Even Petra Academy has a popper. Even a popper believes in Faith, Hope and Love. And even though he doesn't have a proper writing skill, he still wants to convey things that he is inspired.
What happened last week was - as Richard would really likely to say - a blast, only this time it was really a blast literally. Here goes the story:
There was an indoor-soccer tournament in UCM (University of CentralMissouri, my college), and we Vietnamese formed a team of five and joint it, and I was the goalie. The other team was all Americans, which had two characteristics: they were huge, and they didn’t play soccer much. So as a matter of fact, we had to face big guys who were playing kick-ball, which was bad, especially for the goalie. So for the whole game, I tried my best to cover the wide goal desperately. When I caught the ball, the American attackers still tried to kick the ball, so I got kicked and fell many times pretty painfully. (The referees were also Americans, and they didn’t know the rule well neither, so there was no foul.)
When the game had only 25 seconds left, it was a tie: 5-5. I said to my self that I would not let them score anymore, even if it’d cost my life. And this was where I had “the blast”. In the very last second, one huge guy from the other team managed to get the ball through everyone, and before I knew it, the ball went straight to my face, one spectacle of my glasses got pulled out, and the metal part of the glasses was bend and cast away. I got totally knocked out as an epic loser. We lost.
Right after the game, I had to get to work, and there I acknowledged a new dimension of harshness, while walking under the freezing rain, with my glasses bended, my legs sore, and my right thumb broken.
I don’t remember how but, while watching the debate between McCain and Obama, suddenly I thought of the cute little Shadiah. She has been taught all the stuffs, including many things about American presidents from the beginning. But one day when I randomly asked her, “Shadiah, who is the current president of America?” .She hesitantly answered, “Abraham Lincoln?” I laughed, so she turned a bit shy and answered me again really softly, “Is it ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt?”
Well, it’s a bit surprising when she didn’t know who the current president was, while she probably knew many other presidential facts than I did (tales, maybe). She was a little girl anyway. This leads to a more interesting thing: what would a little girl likely to remember would be the things which are significant (like A. Lincoln), and things which are somehow related to her (such as a teddy bear). Things should be similar to little boys also, and if parents and teachers can take advantage of this, well, they can somewhat control what they want the children to learn and believe – useful though scary.
It’s Chelsea birthday yesterday, so, happy birthday to you, my dearest sister! (maybe she doesn’t even know about this blog, how amusing… ^^)
It’s me. It’s Anh. I know, I have not posted anything here for decades. And I surely have been feeling terribly sorry. Excuses? I suppose I have some, since lives change, and my life has changed surprisingly since the new semester started. But as Mama Sukut said, “The busiest person I’ve ever known is Mr. Gianforte, but he still blogs.” Therefore, no excuse is sufficient. Most people don’t accept lame excuses, but unfortunately I like giving explanations. So here is it.
For every single weekend I have been thinking, “I have to post something up there! I have to post something up there!” But then, just like T. Coraghessan Boyle describes how a murder response to a detective’s question “What happened next?” in his story Greasy Lake, “I don’t know, something came over me. Exactly.” Exactly. And failing to keep my promise takes away my courage to read others’ blogs, and things get only worse.
Because of that, couple minutes ago, I said to myself I had to fix this as soon as possible. And so, trying to forget all the tests and works and stuffs for a moment, I am typing something for this blog right now. Yeah, I am back.
Things need to be changed a bit. I can’t really blog every weekend as I wanted, so I’ll change to …Mr. Koenen’s solution, which means I will blog here whenever I do. Secondly, I will sadly change my purpose of blogging in this page. I will not always be “composing” here, but instead will do what Richard has suggested, “telling what happens”. Hopefully this will make things easier.
This sounds like a sad stuff, but I have to go now. I am being late for my job. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some to eat before working. So yeah, I will read and comment your blogs later. Good to be back again.
When I graduated from Petra, I clearly understood that I was an incomplete graduate, that I lacked so many things which any true Patrafied graduate should have had. Since then, I have been concerned how to become more sophisticated.
I was thinking about it again yesterday night, and suddenly realized one stunning fact: I have learned almost nothing from Mr. V’s Bible Interpretation class! I remember I have tried to ask several questions about Christianity, but they were all off-topic, so Mr. V denied to answer them, and Richard’s responses to my questions weren’t really efficient since I couldn’t understand much what he said back then. As a matter of fact, the only thing I think I’ve learned in that class was merely knowing “what’s going on” in the books Esther, Ruth, and the Gospels. I did not understand the “points” or any innate lesson from them, and I didn’t have any idea what the book Philippians was talking about. How crazy it truly was!
Surely, I am not going to criticize Mr. V at all, especially after watching “true” graduates making their speeches, any single one of them expressed how challenging Mr. V’s classes were, and how many things they have learned from him. However, I truly don’t think it was my fault neither (bad me.) I did try in that class and I got an A for the final, and a high B for the class. The only thing bothers me is that somehow I’ve missed a chance to be a better interpreter, and if only I could go back and attained his class again, I might have been appreciate the class much more (and maybe I would have mentioned Mr. V in my speech also.)
Back then when I received my final grades, I kept thinking that if only I have got an A in my Bible class, I would get straight A’s and become… another Richard (never mind about this.) As now I am thinking back, I am actually glad that it was not an A, or else things would have become really ridiculous.
The thought leads me to wonder if I really deserve all the A’s in the other classes. I realized the difference was that in those classes, I really learned things and my knowledge in those fields have improved a lot. Because of that, I was given A’s even though I was still so far behind my classmates. An A was not showing what level I was at, but how big the improvement I got. Realizing these, I am extremely thankful.
“Hey Anh, how're your grades in college?”
“Are you asking about the official grades or the real ones?”
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I wrote this post last night, after I went to bed about two hours.
When I was taking my Philosophy course, the professor defined “faith” as the belief without proof (By “proof” means through reasons and logics.) At some points, I can argue that almost everything does not have good proof, but of course we know what he means by this definition. Of course, Christians’ faith is not some unjustified fallacy, and we do have a lot of solid proofs that if only we regulate them with our minds, we may clearly feel that everything makes sense. However, not everyone can obtain such knowledge sufficiently, and since most people are rational thinkers, a slight doubt in a fragment of second of the nature of Christian faith can be unavoidable.
Shamefully, I myself did that sometimes, though I tried to “fix” that by making me become more sufficient with books and prayers. One thing I am so thankful is that any sincere prayer will surely be replied, and yes, He did. Now thinking back about it, I feel it inappropriately funny if some believer asks God for “proof”, but somehow I did ask, and He did give me some “proof”. Though I am going to share the story, it is not a testimony or anything close, but simply a “story” to share.
It happened when I was… flying to Montana for the graduation of Petra (yeah, life is comprehensive sometimes.) Sitting next to me was an old woman. We got to talk to each other, and I knew that she wasn’t an ordinary person, but an eighty nine year-old historian. Well, basically she was a Christian, and she was going to try to “evangelize” me, but since I already was, her story was amazingly significant to me. She was distinctively a rational scientist, many of which are strong atheists. The important thing was that she was a historian professor, and therefore, whatever she could find shouldn’t be too far from the truth. Indeed, from trying to deny God’s existence by finding proof, she was convinced herself by the fact that what the Bible said was surprisingly true. She told me a lot of stories, showing me how the three sons of Noah were really the ancestors of the three races, and many others (I just can’t re-demonstrate all of them efficiently.) And I realized, this was the proof given by God.
How do I know it? Can she tell lies? Can she surely be the historian only because she said that? Was all what she said reliable?... If I wanted to ask myself these, there could be much more, but then nothing can be come up with in the end, and probably the conversation wouldn’t have even existed. I understand what I saw and what I heard exactly how God wants me to. The clear explanation belongs to another dimension of knowledge, so it cannot be provided. The fact is, I saw the proof I needed, was amazed by that, and got my faith strengthened greatly.
It’s 1:16 a.m. right now, and I don’t know what I am getting at. However, I have the formula for my Christian life now: Keep trying, fall, try harder, and pray. Look at me, some of the hair of the black sheep is getting lighter!...
I clearly know that I did not post anything here for the last two weeks. After I had written Some notes for my readers and couldn’t keep the promise, I truly feel really sorry. There isn’t any excuse should be sufficient - it’s true, but maybe some explanation should be a bit helpful.
First of all, my lack of posting doesn’t really mean that I didn’t write anything at all. In fact, two of my entries for this blog have been done already, and I’ll explain why I didn’t post them later.
After I came back from Bozeman this summer, things have got crazy here. Since I was attending “squeezing” summer classes, one day in class was technically equal to one week in a normal semester. Therefore, skipping a week does hurt. Of course that I do not ever have any hesitation about visiting Bozeman, but then, philosophy final became a tough one to keep up with. I did fine, fortunately. However, my new class, Micro Economics, was even more intense (in a different way). Since I have to read a massively huge text book, it was even much harder for me to keep track with my reading plan! (Oh, my!)
Yeah, it only means that I have to try harder, I know. After all of the things I have learned so far, I understand that hard life is critically necessary. However, the real trouble was that I have been challenged (or I can say, attacked) psychologically and mentally for the last couple of weeks. I cannot tell the story, but since it happened, my finished entries turned out to be confusing that I wondered if I should post them or not (there are nothing wrong with them, though, it’s just me.) Anyway, I am doing fine for now. I am glad and thankful for that.
Wow, this retarded post is getting pretty long. Maybe a tiny random story in the end wouldn’t be too bad.
Last night I had a dream. I don’t know “how” and “why”, but I saw Kim and Rochelle in my dream (!). There were discussing about another girl X (I don’t remember/ know who she was). And the discussion was like this:
K: X is prettier than me! T_T
R: No, you are prettier than her. ^^
K: No! X is obviously prettier than me!
R: No, she is not. . .
So I jumped in and said, “It’s not really matter. Guys like pretty girls, but nice girls are the ones we want to get married.”
Hearing that, Kim and Rochelle was “oh, ok…”
Then I turned to Rochelle and said to her, “So yeah, you should be nice, Galadriel, and you should stop …being taller also.”
At that time, I felt awkward, “What in the world did I just say?!! O.o”
That’s the end of my weirdest story. Thanks for reading till here. I’ll try to post something better next time :D .
I have been keeping thinking about Mr. Koenen speech at the Petra 2008 graduation. In order to practice the idea of “sacrifice [myself] for ‘something’”, this was the first thing I came up with: The Prince Caspian Operation (!) (When you read to the fancy name of the operation, please imagine some ethic music appears along with it.) This is the second so-called “operation” since …the KKK operation, which surely wasn’t any racial stuff but simply was… how to get to Kim’s birthday party. The mission was accomplished barely in May 2007(*). However, the mission this time seems to be much tougher.
What in the world is “The Prince Caspian Operation”? – Well, everyone should recognize easily that it should involve somehow with the movie The Chronicle of Narnia: Prince Caspian. I saw any single person who was talking about this movie saying that it was perfectly great (one example should be Kim’s “prince caspian”). This just makes me want to watch the movie so badly. However, there are rumors about the difference between the movie and its original version in the book of C. S. Lewis. Also from personal experience of Harry Potter, I believe that it should be more beneficial if I read the book before watching the movie. The thing is, it’s not so easy to do that.
I am now working with the Bible (currently the book Judges). According to my plan, I will then finish the second half of Harry Potter and the deadly hallows, which have been delayed for more than a year. Until then, The Chronicle of Narnia will be read. Unfortunately, I am not the kind of reader who reads several books at the same time, and I don’t want to change my reading plan neither. Therefore, Mr. Prince in the movie will have to wait for a while. And that’s all there is to it.
That’s not an act of sacrifice! – Well, I think that’s a pretty challenging thing to do (and as I said in the title, it is LAME, isn’t it?). Besides, I suppose I need to get some guts before doing some greater sacrifices, and, I did said that was my first step (at the 1st paragraph) – means that I have been doing “something” else also.
So yeah, I need to finish this post for now, that I can continue the “mission”. Wish me luck! :D
* For more information, please contact Kim's mother, living in where-ever-it-is.
- Basically, popping is one kind of breakdancing - which pretty much defines who I was in Petra. Body waves and moonwalking are examples of it. Besides, "popper" sounds weird and ..."crunchy" to me, so I took it.
