So yesterday got up at 6 am on a Saturday morning to go to the Rice math competition. I was hoping it wouldn’t rain, cuz it always rains whenever I go onto a college campus..=/..it ended up not raining except it looked bleak the entire day.yuck…overall, the competition wasn’t that exciting, but it was fun hanging out and also doing the team competitions…altho the team next door *COUGH* was singing or something the entire time, that was an interesting distraction, and halfway thru they opened up the partition door and asked to see our trash can…LOL….hmm ok I guess they weren’t working on the team problems at all…=P…the individual tests were HARD tho, at least I thought they were…i bet amy didn’t think so, she was scribbing away the entire time…woohoo!!!...i hope she wins something this year, she did last year..stacy introduced me to wendy’s bacon cheeseburgers…YUMMY!!!...thanks stacy….i actually remember seeing something about being addicted to wendy’s bacon cheeseburgers on someone’s profile (..i think it was steve..?) ..after lunch we basically hung around in the student center waiting for the awards ceremony to start at 3:15 so that we could go home…jenny and me ended up wandering around looking for a drink machine….then we found a grand piano and jessica (zhu) played the RIGOLETTO SUITE for us!!!!!!*drool*…I freakin love that piece…she played it REALLY well too..so 3:15 rolls around, we get back to Herzstein Hall and the guest speaker is STILL talking….walked around campus with jess, came back 30 minutes later – and he’s STILL talking!!!!...o_O…he finally finished around 4 effin 15 pm, and by that time, I was freaking out cuz I needed to get back to sugarland before 5, and other people were getting worried too cuz they were supposed to be back by 4:30…baevich and grigassy apparently got tired of waiting too, so they decided to leave..*whew*…

Ended up not getting back to Austin till 4:45, where sid picked me up (thanks for actually driving all the way out to the school!!!!!) and we dashed off to the AMC on westheimer…hahah sid made this invention where he took one of those elastic headbands, put it on at an angle so that he could slip his cell phone under the band right over his ear…LOL…. sid’s dad though, apparently saw it too and said something to sid in Chinese about a dog eating its own crap..HAHA hey, I thought it was a pretty brilliant idea

Sid ingeniously got to the AMC on time, (where we watched “the passion” with the rest of his church), even though we drove past dunvale and had to turn back!! And I mean RIGHT on time, like we sat down with the rest of them right when the actual movie started, we didn’t even have to sit thru any previews.. MAD PROPS to you sid!...now that’s what I call some spiffy driving there..hehe

The movie, “the passion,” was pretty intense and amazing, I’ll say that much. I don’t want to talk that much about it on my blog though. I pretty much sat kinda stunned the whole time. It was the first time that I’ve ever cried while watching a movie before, iuno..it just seemed so real, and I guess watching it was kinda like having someone slam you in the stomach over and over again. I tried not to cry, but the part where they nailed Jesus onto the Cross really hit me hard. I think I just couldn’t hold it in then, cuz that’s when it hit me that He really DID suffer for us. For us. Are we worthy? “And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.”…of course, the number of times they slammed the hammer down was more than 4 times, but it was both happiness and unhappiness at the same time. The interesting thing was that afterwards when we all met back at jireh, john told us that when they filmed them nailing Jesus to the cross, the hand that we see holding the hammer is actually mel gibson’s hand…it’s supposed to symbolize that WE killed jesus…very subtle, I thought that was really interesting…another part that really got me was when Jesus fell down the second time carrying the cross, and his mother ran to help him up.. I don’t know why that part got me, it just did….the whole film wasn’t anti-semitic anyways, I don’t see what the whole hype was about. It was just extremely stark and real. People say that there’s too much violence in the movie. But what if it really was like that? Plus, it doesn’t make sense to call the movie anti-jew, cuz Jesus technically was a Jew too.

We followed josh back on the way to jireh..the mini cooper!!..it’s the first time I’ve ever seen someone who I actually KNOW drive a mini cooper….we wondered whether josh knew that we were following him though..hmm…lol I told sid about how i do “people-watching” at the mall but see, when I do that I don’t just sit there and watch people, I actually get up and follow…sid calls it stalking..>_<..

Chilled for a while eating pizza and really yummy salad (that cyndy made!)….jackie made this cake that looked REALLY good but I couldn’t eat it cuz of lent…=(…hahh john made us all introduce ourselves and then say something interesting about ourselves… no one knew what to say, so he gave up and just told us to say what color gummy bears we liked the best…lol….so random but funny (kid: “umm, I like red. And green. And yellow. And orange…” Jessie: “uh, you mean all of them?”..HAHA)..meanwhile we could all see steve pacing around in the kitchen eating salad and whatever else he could.hehe. guess he was hungry…so john made steve come in and say TEN interesting things about himself, while telling him that the rest of us had already said our “ten interesting things”…..LOL, sorrie steve, but that was just really amusing..=P…also found out that I managed to throw everyone else off since I call Jessie by “Ms. Liu”…haha of course that goes the other way around as well, I get thrown off whenever I hear everyone else call her “Jessie”

We had an informal discussion/bible study session in the chapel (..is that what it’s called at non-catholic churches, too..??) to reflect on the movie….i thought that was a really good idea, and it felt nice getting to sit with all these ppl who all felt the same way I did…john was the leader of the discussion basically, and did a really good job with it too, he really knew how to make us reflect and think…I was impressed too by how everyone knew the Bible so well….the thing I think i like most about jireh is that u get such a warm, enveloping, yet serious feeling when ur there, and then all the singing they do too really kinda reinforces everything too – that part I REALLY like….props to all the musicians (sid john josh edwin cyndy evan) for making it all feel so…iuno if I can find the right word for it….for making it all feel so..right.?..i can’t express it in words, they’re up there on the podium playing, the rest of us are below singing along, and looking UP at the words on the screen, and I feel this wave of excitement kinda wrap its way around me….i mean, it’s something I’ve never felt before anywhere else …I don’t even know most of the ppl there, but I was just really impressed by them overall, really convinced, really content…

Finally left around 10:30, and drove back to new territory with sid and two other girls (woot! Sid’s a pimp!!..hahahhaa j/p j/p) Jackie and Sunny (…I think that’s her name..?)…halfway thru sid and me switched into spanish for some reason…LOL…funny, cuz Jackie and sunny then switched into mandarin…the best part, as sid noted, was that “es interesante que nosotros podamos entender ellas, pero ellas no nos pueden entender”…HEHEHE…..oh, almost fergot, have to blog this funny convo from earlier:

me: people say you look like yao ming…cuz of ur hair I guess
sid: hmmm..yup.
sid: maan, I’d have to say that he’s the coolest Chinese guy ever
me: ..wait…who, you or yao?
sid: me, of course!..................*pause*…… and yao….

HAHA…I ought to do a poll on that, sid vs. yao…=P

So I ended up being out of the house for almost 15 hours!..but it was worth it, it was a TERRIFIC day/night in all aspects possible….i wanted to go to jireh again this morning, but couldn’t make it in time cuz of driving class…..soooorie yall!!..i’ll try to make it next Sunday or Saturday

And don’t forget: “Gaudí fue atropellado por un tranvía enfrente de su edificio la Sagrada Familia!!!!!!!!”

^hehehe

these next few weeks are gonna be crazy with work. For some reason I’m starting to flip out about grades again. Just like good ol’ junior year…*sigh*..Work practice and scholarships. Meeh. I’m prolly gonna temporarily disappear offline for a while, prolly not too much AIM…just call if you need something or just wanna chill…I think imma need get out more often now that the school year is almost over. =(…of course, with enough time for practicing too..!