3rd year in Hong Kong!

This week marks the start of another school year, the 3rd in fact! I can't believe I've taught for 4 years now. Seems like yesterday when I was still doing my practicum at UBC and when Michelle went on hers in Dalian. I joked a couple days ago that no matter how hard I try I'll always only have one more year of teaching experience than Michelle. That is unless she gets pregnant. Then I win.

So this year I've been given an English Literature course to teach and I'm really excited about it. I've been reading through lots of short stories and remembering the texts that I was taught back in the day. The challenge of teaching here in HK is that students are not exposed to reading (especially English books) at an early age. Students have no habit of reading for enjoyment. The only things they read are textbooks they are memorizing for the exam.

This year my teaching schedule looks like this. It's a really nice balance. Instead of teaching one more English Language class with all the grammar and compositions to mark, I'll get Form 3 Literature instead. I get to see the students I taught in Form 1 my first year again which will be nice.

Oh! I've been rearranging (don't want to use "redecorating" since it's a little feminine) my table. I've been getting rid of the clutter. Notice the theme going on?? Yeah, I'm pretty proud of the tape dispenser I made.

Hope all is well with whomever reads this.

Blessings

Awesome friends

Our summer vacation here in Vancouver has flown by so quickly. We have one week left before we have to leave. Last year, leaving our friends was tough enough. But I think this year will be even harder.

When we arrived to Vancouver this time around, I remember telling Michelle one night after we had hung out with our friends (I think Allen and Hannah) that if our friends were crappier, it would be so much easier to leave at the end of summer. The reality is just the opposite: our friends are awesome and hanging out with them this time around has made us realize how much we miss them.

I don't think I fully realized this until yesterday when we partook of communion together at church. After an intense sermon on how we are called to grow with our family at church through both the good and trying times, we were invited up to take the communion elements at the front. It was so cool to share communion in the church I've grown up in, but what was especially impacting was to see all the familiar faces mixed with all the new faces I had never seen before. As the course of people lined up for the bread and the wine, I couldn't help but feel an overwhelming emotion of joy, love and affinity. There was joy and love for these people were my brothers and sisters. These are the people I've grown with, laughed with, cried with and, most of all, followed Christ with. There was a love for the new members and young teens I didn't even know the names to- a reverant disregard for unfamiliarity. As long as we shared the same elements and share the same cross from which grace flows, we share an affinity because we have pledged fellowship and commitment to walk together as a family.

That moment was surreal. My heart wanted to explode. It went by too quickly.

For the joy I felt was all-too-soon replaced with the realization of how much I missed home. My heart had ached for this in Hong Kong and I hadn't even known. And there in that familiar seat in our sterile, off-white walled box where my heart belongs, my soul languished for what I would miss when we leave again.

My mother-in-law recently mentioned that it gets harder as you get older to make good friends who will speak into your life. And though I'm not old enough to fully live out the truth of this adage, this I do know: that I've been blessed to have these relationships in my life thus far. And these good friends have not only spoken into my life, they've filled it with unspeakable joy and given me the courage to strike out and take a step in life. They have challenged me to grow, to be a better person, and to follow Christ more heartily than I ever knew I could.

I wish my friends were crappier, so leaving Vancouver would be so much easier. But they're not. They're awesome. And for that, I'm thankful.