Long Story Short

My original thought:
"Surely I can have one blog that is devoted to purely China, and one blog that is about being a young adult."

That's just the issue. I cannot simply be "China" and be a "young adult" as two separate things. I originally thought that China would be an adventure, and though it certainly is that, it is not just a stand-alone adventure. It is an intricate and meaningful part of the story of this young adult. It will forever continue to be a a crucial chapter, causing significant turnings in the story of "life". To separate the two would be a complete disservice to both, creating a catch-22 of sorts. Neither story would be completely satisfied without the other. The person in China and the young adult need each other to best serve and interact with the surrounding people, both in China and in America. Now looking in hindsight, i realize the ridiculousness of the original thought as I truly had no idea how these 11 months would be changing me and my story.

Speaking of story, I recently read a phenomenal book that I highly recommend everyone to read. Pronto. You see there is this famous author named Donald Miller who wrote a famous book. People then wanted to make a movie out of it so as they are going through the movie-making process, he writes another book about the things he learns along the way. It's really quite intriguing and he does a fabulous job at articulating parts of humanity that we all intrinsically know, but have never spoken. The book is called "A Million Miles In A Thousand Years". It's a quick read, it'll probably take you four hours total. Just a chapter a night [well, you'll want to read more than one at a time…].

It's got me thinking a lot about story, which seems to be a major concept of life in this semester. You see, we're building a curriculum based off of story, teaching second language learners to tell their story, incorporate story in their everyday lives, and recognize the story of others. The theme of each class is illustrated in another story, usually [well, always] a parable from the books of Matthew, Mark, or Luke. It's been a fabulous opportunity for me as a teacher to re-evaluate these stories and tell them in my own way, and it's served as a wonderful teaching tool in class to have students engaging with language they rarely use.

Anyways, you'll be hearing more about that at another time I'm sure. Long story short (haha), read the book and tell me what you think!