home on the range

went home this past weekend (10.19 - 10.22) for mom's bday! we went to potato patch for dinner. it's a soul food restaurant in the woodlands area that serves hot buns by literally THROWing them to hungry guests

finally got to see miss hsu :)

more than a city in the middle east... congrats dubya! also got to see brenda :)

david crowder and third day concert

san francisco!

jen was on a business trip in the bay area so she generously flew me up to hang out with her :) it's awesome having a sister that works, haha.

san francisco is a really cool city and you should visit if you ever get the chance. it's funny though because the only touristy thing we did was visit pier 39 :p it's a famous pier in san fran where the sea lions rightfully claimed as THEIR home

the rest of the time was mostly spent with my godfather. he took us to eat seafood, chinese food, and indian food. yum!

we also got to see our family in oakland. we ate dim sum for 4 hours! dim sum was delicious and i had a few dishes for the first time. our cousins, jason & sharon, took us around too but i dont have pictures of that. we had sushi, dirty martini bar & pizza afterwards, and chicken and waffles.

overall, san francisco was a good mini-vacation summed up as good food, family, and godfather time :)

happy bday mommy!

cultural dinner

the STIMers invited people over to eat east asian and filipino food, learn more about crossing cultures, be entertained with music and dancing, and hear more in-depth about each STIMers testimony. we had about 40 people come! my favorite part of the evening was seeing my friends learn new things, feeling supported, cooking yummy filipino food that has become a comfort food to me, and fellowshiping :). in all honesty, the dinner was a lot of work but definitely worth it. i hope more people will go on STIM after getting a better taste of the STIM program from this cultural dinner!

can i get a...

fall festival party

we got all the international students together and threw a fall festival party filled with sharing what we're thankful for, discussing different traditions during the fall, pumpkin carving, and eating :p

hoe down

i <3 amanda moon for taking the only picture of mark and i when he came to visit! it was a GREAT surprise :)

STIM 4 - group pic

stagecoach inn

to celebrate our victory in finishing STIM, we stopped by the famous stagecoach inn. supposedly it's a landmark in texas because some famous texas heros have stopped here to eat...or something like that.

haha, jenny...

one of the main reasons we went to stagecoach inn and paid a whooping $40 for lunch was for this dessert called strawberry kiss. you can decide yourself if it was worth it

happy bday peter!

surprise! we walk in at midnight and peter washes the dishes until 12:30am :p

peter & mok have a nice place. yay for friends!

cheers! no cups? use bowls.

top 3 excerpts from Life After God

the richness of the rain made me feel safe and protected; i have always considered the rain to be healing - a blanket - the comfort of a friend. without at least some rain in any given day, or at least a cloud or two in the horizon, i feel overwhelmed by the information of sunlight and yearn for the vital, muffling gift of falling water.

my mind then wandered. i thought of this: i thought of how every day each of us experiences a few little moments that have just a bit more resonance than other moments - we hear a word that sticks in our mind - or maybe we have a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly - we share a hotel elevator with a bride in her veils, say, or a stranger gives us a piece of bread to feed to the mallard ducks in the laggon; a small child starts a conversation with us in a dairy queen - or we have an episode like the one i had with the m&m cars back at the husky station.
and if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we would see certain trends emerge from our collection - certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us. we would realize that we have been having another life altogether, one we didnt even know was going on inside us. and maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real - this clunky day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal. so just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives.

there was this group of blind people, with white canes and everything - a C.N.I.B tour or something - and they heard us coming, and they motioned for us to stop, and we did. then they handed Mark a camera. they asked Mark to take their picture.
blind people?
exactly. but the strange thing was, they still believed in sight. in pictures. i'm thinking that's not a bad attitude.