depending on Him in my inadequacy that He may glare brighter as He shocks us all with what He can do with a weak, dependent underachiever.

Hail thee Lady Liberty! The Statue of Liberty and her trusty NYC tour guide, Chris!


Three babes on top of the Empire State building. brrrr... It was cold and blustery up there!

Well, more NYC pics to come in the coming weeks and hopefully a summary of my time there.

I was reading what I wrote in my last entry and reliving that memory still causes pain to pull tightly around my heart. I know the other Pohang girls feel similarly (even Sandy who left Korea to marry the man of her DREAMS) which leads me to wonder what was so powerful about that time? Of course, it was a great time with incredible people. But to be honest, I have lots of great friends (as do the other Pohang girls) and I've had a lot of amazing times in my life. But there's something special about the loss of that time.

Just theorizing. It was very concentrated. Just us four, for two years. We did everything together in a fish bowl of sorts.

Well, on to other things before my non-Pohang girl readers start to puke. :-)

Movies I need to see soon:
Lost in Translation
Garden State
House of Flying Daggers (same director as Hero. I've got to see this movie! It looks like more eye-candy from this director. Unfortunately, it's not showing anywhere in SD yet. And they're showing stupid stuff like Blade or whatever that dumb movie's name is instead of this movie!)
Elf (I thought it would be dumb but I saw an advertisement and it looked hilarious! Am I right?)

Okay, breaking news: I'm SLIGHTLY considering going to Biola this January instead of starting that web-design program that I've been bemoaning this whole semester. (bemoaning because I didn't start it in September like I had originally planned) I need to really pray about this and there are a lot of things to consider. I put it out there because I REALLY REALLY need people to pray for me about that. There is a high probability that I'll just stay with the current plan of starting the web-design program in January but just wanted to let you know what I’m thinking about.

Oh and Happy B-day to you, you live in a zoo, you smell like kim-chi and you even spell your name that way, too! (haha, get it? Sandy Chi + Scott Kim= Sandy Kim-chi) Happy B-day! (her b-day's on the 11th, everyone. Just in case you were wondering)

Well, happy b-day, Joanne. Hope you received my e-card. It just seems like yesterday that we were celebrating our December b-days all together at Lilac. I remember it clearly. We had our White Russians and our ice cream cake from Baskin Robin's. Sandy was wearing that colorful funky hat. I was video taping and wearing my new Handong Global University sweatshirt that I had just received from Joanne (which coincidently I'm wearing right now). "Phillylo" was just a distant, impossible twinkle in Sandy's eyes. End of semester grading stress was in full swing but hey, that never stopped us from having a good time. Just shows you how much can change in a year. Amazing! Well, happy b-day to Sandy, Joanne and me-the December birthday three! (and Ro you're cool even though your b-day is in March)

You know, my only beef with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is that it isn't the comedy it claims to be. It is a fascinating, unique movie with spectacular acting but a comedy it definitely is not. In an interview with an actor the other day on NPR Terry Gross made the comment that there are actors that you watch and think, "There's an actor." and then there are actors that you watch and think, "There's a normal person. That could be a person at Starbucks or at my work." The latter was definitely the case with Kate Winslet in this move. She was so convincing. I had no idea that she was that great of an actress. Jim Carey was also pretty good.

The movie had an almost hypnotic, dream-like quality to it. A lot of the movie takes place in Jim Carey's mind, his memories to be more specific. But his memories seem to take on a mind of their own much like our dreams do. We are in control of our dreams supposedly but they seem to interact with us in strange ways. At one point Jim Carey is telling the doctor that he no longer wants his memories of his girlfriend removed but the doctor responds it's too late I'm a memory in your head that you're talking to. As Jim Carey relives his memories that are being removed the memories start to distort similarly to how our dreams sometimes become distorted. It was actually a bit disturbing at times but I still enjoyed the movie. However, it won't be a movie I'll watch over and over again.

Okay, I promised myself that I'd reflect on some of the academic stuff I'm currently reading instead of just talking about silly stuff like the links in my profile! :-) But alas, I've run out of time and my stomach is rumbling. But I really, really am going to try to hash out some of my ideas that reading The Lexus and the Olive Tree is provoking in my next entry. Ha, famous last words of this blogger but I really am going to try. :-)

Tonight in class I was treated with an elementary-school-style rudeness that I haven't experienced for quite a while. We were all assigned a scenario and roles to play. The scenario involved a complicated land dispute, which involved the interests of a church, a land development corporation, a small business, the local government and the local community. I just so happened to represent the church in my group (the role was assigned to me). Unfortunately, I was the only one representing my claim in my group and I had to face down the corporates and the government all by my lonesome.

Regrettably, they happened to be slightly rude, vindictive %#!&s and to top it off they happen to work in this field so they deal with these kinds of scenarios everyday. So they had an axe to grind. So yeah, they laughed arrogantly in my face several times. It was grand. I was actually taken off guard by this because before this point I had considered everyone in the program to be exceptionally thoughtful, kind citizens. Well, I definitely saw the RUDE side of three of my female classmates. But to be honest, I had always kept a distance from these three girls and now I know why my intuition had led me that way.

I don't take things like that well. I actually think in that respect I'm easy prey. Perhaps people with thicker skins could have laughed it off or thought of pithy answers but not me. I started to lose my temper. I don't do well in situations where people don't really listen but just attack and laugh.

So I came home steaming about it. I've decided I'm going to email each of them individually when I've lost my sarcasm and calmly tell them I didn't appreciate their @#!$$%^. Just kidding. But I am going to email them and tell them I didn't appreciate how they acted during the project. I actually feel that is the healthy alternative as opposed to us all feeling a little uncomfortable around each other from now on.

Okay, this is not going to be a real entry. Just a half-hearted "i'm here and alive" entry. Here I am. I was going to write a real entry but instead I got sucked into clicking on the links in my profile. (The right corner of my blog for those that are totally oblivious to those sorts of things. You know who you are, joanne.) Did you know that if you put in your fav movies and the other stuff on your profile that blogger actually creates a link to everyone else that listed the same as you? It's been really interesting to read about the different people who like the same books, music and movies as me.

If I click Matrix I tend to find intellectual sci-fi people but if I click Anne of Green Gables the people that share this link tend to be women under 25. It's like doing Social Science using movies or people's interests.

Let's call it "interest clustering". Try it. Often people that like the same movies have a lot more in common than just movies according to Joyce Thompson's "Interest Clustering" study.

What really trips me out is when I click on a person who likes the same movie as me and they’ve listed the same movies and music as me. Then I'm like, "Hey, only I'm allowed to have that great of taste! Stop copying me!"

If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you need to get with the (blog) program!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

It doesn't seem real but I'm flying out to Baltimore tomorrow morning. I'll be staying with Sandy and Scott in Baltimore. Then later I'll be in NY seeing the sights and meeting up with new and old friends. Lucky me! I also got a round trip ticket for $233.41! So I can't stop bragging about that!

Hopefully, sometime soon I'll make time to reflect on the family Thanksgiving meal with its joys but also its frustrating post-election political discussions.
:-0

i can't believe this. i'm typing with only my right hand as we speak. why? I was peacefully chopping up veggies to make some vegetable juice when the plump carrot that i was about to hack into rolled over and instead I chopped into my left index finger.

oh yes. My first thought was, "Ahhhhhhhhh!" My second thought was, "oh crap, that is too deep. Ahh, i don't want any shots!" (i have a deep aversion to shots) I ran out to my grams and unc with a reddening napkin around my finger. At first I thought i might have to go to the emergency room but Dr. uncle and grams helped me wrap it with band-aids. It stopped bleeding and we decided that would be okay with a couple band-aids and disinfectant.

But the last half an hour I’ve been walking around my house with my left index finger in the air like I have a great idea or something. (It starts to pulse if I don't hold it up and it's gross feeling not to mention probably not healthy.) After our little emergency died down my grams looked at me walking around the house with my finger in the air and said, "All you need now is a light bulb above your head." Haha, very funny.

Suddenly something as simple as putting my hair in a bun has become a task. This is going to be interesting. Hopefully it will heal quickly.

Ironically, out of nowhere i've also started sneezing in combination with the sniffles. Look now, i'm starting to sound like a certain hypochondriac prof. at Handong. (hehe pohang girls know what i'm talking about)

Growing up is a weird thing. I just came back from my mentor's 50th birthday party. She and her family were a major part of the wallpaper of my teenage years. Those were tender, vulnerable years. I was awakening from the deep slumber of a shaky, unstable childhood. Yes, trying to find my way. Would I survive the perils of teenagehood without a lot of parental guidance? Thank God, I did. I've turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. :-)

My mentor had a lot to do with that, so perhaps that's part of the strain I feel when I hang out with her family and the people that filled that time in my life. Maybe when a butterfly immerges from a cocoon it doesn't want to remember that it used to be a fat, vulnerable caterpillar.

Most of the people there were part of the legacy of the OB years. I remember that humble beach house packed with visitors and teenagers on that extremely wide street. I used to just go over there randomly and grab the key off the nail in the community laundry room. I would let myself in sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, wake up my mentor to talk about life and my worries.

At the party I was talking with a girl from those years. She's now in her 20's but I remember when she was half my size. She and her mom lived down the street from the OB house. She was deathly quiet back then. I could tell that she was much more outgoing now but that it was easy to sink back into "quiet Tracy mode" when she was around this crowd. I could relate to her. That's the weird thing about growing up. Even though my mentor's son is now a foot taller than me it's hard for me to not see him as the 5 year old that kicked me from under the kitchen table.

And perhaps some people at that party looked at me in a similar way. Yes, as I looked around that room I felt the tugs of my ill-fitting past. It’s that residual memory that makes the growing up process weird. Being reminded of who you are in a historical, cumulative sense when you see yourself through the eyes of others and then comparing that with what you see when you look in the mirror.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. So I figure, "hey, let the pics do the talking." This is a picture tour of my last two weeks. In a couple days I'll write and fill in the gaps.

:-)

The Morning After
I can't believe George Bush won! A relief when it comes to some domestic issues but a nightmare for foreign policy!