Bits and Pieces from the Week

I feel like I have so much less to blog about now that I'm State-side. So I've scrounged up some interesting moments from the past few days. There is a "deep and meaningful" moment, an update on my current living situation, my movie recommendation for the week, and finally my advertisement for a new game I played recently that seemed very weird at first but then totally sucked me in. Read on for details!

Deep and Meaningful: At church yesterday I was talking to a friend who did two stints in South Africa. We were talking about how weird it can feel to come back 'home' and out of that conversation came our mutual revelation of how Westerners (I'm not making this American specific because it's really many Westerners that do this) feel such a sense of entitlement. People should wait on you and make things your way, ie in restaurants. We expect that "the customer is always right" even if we're not. I see it all the time now, and I don't remember being so aware of it before. In HK, you have food and you eat it. You don't special order your food with all these changes. You don't expect other people to modify something just for you. It drives me crazy now to see people do it, but I also can see how easy it is for me to do it when I'm in a place where being picky is a normal thing. Does that make sense?

Update on my current living situation: Things are going surprisingly well! My parents definitely keep having these moments where they say, "It's ok that you put your trash in the small trash can in the kitchen, but next time throw away your trash in the can in the garage." And I can always tell it's coming when they say "Oh, I just wanted to tell you ..." Things like that that I need to re-learn about their household and how very praticular they are about how things should be. But it hasn't been tense yet so that's very good!! I basically try to make it feel like I'm not there. I'm very very tidy, I keep all my things in my room and put away, and I do my laundry at off-times so as not to interrupt my mom's stuff. The one thing that drives me crazy, however, is the alarm on the house. They set it at 9 pm (my parents are verrrrry rigorous in their routine) every night, and while I don't stay out crazy late, when I do come in at 10:15 I have to reset it. And it beeps for 30 seconds (!!!) as it resets. So no matter how quietly I come in, 30 seconds of alarm beeping wakes them up and I feel evil. I hate it. They don't say anything since I'm 27 and can stay out as late as I want ... but I wish I didn't have to wake them up like that.

Now on to my movie recommendation. I saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine on Saturday night. If you like lots of explosions and action, then I think you'll like it. I have seen all the X-Men movies, but somehow the information has fallen completely out of my head so I sat there the whole time next to Claire, who's a good sport, saying "Who is that? Is he good or bad? Why is he doing that??" Finally Claire said, "They didn't send me the script so I don't know" and then she laughed at me ... a lot. All in all, it was a fun night. And my goodness, Wolverine has been working out ... a lot ... in preparation for this role.

Finally, the new game I learned. Lately (and by lately I mean the last 2 weeks) some friends and I have been taking turns cooking on Friday night and then playing games. We wanted to do something that allowed us to hang out more, because watching movies doesn't really make you interact at all. So this past Friday, we played The Office trivia game (which I totally rocked) and then we played this new game called Killer Bunnies. Now bear with me here because I know the title sounds weird. But it was so fun! It was really confusing at first, but once I got the Cyber Bunny to kill the Ebola Virus and then someone else ran my bunny over and I starved someone else's bunny to death but then the Magic Spatula and the Halo got in the way ... it was all good. Then Gracie won because she had the magic carrot. Seriously, you guys should play this game. It's with cards that have all these weird things on them. It sounds crazy, but it's really fun. We're playing again on Friday. I'm determined to kill all the bunnies and take the carrot.

So, there's my week. I'll try to find some more deep and meaningful moments. My small group is starting a study on Authentic Relationships so I'll be sure to share some more about what I learn.

Also, teaser for next time -- I had a very unexpected lead come up on a new living situation. More to come, so stay tuned!!