Summer 2006
Hey Everybody!!!!
First of all, don¡¯t worry, I didn¡¯t fall off another wall and break the other side of my face this summer, hehe. Oh yeah, this may be relatively long, so please excuse my grammatical errors and all the mistakes that I will be making in the following entry.
It¡¯s so good to be back in Shanghai! It took me two months away from Shanghai to realize that Shanghai is my home, and I¡¯m so grateful that God has placed me here. Before I get into all the cool stuff I learned, this is what I didJ
June 12- June 22 College tours
June 24- July 14 IHOP- KC
July 15- Aug 3 NYC
Aug 4-6 Alithia¡¯s Wedding!!!!!!!
Aug 9 Back in Shanghai=D
So, short summary of the college tours.
I visited the following schools:
Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore, Franklin & Marshall
New Hampshire: Dartmouth
Maine: Bowdoin, Bates, Colby
Massachusetts: Tufts
New York: NYU, Columbia
Um¡. Swarthmore, a tiny liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, is my ultimate dream school. It¡¯s also extremely hard to get into, but oh well, I¡¯m just gonna trust that God¡¯s gonna help me get in wherever I¡¯m meant to beJ I mean, college apps are like a tiny blackhead on a face in God¡¯s eyes!! Ok, horrible comparison, maybe the blackhead¡¯s bigger than the college apps, but you know what I¡¯m saying.
Franklin & Marshall is in Lancaster, yes, the place where many Amish people live. Not knowing the name of the County we were in, we were shocked by an Amish souvenir shop that sold shirts saying ¡°I LOVE INTERCOURSE,¡± followed by a tiny ¡°PA.¡± Later on, we drove through this sign that said ¡°WELCOME TO INTERCOURSE¡± and we went ¡°ooooooooooooooooooooooh!!!!¡± Well actually, being the smarty I am, I figured it out before then, but yeah=D
IHOP- Kansas City
Did you know that IHOPrayer staff members get 20% discounts when they eat at IHOPancakes?
In short, these are the Arizona girls and these are the Asian boys=). I wrote all of these guys a letter and I told the Arizona girls that they broke my stereotype of mean American blondes who would stick their tongues out at me. Hahaha so guess what they did! They took this pictures for me after I left! I didn¡¯t have a camera so I don¡¯t even have pictures =( of the girls I hung out with the most, Becca, Hannah, Harleigh, and Melinda. It was just so awesome to bond with these girls over a period of 3 weeks. (If you wanna see Harleigh, google her: Harleigh Jean Upton). But yeah, I decided to just put a bunch of STI (Summer Teen Intensive) pictures together in one collage since I barely have any pictures.
We had an awesome crud war one afternoon with four rounds of CRUD. Well, water, flour, shaving cream, and horse feed! I shouldn¡¯t have worn a tank top and shorts because CHIGGERS crawled up and yeah. Charlotte ended up with 70+ chigger bites, and if you¡¯ve never had any before, they¡¯re like super duper itchy mosquito bites. Yeah, now imagine 70 of those in places you aren¡¯t allowed to scratch in public!
Oh yeah, we were also issued a hilarious list of Rules.
- No PDA
- No guy or girl allowed alone without a leader!!!
- ¡. Buncha normal rules
- NO bikinis for girls and no Speedos for boys.
- NO eating mushrooms. (Someone ate wild mushrooms and got sent to the hospital.)
- NO sacrificing of small animals or any animals as love offerings to God. (Someone sacrificed a bunny a few years ago.)
- NO drinking 4 lbs of Ketchup during any lunch time. (Yesh, someone did that in previous years.)
After our STI, they said they would add ¡°No doing back-flips off chairs¡± to the list of rules=D.
Encountering God.
So, this is what a day at the Summer Teen Intensive looks like. So you get to the place at 9 and you stay in the Prayer Room from 10 to 12. The Prayer Room is this¡ huge room with prayer/worship going on 24/7. It¡¯s been going on since 1999 so it has been seven years! =D Then you have lunch, a session, some personal growth time, free time, or more prayer room time. After dinner you have the main session=)! Yayy then you go to bed exhausted, or you don¡¯t go to bed at all.
If there¡¯s one thing that I want to keep with me, it would be living with the sense of urgency of the times we¡¯re living in. Seeing that the time we have here is so short, I want to use every opportunity for His glory and His glory alone. One verse that was really pressed upon my heart during the three weeks of STI was Hosea 14:4. I kind of forgot about it and it came up again during leadership. Anyway, God promises that He will heal us of our backsliding. Although I¡¯m going through a really hard time right now, feeling angry at certain people and not understand why ¡°mishap¡± is all over the place, I know that God¡¯s in control and I¡¯m still excited to see what¡¯s going on. I¡¯ve realized that spiritual highs don¡¯t always have to be followed by spiritual lows¡ God will heal us of our backsliding, meaning that backsliding is NOT inevitable!
Another thing I learned was to never be satisfied with what God has already shown me. After receiving a clear direction of what God wants me to do with my life, I was satisfied, but not complacent. I pushed on, and to tell the truth, pushing on was hard. By the end of the three weeks, I didn¡¯t want to dig deeper into God. I mean, the desire was there, but I was just tired. That fatigue may have been a spiritual attack because I had less strength than I do on school weeks. But anyway, I learned a lot about praying and fasting. I love how the people at IHOP prayed scripture. It¡¯s ironic how we don¡¯t even pray the parts of New Testament Scripture which are prayers of the apostles! When we fast, God does show us amazing stuff. One Tuesday, God showed me His breath through the pages of my Bible, literally. Hehe, at first I thought it was dust, but then I was like, ¡°No way, my Bible can¡¯t be dusty cuz I¡¯ve been using it every day!¡± and then the carbon dioxide or whatever it is kept on coming out! Or maybe it was oxygen. Hahaha since God¡¯s breath gives life, maybe His breath is oxygen so that we can inhale it. Maybe He breathes in carbon dioxide like trees to continue the cycle!! Ok, maybe not, since He doesn¡¯t need us. AGHH OFF TOPIC.
Although I¡¯m going through a very hard period right now, I know God equipped me during those three weeks at Kansas City. I let go of people I held onto, and now that I¡¯m back in Shanghai, those people have left, either physically or ¡ emotionally? I¡¯ll get to that part later..
Btw, my sister turned 12 on June 28. I took a pound cake, put a carrot on it, and carved out a 2 with a nectarine. (I love fuzzless peaches!!!) Anyway, someone brought over a snickers cake after I made the... very interesting cake. At least this time I didn't put anythign salty in this cake! Hahahaha, like the time I put tomatoes in Jonathan's birthday lemon cake and purple lifesavers in Dan's piece of "pizza" with crust made from pancake mix.
NYC
=)
So, I arrived in NYC on June 12 and we went on college tours for two weeks. Then we went to IHOP for three weeks. Then my parents left and
Coney Island. Ground Zero. Times Square. Times Square Church. Forbidden BROADWAY. Sorry, reasonably-priced Wicked! tickets were all sold out from June to mid-August. I slept over at Lily Duh¡¯s place and we had fun just like the old timesJ I got my ears pierced on July 15th! I chose red studs cuz they match with my dress for Alithia¡¯s Wedding. I also hung out with Shannon, George, and Joe a lot=) They¡¯re funny-wunny people and we uh¡ did some stupid stuff together, like sing karaoke songs in English with horrible/pitiful music videos, sit in Chinatown and drink 3 drinks in a row, walk around aimlessly, watch Shannon and George buy shoes at FootLocker while Joe and I wander around, ¡°show affection¡± to Joe (AKA being mean to him and other not-so-nice stuff), and yeah=). We didn¡¯t take any pictures because those three New Yorkers refused to be labeled as ¡°tourists¡± by taking pictures, and I had to be cool like them. Thus, camera-less Charchar now has no pictures. Actually I lied, because George did bring his camera, I was just too lazy to use it! Oh yeah, George is lifesaver! When Alithia asked whether I could play the Wedding March and Bridal Chorus, I didn¡¯t have a piano to practice with. So yeah, I went to George¡¯s Chinese summer school (where he works as a security guard) and practiced in the huge, steaming hot auditorium. That grand piano had messed up keys and they were sugar-coated, literally. The next day another security guard opened up the music room so I got to practice on a better (but still horrible) grand piano there.
The Wedding!
Hahahah why is it that Aaron always wears the best¡ accessories? At the recession, Aaron decides to stand up on a chair and hit a glass cup with a fork. Hahahahaha the glass cup was full of candy so it made a clanking sound that sounded like a cow-bell. Because of that, Alithia and Michael Joe couldn¡¯t figure out that we were demanding them to kiss! But they did=D
http://www.xanga.com/MissionIncredible/520460529/wedding---im-married-now.html
http://www.xanga.com/SilverDragonflies56/517500506/item.html
Go to Alithia and Cherise¡¯s xanga to find out more about the wedding. For you lazy people, I stole Cherise¡¯s pictures and put it into a highly-unskilled collage.
Shanghai!!
Well, basically everybody left right before or right after I got back. I miss you, you know who you are=). In one year, I¡¯ll be closer to you guys! Actually, I kinda like it this way cuz I can talk to you guys when I¡¯m doing homework at absurd times.
I got to see Jonathan, Daniel, Tia, and Kenny before they left for college. I also got to see Tim Niou!! (AKA timmytimtim#3)
I¡¯m taking the following classes this year:
AP Lit, AP Econ, Chinese Literacy Culture, PE/Health/Religion, Study Hall, AP Chemistry, AP Calculus (probably BC, but I haven¡¯t decided for sure yet.)
This is gonna one tough year, so this may be the last big update in the year of 2006. Oh yeah, I¡¯m starting to get kind of stressed over college applications too.
But yeah, this is going to be the best year of my life so far, I know itJ
Sidenote: Come to the October Retreat!!!
Lyrics to Jonathan's song, CHANGE, from his CD Moving On.
These years have come and gone
I've been here for much too long
It's time for moving on
We've had our share of joy
Amidst the trouble and the pain
Memories, but now we're moving on
And I admit I will miss you so
But God has other plans for me so here i go.
Things will be so different,
but different isn't wrong.
We've been trying to same the same,
but change is finally come.
Know that someday we will meet again,
but until then, well, goodbye, my friend.
God brought us together
someday He will do the same again
....
Goodbye
As Su says, "But... different is not the same!" No, it's not, but as Jonathan says, "Different isn't wrong." In this stage of my life, different is good cuz God has been bringing about the change. I've been trying to keep things the same for the past three years, and I know that has impeded my growth in all aspects of my life. So yeah, this will be my motto for this year, "Different is good."-- Keep me accountable!
Love,
Charlotte | 
