Green

I'm wondering if my obsession with green is becoming abnormal. I just realized how extensively it's pervaded my life:

My Room

My iPod

My Shirt Drawer (my boxers drawer is similar)

My Laptop Background

My Firefox Theme

My Glasses

There's plenty more, too (just check the blogger theme). What's interesting is that if you asked me what my favorite color was when I was a kid I probably would have said red. I don't even remember transitioning into having a new favorite color. What's even more interesting is that I'm slightly red-green colorblind, and they detected it when I turned 21.

In any case, the jasper is the birthstone for May babies. Just food for thought.

Experiment

Liked this song from small group, wanted to work out a harmony, and I'm messing around with this software on my new laptop.

To Love the Lord

It sounds terrible full volume. Cut it to half or lower if you're actually going to listen to it (this was more for me than for you).

Training 8-24 to 8-26

I might have mentioned this to some people, but my sister is taking a two-year break from school/work to attend a bible study school in Southern California. I'm actually not sure how to describe it (it's called the Full Time Training). It's not exactly a seminary because its purpose isn't to train people to have careers as ministers, priests, etc... - After graduating, some of the students do go on to serve full-time all over the world, but many go back to graduate schools or work full-time. I wouldn't call it a school of theology either because the students (trainees) go out to preach the gospel, meet with Christian students on campuses, and join small group meetings. I guess it's interesting because it's a comprehensive way to be constituted with the truths in the bible, experience God as life, and mature in the Lord. Anyway, I had a three day gap in my crazy summer so I decided to go visit my sister and some other church friends who went there. Plus, I wanted to check it out for a few days.

They call it "short-terming." Basically, you go for however long you want and attend the classes and follow the schedule of the training. Which, by the way, is kind of intense:

6 AM: Wake up, contact the Lord, dress, clean room

7-7:20 AM: Breakfast

7:20-7:55 AM: Morning Revival (This is a time of prayer, reading the bible, etc...)

8-9:30 AM: Class 1

9:30-9:45 AM: Break

9:45-11 AM: Class 2

11:30-12 NOON: Lunch

12:15-2:45 PM: Fellowship with team/Gospel Preaching

3-4 PM: Rest

4:15-4:45 PM: Study

4:45-5:45 PM: Greek Class (so you can read the original bible manuscripts)

5:45-6:15 PM: Dinner

7-9:30 PM: Meeting

10-10:15 PM: Prayer in homes

10:30 PM Sleep

It's funny. I was expecting to feel really awkward there because I'm usually weirded out by the idea of places like this, but it felt pretty normal from day one. Sure, there are some weird/annoying people but I didn't meet anybody more eccentric than the sort of people you'd find at CAL (refering to the students, not to people off the streets). It definitely helped that I knew some people there. If you asked me 6 months ago if I could see myself at a place like this I would have laughed in your face, but I'm really considering doing something like this in the future.

A little background: I grew up Christian, but I definitely wasn't the best Christian. I read the bible as a kid, went to church, etc...but as I got older I think I just wanted to be "normal." I probably realized at some point that some "religious" people can be a little (or a lot) odd, and if you know me at all you probably realize that I don't like to stick out. Also, I didn't like the connotation of being someone who was overbearing or proselytizing. As I got older, God began to play less of a role in my life - my time in the word and prayer decreased, and I kinda just went to church meetings as a ritual. I believed that God was real because of biblical evidence and how He worked in others, but God was never really real to ME. That changed over the past year.

So it seemed like a good time to try this bible school (that's what I'm going to call it) out. Here's my take on my three-day training experience: the depth of the truth in the classes was unlike anything I've seen (I'll post some bits later), gospel preaching for the first time was interesting (I like talking to people, but I've never talked to strangers about God before), and I want to learn Greek now. The environment of the Training is pretty strict (I forgot to mention that internet access is limited to mondays and phone use is limited to breaks - open to fellowship, though) and there aren't TVs, but it's pretty effective at ensuring that the people who are there mean business.

I guess I just wanted to get this outta my system and clarify any unusualness in my behavior during the past whatever span of time. I'm not crazy. It's just that this is the most satisfied I've been in my life and I don't want this feeling to fade away.

Sublimating.

Every once in a while I fall into an artistic mode and I paint/sketch for a few days. It's kinda like El Nino because it happens once every few years, but it's a lot less destructive. Actually, I guess it's more like when your mom starts using the bread machine.

Anyway, these are two things that I did over the past few days:



I didn't sketch the Parisian scene, but I did purchase it for like 2 euros in France. I think I mentioned that in my Europe blogs. Here's how it looks after I watercolored it. I dunno if I like it yet because it's a little too colorful and happy. Ideally, it would be cool if I could do the "night version" of it, but I don't have the skillage.



The next one was inspired by the decor of a Japanese Restaurant I ate at over the weekend. After David took the GREs this Saturday, a bunch of the bros and I took him to Yojimbo, a small Japanese restaurant in Alameda. It was a pretty cool place, with good music and nice paintings using black acryllic on whitewashed particle board sheets:





This is a bit of a tangent, but I'd recommend the place. The food was tasty (I'd go for the chirashi or ramen when I go back), and the service was good. Our food came a little late, which was understandable because we were a party of eight in a pretty small hole-in-the-wall place, and when the check came they gave us a 10% discount because of it. Pretty solid.

Anyway, on my way home I stopped by Home Depot and got cheap sheets of wood from the scrap pile along with some white paint. Then I went to Michaels and got red, blue, yellow, black, and white acryllic paint. I like mixing colors.

This is the first thing I came up with:



Cats like fish, right? I was going to paint a fish eating sushi before I realized how wrong that would be. I'm not going to paint the cat.

That's all for now. BUT I do have two more sheets of wood that I painted white. I'll post whatever I come up with when I come up with it.

Dreams

I totally forgot about this dream I had last night until I got to work. At first, I didn't even think it was a dream until I started to remember the supernatural elements in it:

I was in an auditorium watching a woman dancing on stage. It started out normally, but then a stream of water began spraying from the floor of the stage in a perfect arc. She leaped toward it and ran over the arc of water like it was a ramp, dancing with the quickest, lightest steps. I'd describe her as being like a hummingbird, only her movements weren't spastic or chaotic - whatever she was wearing was like a flowing river of white silk behind her.

The overall lighting was a peaceful midnight blue, and even though there was a spotlight on her, it seemed like the only light in the auditorium was from the moon.

When she got to the other side of the arc, the stream of water turned into falling snow, which began to blanket the stage. The lighting changed to a blinding white light. The woman danced under the falling snow for a few meters of the music, and then the lights in the auditorium faded away as the music died down.

It was beautiful beyond words, but... why???

I almost want to sketch a picture of it or something

---

On another note, my sister texted me last night to let me know that she got back from Europe.

"I just landed in lax :( ddnt want to come back"

I didn't get it until this morning because I went to sleep really early last night, but it made me feel awful when I saw it this morning because I know exactly how she feels - it made me recall how I felt during my last night in Athens and on the flight back home. I'm realizing that if I don't go back, that will have been the happiest time of my life.

I'm glad she had an awesome time, though. I've been praying for her and the Lord's move in Europe.

Now I have this rain cloud over me at work. I shouldn't be blogging, but I had to get it out of my system. I'll stay a little later today.