Dalat Vietnam

One of my sister's is currently vacationing in Vietnam. She had been in Cambodia for the last 8 months on a cross-cultural studies internship. Now that her team is at the halfway point (of their 16 month internships), they have 2 wks to explore the surrounding countries. Hope chose to backpack around Vietnam.

She just sent me a Skype message, just long enough to say she was in Dalat and was going to be renting a motorcycle to go up into the mountains today.

I try not to worry, but I'm not going to lie: I do. :)

off and running...

so today began a season of running again. i love to run, but i had two thoughts today:

1) wow i have gotten way more out of shape than i thought (let's just say that running through two U2 songs was about all i could handle)

2) don't ever think lancaster city is flat.

none the less, i'm so glad to be off and going again, and i am loving the beautiful trees & yards around where i am...

Culture Shock

so matt & i recently moved into our new home in "the city" of lancaster and are settling in.

we were attracted to the city for a few reasons. a few in particular stand out:

1) just the pull of trying something different

2) being around the beauty of diversity

3) the option to do fun things like walk to our favorite coffeeshop or take the dog with us to buy groceries at market on saturdays

4) the desire to step out of our white suburban church bubble and be in relationship and close vicinity with people who are coming from different backgrounds than we are.

we're so glad we moved here.

but i've been surprised by how much of a culture shock it has been.

i think my view of the city had been a little bit through rose colored glasses. my periodic trips into the city usually were to places like prince street cafe or annie bailey's--places that only give you a glimpse into a segment of the city.

great example: yesterday i was @ prince st cafe where i had a meeting with someone. i stuck around for a while after to work on some projects and reading. i looked around and realized why prince st was comfortable to me: it's mostly like me. they play music i like. it's a nice clean classy artsy environment. people like the blond teenager who was at the table next to mine walk in wearing abercrombie, pulling out their new iphones, and i'm maybe a little jealous. the guy behind me has his macbook out on the table working on something just like i am. i realize there's not much ethnic diversity there.

this is a big contrast to when i went to the grocery store a few blocks from my house. it's in an area where people tell you that you don't want to live. it was a little dingy inside and didn't have the upscale organic and specialty foods that make me like a grocery store. when i was standing in line to check out, there were people from about 5 different ethnic background within sight.

i couldn't get away from this nagging question of if i should stick to places like prince st where i'm comfortable, or if i should be embracing the places that are different than me. the places that aren't always as comfortable because they're unknown, out of my ordinary encounters, out of my ordinary standards.

don't get me wrong, i love diversity. but i'm realizing just how much i'm around white middle class people, so when i'm around someone from a different economic status or a different ethnicity, it can be uncomfortable because i'm not used to it.

i'm realizing that i also have a lot of stereotypes.

lord please save me from this.

i get incredibly angry when i hear someone discriminating against someone else because of their ethnicity, yet some of the assumptions still find their way into my thinking. when i'm stopped at a light, i'm more likely to be nervous about someone dressed hip hop or gangster walking toward my car than i am about someone wearing a polo and khakis. i'm more nervous about a group of young african american men than i am about a group of young white men.

again, lord please save me from this. may i find my place in the city.

A taste of heaven...

I've been at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit Conference for the last day or two. We've been hearing great speakers like Michael Porter, Harvard Business Professor, Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP, and Colin Powell speaking on various leadership issues. It has been a great time of continued learning and inspiration as a leader.

Between speakers, they have been touching on various social issues and artists. Yesterday they had the African Children's Choir perform--a group of African orphaned children who travel the world raising money and representing the plight of all African children. There's something about Africa and something about these issues that deeply touches my heart. It made me cry but not just mourning for the pain of the children--that was definitely there, but there were also tears for the beauty of their dancing, their singing, and their childlike joy. There were also tears for the beauty of the justice being brought to the world through their music. Justice of the hope and the education it provides to children. I think this is a little glimpse of what the world was meant to be--a little taste of heaven.

Today, they opened with Erik Mongrain, a Canadian musician and composer. He began playing and I think everyone was caught in this beautiful moment of surprise over the beauty and innovation of his music. It made me cry. This is just a taste of what the world was designed to be I think--a little taste of heaven.

Check it out:
http://erikmongrain.com/News.asp

Well, I better start listening again. :)

moving on...again...

i continually shift to new online methods of communication. i start one because i think it's what everyone else is doing, but then after a few months or years i grow bored of it and move on to the latest and greatest. it started with just a plain old email account--junomail. those were the good old days. i moved on to the world of dsl and along with it to new email accounts--hotmail, yahoo, gmail. whenever one became overwhelmed with junk mail, i would create a new one. then xanga was all the craze it seemed, so i created my very first blog. i posted faithfully at first, but the musings waned until they were months apart. by then, everyone was on myspace, so myspace it was. my excuse was that i couldn't post on people's blogs without having a myspace of my own. after about a year of myspace, i was informed by the students i worked with that myspace was no longer "it". "everyone is on facebook," they told me. at some point in the past, i had created a facebook account that had never caught on. i pulled it off the shelf and dusted off my account. this is where i am now, keeping in touch on facebook. "but i have no good place to blog," i told myself. (i always hated how messy myspace looked and admired my friend's clean--although out of touch i thought--blogger sites). so blogger and facebook it is. i think this will be the greatest arrangement of all...at least for now.