shouts of joy

I feel lost without having written on my blog in weeks, seems more like months than weeks. This quarter is flying much faster than I had anticipated (especially now that I'm walking and can start running next week). Everyday seems to pass me by without much purpose and energy sprinkled on top. I say sprinkle because I'm thinking about the doughnuts we had at Voodoo doughnuts in Portland this past weekend. How I ordered a peach fritter, but it came with too much frosting and too many sprinkles and I exchanged it for something more edible. So many sprinkles and frosting! That's how our whole weekend was. Fun. Like sprinkles and frosting. And 3 days at that. Five of us drove to Portland and stayed with two of our bachelor friends in their rather-bachelorish-pad. We went to a basketball game, delicious Middle Eastern, Italian and Mexi-American restaurants, a warehouse-renovated-into-a-sanctuary church, shopping centers, doughnut houses, a bowling alley, coffee shops, a newly-ma...

There's a quote that goes something like, "If you fight, you might lose. But if you never fight, you never win." We've become so apathetic lately. Our generation controls their life from an electronic, cellular/MP3/GPS/camera/web browsing device. "What ever happens, happens" is a line I've heard too much of lately. According to a recent report posted by CBS News in a survey of U.S. citizens ages 15-26 less than half of them knew the political stance of their governor and 47% of eligible voters actually cast ballots in all or most elections. I know I'm not one to be pushing out the "Let's get real here" kind of talk. I'm fairly ignorant when it comes to politics or public affairs, and I don't always put the energy out to do what I believe is best. But something has to change soon. We're coming down to the end. We're running out of time. There's the parable in Matthew 25 about the Master and his servan...

I remember as soon as the sun would peak over the jungled hills, it was like my body knew without having seen it. The perspiration would soak into my punjabi shirt no matter where I was. I'd try to pretend there was no sun, trick my body, so I wouldn't get that embarrassing streak down my back. The other teachers and students would come to school with their umbrellas so they'd have shade everywhere they went. Maybe it helped, but for me, an umbrella would be just one more thing to keep track of. Also, why would I want to go outside? An umbrella indicated that I had plans to go out, and I had no such plan. I had never experienced that awful feeling of melting before. But to me, there was nothing worse. I'd lie face down on the stone floor to absorb the cool-ish-ness until it was gone and then slide to a fresher, cooler spot on the floor and rotate onto my back. All day long, all around the floor, until the sun went down. I made a routine of waking up at 4:00 to run thr...