See You @ the Pole

Before I forget, here's another lame joke I have:
What do you do when you're bored?


Play board games!!!
Ahahahaha get it?

Anyway, today was the annual See You At the Pole. SYATP was started in 1990 by a group of teenage students in Burleson, Texas. I don't know the exact history, but they basically met at the flagpole at their school in the morning before school started to pray for the school year, students, teachers, etc. By mouth, internet, and whatever else, the word about SYATP spread. Now, it's an international event that happens every year!

At Lynbrook, we actually had a "See You At the Quad" because the area around the flagpole is really cramped. We prayed a lot, sang worship songs, and went into small groups to get to know other people. What was cool was that 5-10 minutes before school started, we were still praying and singing as people started walking to their classes. Since we were in the quad which is pretty much the center of the school, almost everyone probably either heard or saw us singing. Lots of people joined in, and others looked at us like we were weird. But at least we spread awareness to the school! Actually, I heard the people in my first class mocking us and making fun of the songs, but I was surprised I didn't mind. So that was good. :)))

Overall, it was a really good experience! :D

French Joke

One of my friends from my Biology class told me this joke last week, and I thought it was pretty cool! It's like an "oral" joke where you have to say it out loud to get it, so it might look weird at first. :P And keep in mind that "un oeuf" means an egg in French.

Who do French people only eat one egg for breakfast?


........







Because they've had un oeuf!!!

If you say un oeuf with an American accent, it sounds like "enough." So it's like, "Because they've had enough!" Haha get it? Sorry if it's not funny... :P

LOVE LOVE LOVE :)

High school's starting for real now. Teachers are going crazy about homework, the dance team season is also starting to get intense (we have LOTS of dances to prepare for Winter Show and competitions), and it's the time of the year when clubs are getting going again.

Clubs are not that big of a deal for most people I guess, but for some reason, I take my choosing of clubs very seriously. :P So far, I've only chosen French Club and Agape, because they mean the most to me. Especially Agape!!! XD

I went to the lunch meeting for Agape just this Monday. A special guest speaker came, who was actually a graduate of Lynbrook High School in '04 or something. I really learned a lot from what the speaker told us. He started with the question, "What is Agape? What does it mean?" Weren't you probably wondering that too when I first mentioned it? Well, to answer that question, Agape is a Greek word meaning "unconditional love." That leads us to the next question, "So why is this club called Agape?" The club is actually called Agape Christian Club. I didn't want to mention it earlier to give it away so quickly. :P And the reason there's the word "Agape" in front is because our purpose is to love unconditionally.

(BTW, the definition of unconditional is "not limited by conditions; absolute" so keep that in mind!)

In fact, to love each other unconditionally should be our purpose as Christians. :) We are able to love freely because God first loved us. We sinned and did so many bad things and broke all of his commandments, yet he still loves us just because he had always loved us, not because of what we do. So basically, God won't love you any more or less by your actions, because he already loves everyone unconditionally and to the fullest possible. We have all done so many bad things in life, but all we have to do is admit it and ask for His forgiveness and he will never hold it against us. (But that doesn't mean we can just keep on going on with our bad stuff! Just if we accidentally mess up, it's ok.) And because we know he loves us so much, it's our natural instinct to love one another. And on our part, loving unconditionally means to love like how God did to us; to not love someone because they did something good for you, or to dislike someone because they hurt you, but to love people regardless of what they do.

I feel like I'm preaching a lot or something. :P But seriously, this stuff is SOOOOOO hard to do. It's kind of natural to just judge someone by their looks and not talk to them based off of what we see on the outside. And it's even harder to love someone who has hurt you so much. For me, to start off with, it's even hard to imagine that God is there sometimes when I'm praying because we just can't physically see him. But when I prayed with faith, my prayers got answered for real.

Just a side story: this one time, (it was quite a while ago) my brother was looking for his violin string and asked me to help him try to find it, so I just laid down on the sofa and made a short prayer. At first, I wasn't sure if it was going to work, but believe it or not, literally, within 10-20 seconds, he was like, "Oh hey the string's right here!" And my family members and I have lost many things and praying works EVERY TIME!!! It's pretty awesome!

I'm still working on what I just said above. But as I said before, these things are so hard to actually apply to life because when I see someone who has hurt me, I'm just like, "Aaargh he/she's mean!" Or when I see someone with special needs or someone that looks weird, I'm like, "I don't want to talk to them." So it's hard to change that mentality. But I'm working on it. :)

Well, hope this helped!!! XDDDD

PS. I should actually put this post in the Bible Study Corner, but I don't think that gets sent to people's emails so I'll just put it in the normal place so people can receive this in their emails. :)

Mid-Autumn Festival

Tomorrow (September 12) is the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival! It's on the 15th day of the 8th month in the Chinese calendar. I don't know how they convert that into our calendar though...I just searched the date up online. :P But actually, this festival is also celebrated by Taiwanese and Vietnamese people, so it's not exactly the "Chinese" Mid-Autumn Festival.

Anyway, the Mid-Autumn Festival is also known the Moon Festival or 中秋节. On this day, the moon looks the biggest/roundest. :) I don't really know exactly why it's celebrated...but at least we get to eat mooncakes! If you've never tried mooncakes and are not allergic to nuts and seeds and other stuff, you haaave to try it! They sell it at local Chinese supermarkets, but are kind of expensive since they're once-in-a-year type of things, so just buy one to try first. But they're absolutely amazing. :))) If you're brave enough, you can search up a recipe on Youtube; I heard they're really hard to make though. D:



Nowadays, they've come up with so many kinds of mooncakes; the most traditional ones are the lotus paste mooncakes, but there's also red bean, green been, coconut, dates, sesame, nuts, and even ice cream mooncakes! Haagen-Dazs in Hong Kong (and other places in China probably) sell ice cream mooncakes. :)


Apart from eating mooncakes, the tradition is to also light lanterns and watch dragon dances. I remember when I was really little, my aunt (or grandma, I forgot) gave me a Hello Kitty lantern for Mid-Autumn Festival. <333

Anyway, happy Mid-Autumn Festival!