Technology Anyone

So Recently, I have been thinking a lot about technology. What would our world be like without the technology that we have grown to take advantage of? So I have also thought about how technological I am, as opposed to others that are my age.

Here is how I fit in...

Typewriter - when I was little I used to go into my dad's office, and sit at his desk while typing on a typewriter, that used to be his fathers.

Electronic Typewriter - Then there was the day that my dad got an electronic typewriter, no more correction tape :) This was a big day.

Computers - when I was in third grade, we had just gotten a lab full of computers that we got to go and use once a week. The only catch was that we had to have some parents volunteer to come and run the lab. Well me being me, volunteered my parents saying that they didn't have a real job, they were just pastors after all. They graciously agreed, and even brought my little sister. This was my first experience with a computer.

After SEVERAL years (I think I was in High School) we got a computer of our own, that we had at our house.

Email - when I was in eighth grade my dad signed up for an email account. I thought that he was crazy, how do you communicate to someone else through a computer screen?

My Space - when I was in High School all of my friends were all really into My Space. I decided that I didn't really care, and wasn't sure if I really wanted to make connections on the world wide web. Well my best friend couldn't handle this and created a My Space account that she kept up to date, so that she could talk to me. Needless to say I didn't use it that often.

Digital Camera - I grew up with my nice film camera, my dad even had an awesome external zoom that was printed on actual paper. Then for Christmas before I went to high school I got a digital camera, for the first several months I would take the camera to my portable printer so that I could print out all of my pictures, I wanted something that I could hold onto. I am now on my third digital camera, and don't print out all of my pictures anymore.

Facebook - one of the first things I did after I moved into Manchester was create a facebook account. I am still kind of hooked to facebook, as a great way to connect with old friends or friends who no longer live just down the street. I will say that I am not into all the applications and games that go along with facebook.

Email - all the way through college this was how connections were made, classes were canceled and assignments were submitted. How did you do anything on college campus before email?

Second Life - when I took an online class in college I got to create a virtual version of myself that got to fly through second life, it was something else. I was glad when the class was over and I could delete my account.

Kindles / E-readers - no longer do people carry around books, now people download these books onto a portable computer. I am not ready for this change, I like holding the actual book. No wonder Border's closed.

Netflix - now anytime you want to watch a movie you no longer have to go to the store and buy it, go to the library and borrow it, or go to movie rental place. Now all you need to do is get online and watch any show or movie you could want on netflix. No wonder blockbusters are closing.

Wii - so until college I had never played a video game. I had occasionally played on an old school game boy, but that was mostly me playing tetris or sometimes mario racing. Then for Christmas this past year, my mom got me a wii and it opened my world.

Blog - as of about an hour ago, now I have my own blog. Following Rachel's bucket list, I was inspired to create my own. So after compiling my own list, I decided to make it the base of my blog. We will see if anyone wants to follow it.

Next Steps? Well Rachel is also into pinterest and Twitter. We will see if she gets me hocked on either one of those.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about how old school I am.
:) Carol

Two Perfect Weekends

Hello everybody,

Last weekend, Jeremy left for a trip to Michigan and so it was just Rachel, Carol, Cat and me. That means we had a Girls’ weekend and that means: PARTY :) 

On Saturday morning, when I got up, I went with my “Adoptive Family” to a Winter market in Elgin. They had scarves, hats, sauces, breads, jewelry, bread, sausages, etc.

I bought a baguette and Karen bought me a chocolate croissant. Yummy :) 

For lunch we went to “Big Apple” and it was really delicious. During that time, the others went to IHOP.

After lunch we drove to the library, got some movies, drove to Springfield Mall and went shopping. But I can’t forget the important stop: before shopping, we went to JAMBA JUICE. That means smoothies for everyone!                       After a few hours shopping and after everyone bought something, we thought we had spent enough money and should watch a movie. So we drove home, but first we picked up Virginia. At home we had dinner and for dessert we had cake, donuts and a lot more. After that, we watched one of our movies: “Kate and Leopold”. During the second movie (“Penelope”) we decorated our aprons and we painted our nails. All together it was a really nice day. We had a lot of fun.   

On Sunday, of course, we watched the Pro Bowl, which I enjoyed. 

During the next week after this weekend, we went to EPH for dinner and to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. Yummy!

On Saturday, we (Cat, Carol, Don, Jeremy, Rachel and I) went to Wisconsin. So we left at about 10:30am and drove about 2 hours. Our first stop was Culvers to have a delicious lunch. The next stop was at Brennan’s, which is a local grocery store and they have a lot of different CHEESE and FRUIT. So we bought some cheese and some other things and then we went to Swiss Colony. There we bought CHOCOLATE :). After everyone was satisfied we drove to Carol’s house. There we relaxed from our exhausting day, played Wii and had a delicious dinner that Carol’s mom cooked. Also we had dessert. Then about 7:30pm we drove home, went to bed and dreamed of our nice day and what we bought.

Sunday was the big day: Super Bowl. So we prepared everything (we cooked and baked together), tried to clean our big mess in the kitchen and then we went to Virginia’s to watch the final football game. Everyone was super excited. It was a very interesting game. But in the end the Giants won and some of us were happy. For dinner everyone brought something. So we had a ton of food: chili, pasta salad, tacos, cheese dip, spinach cheese dip, bread, rolls, football shaped cookies, etc.

All together it was a very nice weekend and everyone enjoyed it!

Denise

The Longest To-Do List

I found this picture/quote on Pinterest, one of my new-old favorite things to do. It got me thinking, though, about how many times I have indeed felt this way. I've started numerous lists of what I would like to do, what I can do to better myself--physically, mentally, spiritually--but I rarely follow through on all or any of the items on my list. I think it's time to start a fresh list that I will actually keep and work on. A short and long-term to-do list. Doing it publically is a way for me to keep myself motivated and going. Even if no one is actually holding me accountable, I will hopefully feel the need to not let anyone down--whoever that "anyone" may be. So here's my list. Give me your honest opinion and hold me accountable if you feel so called!

1. Read at least one news article every morning
2. Work in the garden
3. Keep my indoor plants alive for at least six months
4. Go completely vegetarian for a year
5. Keep my room clean for a whole week
6. Keep up with my personal blog
7. Learn to play the guitar
8. Re-learn to play the bass clarinet and alto saxophone
9. Improve my “social media skills”
10. Read the magazines sitting in my room that I keep saying I’m going to read
11. Eat more fruits and veggies
12. Find my go-to karaoke song
13. Have the courage to sing karaoke
14. Work on my French
15. Write at least 100 pages of original scripted material in a year (or participate in Script Frenzy and actually finish)
16. Write 50,000 words of a novel in a year (or participate in NaNoWriMo and actually finish)
17. Write something each day
18. Work my way through my book list (to come later)
19. Go on a silent retreat
20. Look into schools and finally decide what I want to do
21. Start a book of inspirational quotes I find
22. Bake from scratch more often
23. Work out at least three times a week (i.e. Zumba, yoga, the track, or even just a walk or 30min of Just Dance)
24. Start saving some money (even a few dollars) from each check
25. Work my way through AFI’s 100 Years 100 Movies
26. Learn organic farming
27. Hike the Appalachian Trail
28. Go on a cruise
29. Run a 5K
30. Ride in a hot air balloon
31. Live in another country (preferably France, England, Ireland, or Canada)
32. Go fishing
33. Go sailing
34. Travel:
        a. Ireland
        b. Greece
        c. Versailles
        d. West Coast
35. Go on a date
36. Go on a picnic with a red & white checkered blanket and a picnic basket that would make Yogi Bear proud
37. Drive “The Dude” (the van)
38. Camp out under the stars with my housemates
39. Go to a drive-in movie
40. Have a campfire
41. Write to my penpal
42. Call my mom every week
43. Be in times square on New Year’s Eve
44. Make Chelkey youtube videos
45. Make my Williamsburg Family Vacation scrapbook
46. Send birthday cards
47. Grow my hair long again
48. Own my own café
49. Go to Starved Rock (Illinois)
50. Make my own peanut butter at Fischer’s

Love,
Rachel

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