well i'm back at the homestead for a month. a month can be a long time. i hope this one is long.
Christmas time has always been one of my favorite times of year, if not my favorite. i love the way the decorations look and the beauty of new snow. i love the candles and the smells of christmas cookies and evergreen and the fire burning in the fire place. i like the excitement surrounding the day and the way everyone puts in some extra effort to get along. i like the music and giving gifts. but the thought occured to me that perhaps i like the christmas season so much because it is so distinctive from the rest of the year. it has so many of its own traditions and it's own unique excitement. I know it's not wonderful to everyone and it stresses a lot of people out, but I certainly enjoy the predictable change of christmas time.
then of course there is the far more important aspect of christmas- the reason for the season Himself- who we should always keep in focus, especially this time of year. I really like advent because it reminds us that we are not just waiting and preparing for Christmas morning when we remember how Jesus arrived as a baby but also we are waiting and preparing for when Christ comes again. Advent does a good job of putting the incarnation in context. The incarnation itself is rather mind-boggling. God, the supreme being of the universe, completely good and perfect, taking on the form of a man, even a baby. He obviously got to pick at what time and in what place he wanted to arrive- He chose in an over-crowded small city, in a stable amongst the livestock, to a girl who had gotten pregnant out of wedlock. He knew Jesus would grow up poor, and probably the object of some speculation if people in His small town of Nazareth knew about his bastard status. All of this I like to think about during advent. I like to think of how our God humbled himself to this extent so that He could show God's love to us. Christmas is not just about a star, some shepherds, and a manger. It's about God breaking through to us in human flesh so we could know him.
I always think it's cheesy when people say "Jesus is the best present you can get for Christmas" because really there would be no Christmas without him and kids don't really feel like Jesus is much of a present since you can't hold him in your hands or put him in the playstation. Still I do think the sentiment is right, that Jesus is the gift of God to an undeserving world. do we earn our Christmas presents from our parents? I know I never did. I'm pretty sure that even if I was bad they still would have gotten me something. God took it a lot further by dieing for us while we were still undeserving and offensive. There really is no point in Christmas without Good Friday, and no point having Good Friday without Easter. I appreciate the plan and process of it all. It started so long ago- it was the hope of Israel and because of God's goodness and generosity, it became the hope of the gentiles as well. so as we approach Christmas, I hope we can keep Christ in his rightful place at the center. It's always a challenge for me because the other good things are so distracting. Especially this year as I get ready to leave (I feel like I just got back!).
I have a feeling these next 4 weeks of nothing will be very busy. I always manage to make my empty schedule full. If nothing else, I will definitely enjoy friends and family and read some good books.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
a little procrastination
so I should be going over some macroeconomics slides right now but i haven't yet worked up enough motivation. It's finals week and I can't believe how quickly this semester went by. Definitely the fastest yet. Anyway, in a few days i'll be done and i'll get to think about Christmas for a week. then i'll pack and get coffee with a bunch of people, spend as much time with stephen as his schedule allows, make a few bucks doing economics research, and fly off to sweden. it hardly seems real.
right now all i can think about are Peru's economic development policies from 1990 to 2000. i tried to study for econometrics this afternoon but it didn't feel very important. none of my exams really deserve much study time, at least that's how I feel at this point. i'm sick of doing work just like the rest of the student body. wouldn't it be nice if they could just teach us without any testing, sort of a 'get what you want for your tuition' sort of deal? unfortunately that would prohibit them from giving us degrees and i'm guessing that's what most people are here for. so economically, it would not be a good idea for the university, though I would enjoy it.
here are some preliminary thoughts on my trip to sweden which i will someday look back on to compare to my actual experiences. I expect it to be expensive but I really hope I can get over that and not be overly frugal so that I don't miss out on too many once-in-a-lifetime experiences. this is probably the only point in my life that i can afford to deplete my savings on european adventures so why not? the more i think about grad school, the more i think i won't go straight into it.
i will probably be pretty lonely at times. i know some alone time will do me good though I'm not sure how i'll react to being away so long (2 months more than I was in Peru). I'd like to do a lot of reading- more classics and some philosophy perhaps. i'm hoping that swedes sit in cafes and read. in peru it wasn't common at all. if I get homesick I suppose I can wonder around in IKEA or H&M. Too bad the exchange rate these days is pretty poor.
Exchange rates, interest rates, wage rates- all things I should be studying at this moment. It really is true that economics relates to almost every aspect of life. I can't help but look at life in terms of supply and demand, the free rider problem, and diminishing returns. I often wonder how I viewed the world before everything fell into rather neat economic graphs. Note to self: take an econometrics grad course next year.
Okay well perhaps I'll get back to work. Sweden still seems like an abstraction most of the time and the workload sitting on my shoulders prohibits me from ignoring the here and now. it doesn't really feel like Christmas time.
right now all i can think about are Peru's economic development policies from 1990 to 2000. i tried to study for econometrics this afternoon but it didn't feel very important. none of my exams really deserve much study time, at least that's how I feel at this point. i'm sick of doing work just like the rest of the student body. wouldn't it be nice if they could just teach us without any testing, sort of a 'get what you want for your tuition' sort of deal? unfortunately that would prohibit them from giving us degrees and i'm guessing that's what most people are here for. so economically, it would not be a good idea for the university, though I would enjoy it.
here are some preliminary thoughts on my trip to sweden which i will someday look back on to compare to my actual experiences. I expect it to be expensive but I really hope I can get over that and not be overly frugal so that I don't miss out on too many once-in-a-lifetime experiences. this is probably the only point in my life that i can afford to deplete my savings on european adventures so why not? the more i think about grad school, the more i think i won't go straight into it.
i will probably be pretty lonely at times. i know some alone time will do me good though I'm not sure how i'll react to being away so long (2 months more than I was in Peru). I'd like to do a lot of reading- more classics and some philosophy perhaps. i'm hoping that swedes sit in cafes and read. in peru it wasn't common at all. if I get homesick I suppose I can wonder around in IKEA or H&M. Too bad the exchange rate these days is pretty poor.
Exchange rates, interest rates, wage rates- all things I should be studying at this moment. It really is true that economics relates to almost every aspect of life. I can't help but look at life in terms of supply and demand, the free rider problem, and diminishing returns. I often wonder how I viewed the world before everything fell into rather neat economic graphs. Note to self: take an econometrics grad course next year.
Okay well perhaps I'll get back to work. Sweden still seems like an abstraction most of the time and the workload sitting on my shoulders prohibits me from ignoring the here and now. it doesn't really feel like Christmas time.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
turnips and meat stuffing
change always surprises me. thanksgiving snuck up on me this year and as with anything that lacks a long excitement-filled count down period, it passed almost like any other day. don't get me wrong, it was nice to sit around with my family and catch up, but mostly it just reinforced my feeling that everything around me is changing at an ever accelerating pace as I continue to age. Sometimes I feel like the world should just stand still, in time and pose, while I get older and figure everything out. "little" michael, as we continue to call him, wasn't around this year because he joined the air force and is down in Florida training. my brother owns a condo now and when asked what he wants for Christmas, he said decorations for his house. tim and chris are both renting houses and dan will probably move in with chris after he graduates. my sis and tory are applying to college. Are my memories just so vivid? why does it feel like it was just yesterday that we were crawling around in Nana's family room pretending to be zoo animals or serving fake food to all the grown ups from our restaurant?
I still feel like my own life is like the marble I used to drop into the funnel of the marble works; it starts off going slowly around the wide rim of the funnel and gets faster and faster as it spins towards the bottom. again, the change is good, really good. it's just surprising. i keep making decisions that are keeping me on track (for what, i don't know exactly) or perhaps I'm not making decisions consciously so much as going along with what comes. Doing research is a good example. I asked one of my econ professors if she knew of any internships related to econ that I could look into for the summer. she told me she knew the director of the research center at uconn was looking for workers at the moment, sent me to him with a great recommendation, and the next thing I know I'm learning all about connecticut's healthcare system and contacting doctors' and dentists' associations and tracking down data sources. It all just sort of happened.
Sweden seems less real to me than my past trips. brazil, mexico, spain, peru- all were embarked on with the main purpose of serving God. Sweden is for study abroad, for me to travel and "see the world". It almost feels selfish, and perhaps that is why it still seems so abstract. it's also longer. really i get a little freaked out just thinking about it. i know i'll enjoy it but that it will also be hard. i also know that every time I come home, home tastes that much sweeter. when i arrived home from peru, i asked myself why i'm always in such a rush to leave. if this spring semester wasn't the best time, school speaking, to study abroad, i would've seriously considered pushing it back a little further because I've so enjoyed being home these last few months.
i think the change outside me just feels that much bigger because the change in my life seems so big. change used to be gradual. the story might vary a little from time to time, but it always had the same characters and same basic plot. now it has new characters (whom i am very thankful for) and new story lines, and the protagonist keeps running off to a new setting every few months. it is good that everyone else's worlds are changing and growing too- just hard to take it all in sometimes.
we still have turnips and meat stuffing every thanksgiving because my grandpa liked them. he died when i was seven. i can understand why nana still wants to have them tho (aside from the fact that a few of us have developed a taste for them), amidst the change in life, it's nice to keep some little things constant- i think it's calming to the human soul.
I still feel like my own life is like the marble I used to drop into the funnel of the marble works; it starts off going slowly around the wide rim of the funnel and gets faster and faster as it spins towards the bottom. again, the change is good, really good. it's just surprising. i keep making decisions that are keeping me on track (for what, i don't know exactly) or perhaps I'm not making decisions consciously so much as going along with what comes. Doing research is a good example. I asked one of my econ professors if she knew of any internships related to econ that I could look into for the summer. she told me she knew the director of the research center at uconn was looking for workers at the moment, sent me to him with a great recommendation, and the next thing I know I'm learning all about connecticut's healthcare system and contacting doctors' and dentists' associations and tracking down data sources. It all just sort of happened.
Sweden seems less real to me than my past trips. brazil, mexico, spain, peru- all were embarked on with the main purpose of serving God. Sweden is for study abroad, for me to travel and "see the world". It almost feels selfish, and perhaps that is why it still seems so abstract. it's also longer. really i get a little freaked out just thinking about it. i know i'll enjoy it but that it will also be hard. i also know that every time I come home, home tastes that much sweeter. when i arrived home from peru, i asked myself why i'm always in such a rush to leave. if this spring semester wasn't the best time, school speaking, to study abroad, i would've seriously considered pushing it back a little further because I've so enjoyed being home these last few months.
i think the change outside me just feels that much bigger because the change in my life seems so big. change used to be gradual. the story might vary a little from time to time, but it always had the same characters and same basic plot. now it has new characters (whom i am very thankful for) and new story lines, and the protagonist keeps running off to a new setting every few months. it is good that everyone else's worlds are changing and growing too- just hard to take it all in sometimes.
we still have turnips and meat stuffing every thanksgiving because my grandpa liked them. he died when i was seven. i can understand why nana still wants to have them tho (aside from the fact that a few of us have developed a taste for them), amidst the change in life, it's nice to keep some little things constant- i think it's calming to the human soul.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
note to self: reduce stress
today i had a killer migraine. woke up with a headache at 9 and it was a migraine by 10:30. luckily I had already planned to skip my 12:00 class. I tried to be productive while laying in bed for a bit (I got this new job doing economics research! really exciting but challenging) but my brain just doesn't function with that level of pain. Just thinking about it brings me back to this summer, one night when I had a horrible migraine and was laying in Gringolandia (the intern room) under the desk with all the lights off between classes. When my class started at 7:15 I smiled and taught, and while my students did group work I went to the bathroom to throw up.
well the fire alarm just went off and I stood outside in the misty night for a while. i'm so glad i wasn't in great pain then like i was the rest of the day. i guess that's a blessing, but this whole day feels like it can be put in the category of "pain management". to someone who spends her life calculating opportunity cost, the fact that i had so much to do today just added to my physical pain.
lessons i should (and hopefully will) take from today and other days like it: think big picture, remember that history and econometrics exams do not validate me, and find ways to reduce stress. remember to breathe. find time for things i like and care about even at the expense of school work.
while trying to get my mind off the pain today i watched 'goodnight and goodluck' about television during the red scare. i appreciate a very ideological movie like that every now and then. the media can be a tool for good but so often sticks to what sells to an entertainment-seeking public. i don't blame them for trying to make money. its just hard for your average citizen to sort through the masses of information out there to know what's going on and what matters. I am often overwhelmed by the magnitude of information out there, so much of which I have a craving to know and understand, but even if I didn't take classes or work and just spent all day soaking up current events and good literature, I wouldn't begin to grasp even 1% of what there is to know (just about topics i find interesting!) No wonder our society is so cliquish- people have to specialize to know anything these days, but at the exclusion of knowing about a wide breadth of topics. I may just have to give up on being 'well-rounded' one of these days. Perhaps I already have.
well the fire alarm just went off and I stood outside in the misty night for a while. i'm so glad i wasn't in great pain then like i was the rest of the day. i guess that's a blessing, but this whole day feels like it can be put in the category of "pain management". to someone who spends her life calculating opportunity cost, the fact that i had so much to do today just added to my physical pain.
lessons i should (and hopefully will) take from today and other days like it: think big picture, remember that history and econometrics exams do not validate me, and find ways to reduce stress. remember to breathe. find time for things i like and care about even at the expense of school work.
while trying to get my mind off the pain today i watched 'goodnight and goodluck' about television during the red scare. i appreciate a very ideological movie like that every now and then. the media can be a tool for good but so often sticks to what sells to an entertainment-seeking public. i don't blame them for trying to make money. its just hard for your average citizen to sort through the masses of information out there to know what's going on and what matters. I am often overwhelmed by the magnitude of information out there, so much of which I have a craving to know and understand, but even if I didn't take classes or work and just spent all day soaking up current events and good literature, I wouldn't begin to grasp even 1% of what there is to know (just about topics i find interesting!) No wonder our society is so cliquish- people have to specialize to know anything these days, but at the exclusion of knowing about a wide breadth of topics. I may just have to give up on being 'well-rounded' one of these days. Perhaps I already have.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
change
if i saw my current life walking down the street two years ago, there is no chance i would have recognized myself. that to say that i'm so glad God is sovereign and that he sees how all the pieces fit because i certainly don't. i feel like i spend so many of my days being pleasantly surprised by the little twists and turns my life is taking, which is doing a lot to strengthen my belief in God's goodness. all this is very vague but we can chat it up if you want specifics. i just felt like I had to capture for myself my overriding mood of this last month and a half which has been "pleasantly surprised". When I finally stopped trying so hard, good things just walked up to me and said "hello". Despite all my busyness, which never seems to go away, in my utmost I feel more restful and at peace than I have in years. If only I could remember that when my overanalyzing mind decides to ponder the future- that undefined set of possibilities.
Time is both racing and strolling along on a beautiful fall day. My life with Stephen is already so completely different than it was without him; that was less than two months ago. I suppose I should just learn the lesson God is teaching me and trust him and the plans he has for me, despite all the unknowns. What was a bit of "running away" to Sweden is definitely no longer serving the same purpose, but hopefully God has a place for those 5 long months of cold and darkness in his master plan.
Time is both racing and strolling along on a beautiful fall day. My life with Stephen is already so completely different than it was without him; that was less than two months ago. I suppose I should just learn the lesson God is teaching me and trust him and the plans he has for me, despite all the unknowns. What was a bit of "running away" to Sweden is definitely no longer serving the same purpose, but hopefully God has a place for those 5 long months of cold and darkness in his master plan.
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