Year of the Dragon!

Today is Chinese New Year! 2012 is the year of the Dragon! What year are you, you may ask? you can determine this by the picture I've included below:

This is only the 2nd time I've ever missed family celebration/gathering in Chinatown, NY. Every year my family travels to visit my Grandma Gong. When we get there all our cousins come over and we eat together and visit. When the dragon dances begin down below in the streets we head down with our cameras ready.

If you've never seen a Chinese New Year celebration, you should try to check one out. Especially the dragon dances. Businesses pay money to have their stalls and shops blessed at the beginning of each new year and to keep bad spirits away. The Dragons and their puppeteers slowly make their way up and down the streets, their massive and brightly colored heads jutting up into the air and then quickly ducking down again in jerky, but precise movements.

                                                     Some Dragons in action back in 2010


While they no longer allow fireworks to be set off in the middle of the streets, (for obvious reasons), they can't take away all the fun! Instead of sparklers and flames, they now have paper confetti and silly string, which in my mind is almost worst because of the clean up process those two items entail. Below are a series of photos of myself, exploding a large confetti canon.

So what did we do here in Elgin to celebrate the year of the Dragon? I made some veggie egg rolls, green beans, and rice. We ate our meal family style as always, finished the meal with some fortune cookies, and some handouts I made about each persons year/animal (we've got 3 dragons, 1 snake, 1 tiger, and 1 sheep in our house). I had also bought some paper confetti poppers for everyone, and when I bought them I had every intention of having everyone pop them. But I'll be honest, I kinda hoped everyone would forget so I wouldn't have to clean up the confetti...

To finish off this little post I wish you all a Happy Chinese New Year!!

Cat out.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Hello my friends,

It's been awhile since I've had a turn at this blogging business. I sort of skipped the last time I was assigned to write a blog post and now I'm behind again. Poor Cat, who is always the one to follow me, has to wait for me to get myself in gear before she can write her's. So I think it's time I wrote a blog for once.

 The people in this house are always changing. Whether that means new people coming in and old going out or the residents are changing on an individual level. I, personally, am no exception to this. I, like most people, can be an entirely different person from one day to the next. One day I can be the loud, silly member of the house who can't seem to stop dancing. Another day, I'll be the short tempered, bitter man who may be in need of some cheering up. And this has been the case with me for all of my life. It's not unusual. People have seasons. The spring times of our lives are a time when we develop as individuals. New characteristics will blossom and old ones will get new growth. We change, grow and become like new. In our summer times our warmth and light shine out to everyone around us. We have grown during the past season and now we thrive in our developments. Autumns of our lives are when we see a metaphorical bounty produced from within ourselves and give thanks. These are the times when you feel gracious for what you have around and in you. And then there are the winters.

I think I've been in a winter for awhile now. It's a dark time when life seems to come to a stand still. The landscape of your soul is covered in a cold, consuming entity. It looks bleak and uniform. It's easy to lose track of time since it all looks the same outside. You grew during spring and flourished during summer. You've reaped the harvest of your personal growths during autumn. And then your change seems to shrivel and die. It's easy to become disheartened when it seemed like you were growing so much and then it all comes to a screeching halt. All of the time and effort you put in and now it refuses to grow? You ask yourself if you are doing something wrong.

"Am I not nurturing my growth the way it needs?"

"Have I stopped growing entirely?"

"Will I ever develop again?"

 

You look on at what used to be such an awesome display of progress and see it's rotten. Your triumph of forward development now lies under the expansive, cold blanket that kills your growth. It's easy to become depressed. It's a breeze to become bitter. You will almost certainly become jaded. Winters have a tendency to drag on for longer than anyone ever wants them to. After what seems like an eternity, you resign yourself to the idea that your personal growth is long dead. You lose hope. And then you get accustomed to the cold and the dark. It was daunting at first but now it has just become mundane. It's easy to think all is lost.

 But after a long time, you aren't exactly sure how long it's been, you see something new that has grown up out of the uniform covering on your soul. It's small and it isn't impressive but it's new. You don't recognize it. You watch it and you eventually realize that it is growing. It's developing. It's changing. What is this new thing? How should you react to it? You had become reluctantly comfortable in the winter of your soul and now something is coming to change it. Eventually, the vast, cold darkness that stretches over your life begins to recede as this thing keeps growing. This new thing is scary at first. It's so different but it's also exciting. 

You come to realize that it is a new development in your life. Something external has come along to start the process of an internal change. New growth begins sprouting up within you. You do all you can to nurture this growth and under your care, it grows large and strong. It blossoms and blooms and the bitterness begins to wear away. The depression lifts. The world seems brighter. You feel happier. A warmth floods your soul and you are filled with joy. Spring has arrived and with it the wonderful promise of change. You can't tell what shape that change will look like when it has developed but you feel it is worth pursuing. Your heart is full and beauty emits from every corner of the earth. Life becomes as wonderful as it once was. 

I was in a winter for a couple of months. Nothing terribly serious, However, I was not growing. I wasn't learning anything and I was beginning to lose heart. But since last month, some thing new and wonderful has been growing inside of me. It's growing quickly and it's becoming strong. The cold darkness that had settled on my soul has melted away and only warmth radiates from me now. I feel brand new and even better than I have ever been before. It's become easy to see what a gift life is once again. Spring has settled into my soul and I am so thankful that it has finally arrived. I'm changing and I can definitely tell it's for the better. 

I'm sorry I've been absent from here for so long but I'm back, I'm refreshed and I'm ready to go. Don't worry, my friends. I'm still the same loveable character I've always been. I've just got a little extra some thing to make me even better. So goodbye, amigos. I love you all and it's good to be back. Even if you didn't know I had gone anywhere.

Wishing you peace and new growth,

Your buddy, Jeremy

This is a time of New Beginnings

Greetings Faithful Followers,


Things in the house have been crazy, we have been going in a million different directions but yet still finding time to create community, just not time to blog about it. 


Since you last heard from us, we have helped Denise celebrate her Birthday. Denise had been planning what she wanted to do for her Birthday for weeks. So when the big day (or week) came around we went out to eat, enjoyed deep dish pizza (her favorite, I guess you can't find it in Germany), and several frozen deep dish pizzas that she can enjoy when ever she chooses.  


Had a day in Chicago (this event was also kind of in celebration of Denise's Birthday). We all decided that we wanted to experience Christmas in Chicago. This included going to the Christkindlemarket, which according to Denise was almost like being home complete with chocolate, pretzels, and of course bratwurst. 


Denise had said something about wanting to see the Macy's 3-floor Christmas Tree. 

While we were in Macy's we also decided to take some pictures, which worked well in this 12 floor building. We found a secret show room. 

And we enjoyed trying out some of the beds, to many employees around to jump on them though :) Can you find each of us?

We ended our day with a crisp evening of walking through the Lincoln Park Zoo and enjoying the festive Christmas Lights (Jeremy and I enjoyed the animals also). So all in all we had a good time in the city, seeing the Christmas Season in full swing.    

 Thanks to Cat for her great pictures. 


We celebrated Christmas together and at our separate homes:
The week before we all left we had a great Christmas party with just the five of us, we also (with some help from our friends at the office) participated in a Secret Santa, which made things interesting as we hid things around the office and house for one another. 


Carol stayed in Illinois and then went to Ohio
Rachel and Cat went home to Pennsylvania
Jeremy and Denise went to Jeremy's house in California.  


With the new year also comes a new housemate. YEAH!! Welcome Kendra, who  will hopefully introduce herself to you soon. 


Blessings on the Year Ahead, Carol. 

What's the Point?

       When I first started telling people I was doing a year of volunteer service with BVS as a workcamp coordinator for the Church of the Brethren I got the following questions:


“What’s BVS?”

“What’s the Church of the Brethren?”

“What are workcamps?”

“Where will you live? Why would you want to live in Illinois?”

“Do you get paid? How much? So you’ll be poor?”

“What are you going to do afterwards?”

“What’s the point?”

       Now multiply those questions by about 20 and by the time I was getting ready to leave home I was a master at answering most of those questions. But the first time someone asked, “What’s the point?” really stuck with me. But I’m getting ahead of myself, first I should explain the context: the person I was talking to was hardcore into academia and was getting ready to start grad school at a prestigious school and in 3-5 years will be making oodles of cash that they probably won’t know what to do with. We had just finished talking about their future when we got onto mine, which is definitely not a 10 year plan. It’s more of a 1 year plan since I still have no clue what I’ll be doing once I’m done in August/September 2012. But when I explained I was moving out to Illinois to do a year of volunteer service they asked: “oh, is it to help with grad school applications?” I replied ‘no’. “So it’s to put on your resume at least?” I again replied, ‘no’; and they quickly added, “What’s the point?”

       I panicked a little because I wasn’t expecting someone to ask me that. Then I became a little furious and questions starting streaming through my head as I sat staring at their face: ‘What’s the point?’ What’s the point of dedicating a year of my life to helping those in need? What’s the point of helping youth find a way to serve others in communities across the country and abroad? What’s the point in trying to make a difference in a world run by media and political craziness?

       To say I was frustrated is an understatement. I did a little smile and so badly wanted to say, “Well what’s the point of having your doctorate in a field that won’t help anyone or anything except your bank account?” but I held back. I quickly changed the subject, not wanting to offend the person, but at the same time to preserve my memory of them as the friendly classmate who helped me with Statistics.

       Since then I’ve been asking myself, “What’s the point?” I’ve decided that there’s no one right answer: I’m doing this because I can. I have been fortunate and blessed in life and grew up in a comfortable town, have a good family, have good friends, went to a good college, and have had many opportunities to pursue a variety of different passions. Now it’s time to give back. Being a Sociology major I learned a lot about other countries compared to our own and the statistics of HIV/AIDS, poverty, discrimination, wealth gaps, and many other staggering numbers that they don’t tell you about in the news. In fact, my last semester of college I took a class in which it was all statistics about different countries and cultural reasons that contribute to their fortunes or misfortunes: Poverty, fertility, mortality, aging populations, etc. After every class I would leave either saddened or sickened by the numbers my professor would tell us. Sometimes I would even doubt them and go straight to a computer lab to look myself. And sure enough it was all true.

       So what’s the point? The point is that there are those of us who believe that showing your faith is about doing: doing a year of volunteer service, doing a 5k run to raise money for a charity, or doing a food drive to help a local food bank. Taking the risks and having the courage to step out of our comfort zones and face the real world problems of today to see how others live.

“The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.” –Sarah Ban Breathnach


--Cat

New BVSer

Hello, I am the new housemate. I am Denise from Germany, near Frankfurt, I am 19 years old and I like sports, crafts and music.  

On September 24, 2011 I came to America for orientation in New Windsor, MD. I really enjoyed orientation, but it was hard to find a good project. Since October 15, 2011 I have been living in the community house and working at the Church of the Brethren with Becky, Rachel, Cat and Carol. My position is “Administrative Assistant for Youth/Young Adult Ministries and Congregational Life Teams.” My job is to do mailings, help Cat, Rachel and Carol with their work, do some finance things (accounting), make reservations for the workcamps, and I am responsible for the applications for the workcamps. Hopefully I will go to three workcamps next year.

In my first week at the office I got a lot of information about what I should do. So I learned a lot about my work, the office, the community house and other important things. I really like my community house and how it is organized.

In my first weeks in the community house, we relaxed in the evening and watched DVDs. For the past 3 weeks, we have done a lot of things after work, so we were very busy. But we did nice things, for example we went out for dinner, we went to common meal, we made tiles, David Doudt lead devotions, we watched a football game, we played Wii, we did a lot for Halloween. Also, I had to do some important things, for example find out where I can get my driver’s license again (I got mine in Germany, but I have to do it again), if there is a cheaper contract for my cell phone, etc.

But now I will tell you, what happened this week:

This past weekend, Don, Cat and I went to Geneva, where we went into a spice house and bought really good spices, looked for Christmas Antiques and we ate Sushi. It was my first time eating sushi and I really liked it. Also we went by a store couple of times and it smelled very good, so we decided to go in and see what they had--they had popcorn with different toppings. Of course we bought one pack with caramel. It was a nice day, but sadly Rachel stayed at home, because she didn’t feel very well. On Tuesday, we (Cat, Rachel and I) helped Don with moving into his new apartment. It is sad, that he will not live in the community house any more, but the positive side is, that he lives about 5 blocks away but we all can still do something together.

On Friday, we went to the theater. It was my first time in an American movie theater.

Indiana Jones and the Halloween of Doom

Happy belated Halloween everyone!

I hope you all had a splendidly scare-tacular Halloween weekend! We had two parties to attend. One where we were guests, and one that we hosted ourselves.


For our first Halloween party we all decided to go as different people. Our costumes weren’t coordinated, but we looked good! :-D Good times were had by all in Goodwill and Spirit Halloween as we searched high and low for our costume pieces!


Carol as Wanda (from “Where’s Waldo)…
Cat as a hippy…
Denise in a Hawaiin theme…
Jeremy as Elwood Blues…
and Rachel (me) as a 50’s housewife (everyone thought I was June Cleaver, haha)…

 Our costumes for our own Halloween party and the theme, “Indiana Jones and the Party of Doom,” was recently decided upon our watching “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” as a house on VHS. While we were enjoying our time, watching Dr. Jones, Willie, and Short Round, we started jokingly saying we were certain characters in the movie. Voila, our costumes were born. Let me take you through the line-up.


Carol as Marion Ravenwood (she’s the female lead from “Raiders” but we let it slide because Willie from “Temple” is very—blonde)…

Cat as Short Round…

Denise as the Maharaja…

Don as Indiana Jones…

Jeremy as Mola Ram…

and Rachel (me) as a combination between a Thuggee Guard and a Thuggee Acolyte…

Then most of us dressed up for work on Monday (on the actual day of Halloween!)

Tell us what you did/who you were for Halloween! :-D

It's the Great Pumpkin...

Greetings Friends!

I know that each of you have been on the edge of your seat waiting for another great blog from the Elgin BVS House. Well here is my confession, I have been really busy and totally forgot that last week was my turn to blog, and well we don't believe in okay blogs, so I have been trying to come up with something extra special for our wonderful fans, I hope that you enjoy. Love, Carol.

So in the wonderful theme of pumpkins I am no going to tell you a story.
Once upon a time there were 6 BVSers that lived in the Elgin BVS community house. Three of them decided to go out on adventure. They went to a huge garden where pumpkins were growing. The one young man, instantly got to work finding just the right pumpkin. While the other three took their time examining each and every pumpkin. In the time that it took the young man to find three pumpkins the oldest girl still hadn't found a single one that was up to her standards. She then decided to sit amongst the pumpkins until one spoke to her, and asked her to take it home. But still she had no pumpkin to take home. It was quickly getting late and she knew that it would be getting dark and she would no longer be able to see the pumpkins. But what should she do? She knew that soon the Great Pumpkin would arrive...



As a tribute to my favorite Halloween story, here are some of the best quotes from The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.

Linus - "What did you get from that house Charlie Brown?"
Charlie Brown - "a rock"


Linus - "What is that?"
Charlie Brown - "I had a little trouble with the scissors..."
Linus - "Well, that's nothing compared to the fury of a woman who has been cheated out of trick-or-treats."


Lucy - "'Alright alright! Let's bob for apples! This is the way you do it.'"
Schroeder -"'Yeah Lucy! You should be good at this! You got the perfect mouth for it!'"


Linus - "I've learned there are three things you don't discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin."

Our house these last couple of weeks have been filled with people coming in and out so things have been a little crazy. We have had some friends from Cat and Rachel's orientation come through as well as a friend from my orientation. When we have visitors in the house we usually try and do at least one fun thing with them, just our way to welcome them. So when Mike was here Jeremy and I decided that we needed to welcome fall with pumpkins. So that is exactly what we did, we went to the pumpkin patch (which was really just a vegetable stand at the side of the road). We also wanted to help Denise experience her first Halloween in the United States, so we also made her come along to the pumpkin patch. The four of us had a great time walking around and picking the perfect pumpkin (which takes some of us a little longer than others, right Jeremy?).

In closing here is a reminder from Linus. "Never jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker."