On a more serious note...

Today on the bus ride home, Dane pointed out some interesting things to me regarding Moses 4:1 and 2 which say:

1 - And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begottten, is the same of which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying - behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.
2 - But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me - Father, they will be done, and the glory be thine forever.

In verse 1, if you count how many times it says I and me, it comes out to be 5 times but Christ responds with "Thy will be done and the glory be thine forever." This just caused me to reflect upon how many times I do things for myself and worry about me and I.

Tonight I found myself comparing my worst to others best - as my mother calls it, and I realized that this thought is the selfish and destructing thinking that Satan would have us do - the Me's and I's. I decided to go to the park and read and reflect and here is what I came up with:

Mines the Best

The human soul finds short triumph when the ego boosting battles are won.
The daughter fighting the mother until the belittling of self worth leaves the mother relentless to give up causes the daughter to exclaim carelessly, "I won, I'm the best."
The friend who betrays a confidence to edify the need for social growth while in the midst of the group feels that "they are the best."
The boy who smugly grins, knowing he is smarter then his classmates after the grades are given deems his worth to be "above the rest."
These are they who think of me and I.

Then there is He who sees past the I'ms and the whines.
He who confidentially said "let the glory be thine."
He died for these, and those, because he was kind - this was the test.
Because His Son lovingly overcame the world, the Father can say, "Mines the Best."

Away for the Weekend

This past weekend, I was lucky enough to go on a fun excursion to see some fireflies with friends. Since the camera is in the process of being fixed, I had to steal one from Dane to take a few pics. Here you are -

Self shot
Kids blowing bubbles in the streets

We stayed at a hostel - they didn't tell us that it was the crawl space of their house. It was pretty sweet.

From left to right is Princess, Me, Arwyn, Penny, and Janea. On top is Dane sporting his new Dew Rag hat that we picked out.

Sweet Video

My mommy told me about this new version of Love Story and viva la vida by Jon Schmidt and I fell in love. Don't forget to turn off the volume for the music player on the right. Here it is:

Many of you may wonder what I do for fun here at Berhan when I'm not traipsing around the mountains of Taiwan, eating pigs blood/intestine, teaching kids a language that will be of no value to them once they are finished learning it, etc. Well, here you will get a chance to see what I do with my spare time.

Every once and a while, and always on Thursdays, I get this urge to fight. We started a little something called Thursday night fight night towards the middle of the semester when I had too much energy to know what to do with.

This is me and my arch nemesis Jenny Hoskins getting ready to wrestle. She's really scared of me, you can tell.

She only won because I let her beat me. if I hadn't been laughing so hard, who knows what her fate would have been.

At this point, my friend Joseph stepped in to show me a thing or two about wrestling. What he doesn't know is that although I appear to be quite bad, I'm actually a wrestling pro, I just am pretending to not be good so that I can catch them all by surprise at a later date.

After it was all said and done, I decided to fly like an airplane with my friend Molly.

Birthday Birthday Birthday

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday dear Jaimie, Happy Birthday to me!

For my birthday bash, I went to the happiest place on earth, Yammay! The most amazing thing about Asia is that because the people here are such dedicated workers and scholars, when you go to a place like the theme park nobody is there. I experienced both the ride park and water park without any lines, crowds, and had the ability to go on the boomerang waterslide 7 times in a row. I didn't complain.

Sorry Mom!

Sometimes I like to do wild and adventurous things - then make sure only to tell my Mother about it after I've done it. If you watch the video, you will see example of one such occasion. Sorry Mom.

Dead Camera

Sadly enough, my camera died. The poor little thing was sat upon my shelf in working condition the night before its death and then the next morning, I awoke to find that the lens was unable to focus correctly causing my camera to shut off as soon as I turn it on. This sudden death will probably cause a drastic decrease in my postings.

In other current news, I am still waiting to find out if I am going to extend to teach a little bit longer this summer. The benefits of extending would be that I would be able to afford to go to school for an entire semester without having to work, plus I would be able to pay off my car. If I don't extend, I might be forced to take out a small student loan (probably about $500 so not much really). I just have to hear back from the school to see what the need/want for summer. I don't think I want to stay, but it would probably be better for me if I did financially.

Oh yeah, and feliz Cinco De Mayo! We're having a fiesta tonight to celebrate this Mexican Holiday. Hurray for Mexican independence.