Let me not to the marriage of minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on the tempests and is never shaken:
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

- William Shakespeare

KL

the weekend trip was awesome! we loved the foods man. looooooooove. it was damn good fun traveling with the girls and kev :D and our wonderful host. and their interesting friends. and all the stories.

I maintain my opinion - when I travel, company is the most important!

haha i wish we could do this all over again. more days, more food, MORE REST.

fishsoupbubbleteajapanesecrabsduriansmamakwantonmeewondermilkmoreduriansjapanesetea...

okies. time to shower and start on my novel! (i skipped school today hurhur)

a wish come true!

my mom really came to church with me today. she almost didn't, but she did. at the very last minute. God is crazy. all the way to church, I couldn't believe it. I also couldn't believe my mom was really there sitting beside me. As I watched aunty Jane and aunty Esther and my mom yakking away, it was so surreal. For 5 years I prayed for this day.. I'd dream that she would step into a church with me, but I'd never really believed that it would happen even though I keep telling myself to have faith.

it didn't matter that she never believed in Jesus, it didn't matter that she has always thought my religiosity out of this world. It didn't matter that she had to leave early. It just meant so much to me that she was there. I don't know how to say it. The feeling of having a loved one, or someone I love very deeply, by my side in church just means a lot to me. I can't exactly pinpoint the reason behind it. It makes me immensely joyous inside.

:) it was really sweet of my mother, and it's a very nice present from God. of course, I hope that my parents will discover Christ for themselves too.. it's all in His time. I dislike pushing it or preaching to them cos they hate it. yup but for now, thank you Father. it was indeed an unexpected blessing.

lessons on the Lord's sovereignty have been taking root lately. and it's been demonstrated in a number of ways.. it's reassuring to know that His sovereign plans will never be thwarted or ruined. His will is called a will for a reason. It is meant to be, and it will be done. It is the process of getting there that God uses to engage me, to build faith, to build patience, to build my understanding of Him, to build my trust, nurturing the relationship between the both of us.

~

I really like my students a lot. especially my normal classes. Besides being so rebellious, they are funny and cheeky and very cute. it's a joy watching them at school, teaching and interacting with them. and they can be hilarious. like in between lessons, they would take the camera projector on the teacher's desk and turn the camera on their classmates. and do things like examining their friends' pimples on the big screen with ludicrous comments. or pretending that they're making a film.

It's so different from the kind of classes i had when i was in secondary school. I know that they have huge baggages at home away from school, but the class feels so alive! They are very expressive, though (most of the time) not in the way a teacher would want. lol. On many occasions, I had a hard time stifling my laughter or my smile cos they're just so adorably funny. I needed them to be serious enough to absorb what I was trying to teach. If I were a student, I honestly wouldn't mind going to school with a class like theirs.

I've been practicing their english oral with them in small groups after school. it is another very effective way to get to know them and to let them know me. There's a Conversation segment where I throw out any topic that comes to my mind and they would talk to me about it. haha they are very interesting people.

The kite runner

didn't happen today. there was rain, and then there was no wind!

but we had a really relaxing day. ate like a pig and we headed to a little reservoir near the old national stadium. dusk was fabulous, cool and gentle. the sky was so pretty! we sat there and waited for the wind. we saw cute funny plants, and I later found their porcupine seeds stuck onto my shoelace! and for the first time in my life, I saw tiny moving seashells in the water..! we turned them over and the creatures were still in there. haha suaku to the max.

there we were, 2 idiotic girls fighting a kite in front of 10 cars parked along the reservoir (with couples doing everybody-knows-what in there). we fought to fly it in the tiny tiny breeze lol it was so retarded and funny.

I wish I could live in a kampong.

lightning!

I was looking of my window, peering at people below through the thick veil of rain. and then lightning flashed. it felt as though someone up in the sky with a huge ass camera was taking a photograph of all of us in my part of the world.

a time traveler, maybe? like in kate and leopold. haha. someone from the 25th century capturing lives in our present.

thoughts about thoughts

english is the best subject to teach. it's the easiest class where i can make use of practically anything in the world to conduct a lesson, to teach them writing, to let them see the world, and to know them better. i think that their thoughts are the most precious things i've ever gotten thus far in my short stint here. they convey a lot of insightful thinking, opinions, feelings, and inevitably things about themselves through utterly broken grammar and sentence stuctures. the things that they picked out of the film really surprised me. pleasantly (:

today, we screened it again for another class, and they loved it! i cannot wait to read their compositions.

i'm in the midst of compiling a little booklet of short stories for the students to practice their reading and writing. haha this is quite a bomb story. so freaking simple, but it's totally bull-eye.

The Sack

A Sufi Story from the Middle East

Mula came upon a frowning man walking along the road to town. "What's wrong?" he asked.

The man held up a tattered bag and moaned, "All that I own in this wide world barely fills this miserable, wretched sack."

"Too bad," said Mula, and with that, he snatched the bag from the man's hands and ran down the road with it.

Having lost everything, the man burst into tears and, more miserable than before, continued walking. Meanwhile, Mula quickly ran around the bend and placed the man's sack in the middle of the road where he would have to come upon it.

When the man saw his bag sitting in the road before him, he laughed with joy, and shouted, "My sack! I thought I'd lost you!"

Watching through the bushes, Mula chuckled. "Well, that's one way to make someone happy!"

~

the blade runs through my heart

today, for the first time in a long long while, i felt alive. rollerblading! it was quite scary but i totally loved it. learning something new, feeling something strange yet thrilling. falling down again and again and again. (honestly, i was hoping i could make it through without a scrape. FAT chance.) now i'm with a half broken knee and a stinging wound on my butt. i can't sit nor walk properly. i don't know how i'm going to survive sitting in my desk tomorrow and standing in the classroom. but all the pains on my body remind me of my accomplishment!! hees. happy. i can't believe i never even THOUGHT of getting down to trying it again all these many years. wuss.

now i can't decide if i should invest in a bicycle or a pair of rollerblades first. hawhaw.

thanks, al! really made my day. and for everything. loves you.

i thought that i could risk it. wrong. i thought that i could just give it a chance, what's the big deal being friends? nopes. that place was flooded with memories. i couldn't stand it.

one through road

one true road.

rollerblades

last night, i dreamt that somebody gave me my very own pair of sleek, black rollerblades. (:

but i can't remember who it was!

on a happier note(:

the staff at b.hill are really one nice bunch. if i ever become a cher, i'm going back there.