V-Day

Welcome!

Well, you know why you're here. This time in 48 hours I will be one hour into my time in Philadelphia. But never fear. The power of technology lets us read blogs, go on facebook, skype each other and all sorts of stuff to stay connected. Perhaps I shall begin by giving the 411 of what I know I'll be up to at this point.

My last semester at Biola I went to the annual art conference and learned about an organization called BuildaBridge International. Their work involves three things:
1) Community: children's art classes in homeless shelters; summer programs
2) International: partner w/ orgs in other countries to run week-long arts camps
3) Institute: ed. opp through Eastern U for 10-day training, local & global

I'm going to be an Institute intern, learning more about the work necessary to plan logistics for such a thing. Hopefully my internship with the OC Music Awards has helped me prepare! If all goes well, I'll also get to be an assistant teacher in a hip-hop class. I'll be taking the bus to my internship from my place with my roommate Christy. She did the Uganda program I did a year earlier, and is now in Teach for America. It turns out a few of my friends from Uganda are also doing internships in the area, so I'm looking forward to reconnecting with them, too! I will also keep busy being cold. Very cold. Very, very cold.

I've been interested in Philly for years before this though, when I first learned about missionyear. Plus, I love the idea of being in the city of brotherly love. The last couple of days I've been doing a thought/art project leading up to the trip and to Valentine's day, drawing that big LOVE statue-type thing the city has. It kind of helped me get perspective on Valentine's Day. Actually, I'm preparing a Valentine's Day lesson for one of my two interviews scheduled. I joked with my mom about trying to schedule my flight on Valentine's Day so I could sit next to a a guy on the way over and be like...well, hello. :) It was a joke, but honestly it also wasn't. Let's me honest, I have less dating experience than some 8 year olds. It's scary. But doing the whole LOVE mural thing helped me be a bit more okay about that. Talks with people too about some recent marriages and divorces that have made me really think about love is. I hadn't read that 1 Cor 13 passage for a long time, and looking at that's been surprisingly...just, good. I'm really hoping these next few months will really stretch my ability to have love in difficult circumstances. How exciting :)

So thanks for reading all the way through, and check back here for more - hopefully shorter - updates and tangents and pictures and stories and, most importantly, stuff.