My Life til now ...

WOW!!!! I didn't realized that it's been awhile since I've updated. Anyhoos, the last 2 wks before winter break was mostly studying and prepping for the 2 tests before the break. Nothing really special about those weeks.

I did start meeting with the girls in my accountability group. They are great and we are starting with The Attributes of God by Pink. I think it's a great book to start with for the girls and regardless where we are spiritually, it's a great reminder of who God is. Even though this is the second time for me going through this, I still find it fascinating because I pick up things that I didn't the first time around. Thanks Tiff Keng! We'll be going through the Predestination/Election/Free Will after break. Pray for that!

I did think about where I wanted to relocate to for my 3rd and 4th in med school, at least as of right now. It comes down to Newark, NJ, Detroit, MI or Cleavland, OH. I'll know for sure this time next year. I know, they are all the more farther away from Cali. I do promise that I'll eventually come back to home. But as of right now, I'm doing summer preceptorship in early July somewhere in MO. So I should be home in June. ::happy days::

Now, I've been home for about a week already and it's filled with chauffering my mom, get some studying in everyday, and eating all the yummy food. :P Best of all, catching up with college friends. I went out with Tiff Keng yesterday. It was awesome. I haven't seen or talk to her for months and just hanging for the 2 hours reminded me of the good ole times we had in college. Nonetheless, I'm glad that God gave me really good friends in college. I'm playing phone tag with Sandy. The funnest thing to do. :) I talked to Olivia a bit. It was really good to see another strong Christian running hard for God in med school. It was encouraging because I don't see much strong Christians where I am and I really appreciate Olivia. God knows exactly what I need at every moment. How wonderful! I even caught up with an old high school teacher, Mike Frei. I dunno what hit me, but just got the feeling that I should say hi and just check in. ::shrug::

The thought of the week is I'm growing up and I'm not ready and don't feel like I'm an adult yet. 2 weekends ago, APO in my school did Adopt-a-Child where we take underserved kids out for Christmas shopping. They told us that every kid needs 2 adults and that's when it hits me that Wow! I'm actually an adult and not a kid anymore. Amazing, huh. Then this week, went shopping with mom and realize I'm shopping more for work/business causal clothes and moaned about how expensive they were. ::sigh:: The price of getting old.

All these engagements are making me feel even older. I think I know of at least 5 couples and I'm sure there more that I've missed. Craziness. I'm here thinking, I'm still and a student and only 22 yet all these people of getting engaged and getting married. Where do I belong now?

Countdown: 2 days til Shanghai

9 days til classes once again

Once a Bruin Always a Bruin!!!

UCLA beat USC!!! WOOOHHH!!! It's been a long 7 years.

Go Bruins!!

::haha::smirk:: no national champ for SC!

New things for me!!!

This week has been full of new things for me to experience. The week started off relatively normal with really warm weather in the 60s. Then Wed nite was my first ice storm. According to the local, it's a small one. So on Thurs morn, walking to class was ok, nothing big deal but on my way back from class, I was buttoning my jacket and wasn't really paying attention to where I was walking. I slipped on a patched of ice and fell on my bottom and scraped my plam a little bit. Haven't had a fall like that since my 2nd year in college where I tripped over my foot and sidewalk and gave myself a swoollen knee. It'll be a fun winter in counting how many times I fall and be a major klutz. haha

Then the same nite, I had to go to my friend's place to go over some homework problems. I didn't realize how hard and how long it would take to defrost my car. I have an ice scraper in the trunk of my car. When I got to my car, all my doors were frozen shut and so was my trunk. I was like, "I have to get into my trunk! AHH!" Then I just started pulling on any door just to get into my car. Finally got one of the backseat door open, then I crawled around to the driver seat to start my car and start the thawing. Thankfully I remembered that my backseat bench folds down and I can get into my trunk. Yippee! Then I start scraping. It took about a good 30 min scraping and warming up my car. But I still couldn't get my trunk open. The whole time, I was just praying to God to just let me open one door. Crazy.

On my way home, I decided to get gas. Well guess what? The gas door is also frozen shut and I couldn't get it open. So that nite was just loads of fun. It was raining too my the time I got home. It's basically ice pellets raining down. It hurts.

That same nite was the snow storm. My first one. I went to bed excited. I woke up Friday morn with snow and it was just amazing. Everything was white and beautiful and pure. I was so excited that I took more pics out of my window than I planned on.

That same nite, we have our annual Prom. everyone get to dress up. I went to a 2nd year's apt downstairs and had wine and cheese. The cheese was good but I found out I only like dessert wine, the sweeter the better. We walked to the place for the formal. Normally it would be a short walk but with the 4inches of snow the nite before it was interesting. I had on a mid calf dress and strappy sandal, so the walk was freezing. Frozen toes and legs. No amt of jacket and scarf could make up for it. The price we pay for beauty. ::sigh::

The prom was fun. The food was cold and didn't taste the best. The songs for dancing sucks with occasional good songs. Most people were drunk by 10pm. There was a group going out afterward in dress clothes to bars. Crazy people. Overall it was fun just to see people getting all dressed and not seeing them in scrubs like in everyday.

Overall, this week has been good. God has been gracious to me, letting me to see and experience new things. Tomorrow morning will be interesting trying to get to church. hehe. Laters.

Thanksgiving Break!!

It's been a week since my short week break. The break from school was wonderful but too short for my liking. I had a busy but mindless week. It was mostly dring my brother to and back from UOP until he got out on Tues. Then busy trying to find my parents a decent priced brand new car to buy. That took about three days to do. In between all the gatherings, squeezed in some TV catch up time. Sleep did not get caught up but got the daily 8hrs a nite. Not enough.

This is the first time that I realize that going home and back to school is an all day ordeal. It takes 3hrs from the airport to my apt and then another 3-4 hrs of flight and the time change. craziness. On my way back to school, I had to take a freeway that only had about 2sec for me to enter from the airport exit and of course, I missed that. Then I took a freeway that is a longer route. Another girl in my car had to call someone and asked for directions to get back on the shorter route. What a detour! But I did get to see the Kansas City Stadium. Hehe. I'm so not going to drive for Christmas. It'll be too much for me. Ugh!

Anyway, going home made me realize how much I do miss a strong church even though my home church is not as strong as GCC but it's much better than the one I go to out here. I really miss the fellowship. People actually talked and hangout and are not busy rushing around doing things. Here at school, I never really get a chance to stay and hang around cuz I'm always trying to get back and get studying going so I can get as much studying in as I can possibly squeezed in 24hrs.

But God still bless me with my family and friends I've made at UCLA. Being able to catch up with them and their flexibilty with my lack of time to talk during the quarter have been a wonderful gift for me during the quarter. Thank and praise God for carrying me through this past quarter. He has answered my prayer at the end where I was on the borderline of failing 2 classes but He is gracious and gave me something beyond what I was expecting. I'm enjoying the challenge and the gift that God has bestowed on me and just pray that I'll learn even more from Him the upcoming months and years.

In short version, this was my week at home!! more to come about my first week at school with our Prom tonite.

A Whirlwind of Weeks ....

Hi Hi
It's been a looonnng time but the past three weeks have been wonderful yet stressful. The one fun thing was seeing Dr. Patch Adam (the real one and not the movie) giving his schpeal. It was great and funny until his opening for Q&A, then it went downhill to disappointment. He was all for compassion and giving and just trying to brighten up kids' day by being clowns. He also showed a couple of video clips but they were quite disturbing. At least that's what I thought of them. The Q&A was a disaster because he did not answer the questions being asked and his answers were the same one for everything questions, just worded differently. It was here that I saw his hipocricy on his philosophy. He's all about compassion and kindness but he's absolutely violent about government. Also he talked about religions and how he "pretends" to believe the religion of the kids that he clowning and that's done because he's just turn it to himself. So man centered. That was just a sad and disappointing nite for me.

Then the weeks of the last batch of test and finals hit. Boy! was that crazy. The last batch of tests were ok and relatively normal. But the finals, talk about stress and craziness and about not sleeping. I don't think I've slept more than 4 hrs a nite and caffeine kept me going for the last three days of tests. It was a week of keep going and nervousness and praying that I'll pass the tests and the classes. By the end of the week, my apartment looked like I had a tornado tore through it multiple times and plates stacked up the highest it has ever been. I was on salad and pizzas and sandwiches all b/c they take the least amount of time to make and eat. By the end of the week, it was huge breath letting go and physically drained. Nothing was ever like that before. Then I wanted to take a nap before cleaning my apartment but I couldn't fall asleep for the longest time. It was weird!

Side note: A funny story happened during that week. I drove to the state school to use their library to study. Their library atmosphere was very much like the Anderson library at UCLA so I fell in love with it. I was there until 9pm and forgot that it's been at freezing temps after dark. So I got to my car and saw that it was covered in ice. So me, being a Cali girl, I just started my car and sat inside for good 10 mins to thaw out my car even though I only live like 5 mins away. ::sigh:: I didn't have an ice scrapper to scrap off the ice so I can drive. silly me. Then the walk from my car in the lot to my apartment has completely freeze me so I had to take a really hot shower to thaw. How sad!!!!

And now I'm HOME!!!!! The trip home was long. It was an all day event with driving 3hrs to airport and flying for 4 hrs with 2hrs of layover at Dallas. I was a complete zombie by the time I got home. I went out to dinner last nite and the food was awesome! That's what I was missing, the good Chinese food from Cali. (Today I had some rice and veggies for lunch and I told my bro that rice was good too :) since I don't have good Chinese rice at school) I had persimmons today and boy were they great. hehe. I just realize that right now, any Chinese food or fruit would great since I've been Chinese deprived for the last 3-4months.

These past couple of weeks have definitely been draining physically and spiritually as well. It was a lot of trusting the Lord and having the strong faith that He knows what He's doing with me in med school and crazy tests that I was taking. Half of the time, I felt like I don't even have the physical strength to get up every morning at 4:30 and go to bed around midnite and spend all the rest of the day studying. He definitely showed me how faithful He's been and how His promises are just that, His. It's been wonderful to see how my finals week have been done throught God's grace especially in some of the classes that I've been struggling.

I'm excited too because I have started an accountability group through the Bible study there and I'm sort of a leader of the group. The girls I've got are great and I'm excited to see how this would work in my life this year at school. I don't know what I'm going to do with them especially since we only meet one hour once a week because of our crazy schedule. But it's exciting nonetheless.

Anyways, I think this is the Cliff note version of my lovely crazy weeks. Laters.

Restful yet a slightly anxious ....

I'm enjoying this week so far: enough time for me to catch up on classes, get about 6 hrs of sleep a nite (a luxury) and getting a bit of time to myself. I'm enjoying this week but on my back burner is the fact that in two weeks, I have a crazy week of finals. But I'm gonna trust that God will carry me through and giving the strength for the cray non sleeping week. I dunno what to do with my schedule to get all the studying I need. I'm JUST slightly overwhelmed. :P We'll see how I'll survive that week.

Other than that, this has been a normal week. Haven't really done many fun things, except ones going out to the local bar with a bunch of people during the homecoming weekend of the local state uni. It was great in relieving stress and not doing much thinking.

God was really gracious because He just gave me something wonderful to work with (I think). CMDA (Bible study) has accountability group (our version of small group) and I said I could be a contact person for my group. So now I have a group of girls with another first year, a second year and another girl that's been held back. I just found out that I am sort of leading the group as well in choosing topics and what to do. So we'll see how that goes. But I'm excited to see what God has planned for this type of group.

The big thing this week was the MLB Cardinal, St. Louis, winning the world series yesterday. The last two games they played were awesome. It was intense. Funny how I learned to watch all the sports that I don't normally watched in the last two years. First it was NBA bastketball from my brother then college football and basketball from Miss Sandy and not MLB from med school. How funny that I've never used watch sports and not I understand and watch various sports. haha. unbelievable.

Anyways, time for me to look at more pictures to go with my Histology class (microscope class). ::sigh::

Last 2 weeks .... ugh

The last 2 weeks was a torture, not only do I feel like I've ran a marathon of testing but I feel physically drained. I started thinking why in the world that I'm here in this med school. But then I thought of how God has opened the doors to let me in here. I have to keep that in mind or else I will go crazy with the load of work and not doing well. I have 2 classes where I'm barely passing with a 70. How sad! But nonetheless, God has reminded me that He put me here for a reason and that He'll see me through this crazy quarter. I can't really complain about the hole that I have let myself in with all the testing and the depression that came with it last week because I did learn something and that God has reminded me once again to have faith and believe in Him. I have to keep reminding myself to "have faith in God's faithfulness to us" as someone in my Bible Study have said.

This weekend is for me to refocus myself again and rejuvenate in learning the wonderful things of our bodies and of the reason that I choose to be in the medical profession. Please keep this in prayer for me and that I won't get sick unti Thanksgiving when I'm home as the weather turn chilly and rainy and windy. The winter of LA already and am not used to real winter yet since I've been away from NorCal for 4 years.

Once last thing, I have Shanghai to forward to over Christmas Break. My parents booked a trip for a week right before classes start again for me. I'm so excited!!!! :P (I've test to come back to and jet lag to deal with for classes the day after I come back, but it'll be one of those few trips with my entire family. Can't complain about that.)

alrity .... toodles til next time.

Awesome God ..... our bodies ...

I miss having praise and worship nites where people would just sing and joyfully worshipping the Lord. CMDA had one on Friday and it was great an comforting to me because it was like I've found the common ground with all the people at the fellowship. I think this really just stemmed from the email that I got regarding Rsolved for next year. I really do wish to go but it's on a weekend that I do not have off and at the busy time of the quarter. booo. I really do want to go and get the strong teaching and fellowship. oh well. Guess God has a bigger and better plan for me here.

Beyond that, my week here has been the same so far, class, study, some form of entertainment to amuse myself during mealtimes and more studying and hoping to be able to crash for more that 5 hrs a nite. A little update on the anatomy course, I definitely do not want to eat red meat any more because I can smell the meat as I dissect the body and it's really gross. We just finish the upper limb unit and it was great to see how great our God is even in our bodies. the nerves and arteries that we have are so complex and cleaning it out to be able to see them just amazed me to no end. It is like a network of ropey strings but it does everything that our arms does. How amazing is that. So that's what I'm studying right now for my exam on Tues. There's so much information but I trust God and know that He will provide me with exactly what I need.

On a side note, please pray for me in getting closer to God in my walk. I feel like I've been so far away since graduation especially now with crazy hectic schedule and trying not to be consumed by med school. I'm excited in that CMDA is having samll accountability groups and I can't wait to see how that goes. It's a bit like small groups at GOC. Anyways, back to more crazy studying of our amazing bodies.
Toodles.

A day with 3 hours of zzzz + a cup of caffeine .....

That was me yesterday and what a fun it was. It started with 5:30am studying for for anatomy and meeting my lab group at 7:30 to go over our cadaver for the ID quiz later in the afternoon. Then calsses went from 9am to noon. That was great because I was really hyper and people around were like what was I on? hehe. Then anatomy lab after lunch and it was exhausting. My school was having a CME day with Alumni reunion weekend so we had all these older docs who graduated from the 50s coming into our lab walking around. On top of that, we were dissecting the forearm. Boy was that painful. Every time our group look over to the clock it seemed like the clock never moved and half the time we couldn't even find the right muscles in the area. We were guessing the whole time and had to have a professor coming over every so often to confirm what we've found. Then I went back to my apt and slept, right through an activity that I was gonna go that evening. It was a non productive studying evening especially with a Biochem test on Monday morning. Ugh.

The day before my hyper day was when I went with a 2nd year to an elementary school and did school physicals for 5th graders. That was fun. The kids love to talk if you ask them questions but I was busying trying to remember how to use the diagnostic equipment on them without looking like an idiot half the time. :P That really reminded of the fun times of being a doc. And I actually felt like "Wow! Ihave done something real life instead of all the books sitting in my living room right now waiting to be cracked open and poured over." It was a great reality and perspective check for however short the 2 hours were.

Anyways, now I'm gonna start my day off with Biochem studying and gonna go crazy over it till I know it like the back of my hand. Toodles.

Bedtime Ramblings ...

A little something before I go to bed ....

Pastor Bob Shaffer at Grace Community Bible Church (that I went to today) said something that just stuck in my mind. He said, "The danger to being a Christian is not allowing to fail. You can't fail out of Kingdom of God. Once it's given, it's given." What he said was very true and it just reminded me of us being man. We can't be perfected by our own works and that it has to be through God. By us claiming that we are not failures in God's standards, we are sinning already because our nature is sinful. I don't exactly know what I'm saying right now, but all I can say is that we need to own up to it that we are failures and sinners and that it is because Christ's resurrection that we might even have the hope of eternity and the personal relationship with God.

I don't know why this stuck out. Maybe it's because now I'm truly wondering why med school. It's so hard on life and on my body as well. Staying up more hours than I ever care for, constantly wondering when I can squeeze in more studying time. I feel like my life has been going on fastforward with studying and attending class ever since med shool started. Today at church, I thought about whether this is what God has planned for me and is calling me to do. I have nothing to complain but this is just my tired thinking. I know that God has opened this door for me and will help me through it. Now if my heart can be at the same place, that would be awesome.

Anyways, I think I will settle with Grace Community Bible Church. I find this place to be most homecoming to me, feel like I've come home. But we'll see how well I can be plugged in since I've only been to the worship services. :)

This past week has been busy. But nonetheless, it's been going. I am elected to the secretary of OB/Gyn club by default because I was the only one running. So that'll be fun and interesting to see how it'll work out with me. I've been catching up to watch House, MD every week since the new season but it's on a tape since I work on Tuesday nites. I watch it with another girl, Courtney who I go to bible study and church with. She's still searching for a church and may end up at the same church. Oh, and I'm going to medical Spanish so maybe my horrible Spanish will be put into good use. haha.

I really need to keep going to the gym. It's so hard to go at the end of the day, especially after sitting in all those lectures and thinking of all those notes to study over. sigh. I am determined to go to the gym at least 3 times a week. That's my pledge.

Now is really my bedtime. Good nite.

Wanderings ....

Here I am working in the library as work study and my head is pounding after a week's worth of not getting enough sleep and stressing out with 2 tests, with the last one tomorrow. But all I can say is that God has been wonderful and great. What can I do without Him? I really don't know. Anatomy test was as hard as I expected but God was gracious enough to let just pass and gave me a whole new insight in how to study again. It's amazing in how forgiving He is and how He is our strength when it's the most unexpected and undeserved.

Bible study CMDA yesterday was really good and a great reminder of what He has done to save us and picked us out from the millions of people. He definitely answered our question of "Why me?" and that it is His mystery and He'll reveal it when it's appropriate. How precious is that, Him planning the rest of my life as long as I trust, believe and obey Him. The bible study leader gave a really short version of his testimony of his life in Kenya and it really hit me that we may say we are christian but our lives need to be changed in order to live our lives as His testament.

Anyways, this was just a simple reminder of our lives and walk with Christ, very simple and it's something that we all claimed to know. This is my input for the next couple of days. Now back to more studying for Histology .... yippee hiya.....

A Break to a Silght Catch Up .... ::sigh::

OMG!!! I"m so tired. My brain is constantly fired by the end of the day and by Friday, I can't function without taking a nap after class. I'm definitely going crazy. So much material to cram into my brain before each test every week. It's really during this time how I've found that God is amazing especially in the amount information that He has allowed for my brain. And the most amazing part is the fact that what I'm learning so far is all created by God Himself and that there's still so much that man cannot understand. God has been gracious to me so far with my first exam and the studying of the second and third and fourth exams for the next week. There's no way that I could've done all these without His strength. Phil 4:13 has been on my mind as I think back the last two weeks of how crazy my school life has gotten.

As crazy as my school life is, I haven't been going to the gym as much which I am determined to change. But there are still time for me to ponder upon a few things. This past week have been club lunch meetings the major clubs have their first meeting and provide lunch. In the food, God has provided without me cooking at all for the last week. But the clubs invited guest speakers and some of what they say hit me as like wow, I can't believe that they said that. One thing that stood out the most is the definition of humanism. According to the speakers (docs), humanism is compassion for the people regardless whether there is a god or not, but philosophically, humanism is related to the spiritual compassion of mankind. In that sense, the docs were telling us to put aside our philosophical beliefs when we are in our healing mode of humanism. From this, I pondered that the two ultimately cannot be separated because it is hard to understand the true compassion and display true compassion if I haven't felt that true compassion coming from Christ as He died on the cross for our sins.

Another comment that strikes me was that the sprirtual writings of a dead physician were tossed out by his family when they were writing a memoir for him. To the family members, science and spirituality do not belong together and that the world is always one or the other. It hit me that how can that line of thinking be possibly true since there are still so much about science that cannot be explain methodically and theoretically. Those are the amazing things that God has done.

This has been a heavy week and in some way a constant battle in trying to finght against science as I'm learning it. I don't know if that make any sense, but it's a battlefield that I'll be taking on for the rest of my life as God leads me on.

Besides this, my school had a hospital day where a bunch of hospitals across the US that have allowed the students from my school to intern there or have residency programs that have people from my school. That day was sort of like tossing us MS 1 into a sea of unknown and being overwhelmed and lost. It was quite interesting to see what options I have come my 3rd and 4th years and perhaps residency. So far, all my options were on the East Coast. Besides being tossed in, we got quite a few goodies from them ie coffee mug (a med student necessitiy), small portable radio, lots of pens, chapsticks, bags and not in the least papers and candies. I came back to my apt with a ton of stuff and papers that are still spread out in my room because I haven't had time to put them away in an organized fashion. The hospital day doesn't really mean anything to me till next year but it was fun.

An interesting happened on that day was a second year, (i think he's Chinese too), just randomly tapped on my shoulders as I was talking to a hospital representative and asked me if I was Chinese. I just said yes and turned away from him and kept talking to the representative. After I finished talking to the rep, I noticed the same was talking to another Chinese guy from UCLA, telling him that I was Chinese too. But I felt really bad because I think I kinda snubbed him. oops. Hopefully, I'll see him around and be able to apologize. That was quite an interesting reaction and question because people here in this town don't really asked me anything like that. He just sorta shocked me with his question. oh well.

Alright, I think I've taken my slot of break from studying human anatomy. So tooddles until next time. :)

Cadavers .... Meat.....EWW!!!

I am having fun here in med school so far and that has included the anatomy class with cadavers. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever look at beef and pork the same way and may haps chicken as well. The labs were exhaustingly long. It's about 3 hours each time and it's always at the end of the day. So far, we have done the back muscles and pulling the muscles back to get to the spine. And that has been gross enough with the meats. I haven't eaten any red meat since my first day of lab and I have some left in my freezer from when my family was here.
Besides the cadavers, classes had been going relatively well despite having this crazy prof and two quizzes. The crazy prof just lectures from his memory and likes to use a different textbook than required. It was really annoying. He teaches two subject under two main courses. This week has been relatively normal but it will start to the point where I will go crazy. We are starting school physicals where we actually get to help to do them with the second years in two weeks and we have our own patient practical by the end of the month. scary or what!
Today, I actually went to a church that I've found to be decent compared to the last two that I've went to. They are conservative (i think) but the wroship service is a combination of the big service at GCC and Crossrods. The pastor is like Rick Holland, very short and very contemporary. The set up of the service is like the big church. Besides this, they spoke on the Word not in the sense that I'm used to. But more topical based and used the Word as reference. It is not bad, but it's just something different. It was when I was sitting there that I realized how fortunate I was to be under GOC and GCC for the past four years at UCLA. Without them, I don't think I could've grown as much. I know that I'm not make comparsion but sometimes, I just couldn't help it. This will be an area I'll have to work on. Next week I'll try out one more and it's a baptist church then I'll probably make a final decision.
I miss all my buddies from Cal and Chinese food and my family. I didn't think I would miss them so much since I've been away from home since freshmen year in college. But this time is different. I feel like I've officially moved out of my parents' home and will be on my own from now on. sad... :( Nonetheless, I'm excited to see what the Lord has planned for me for the next year here in Missouri. But for now, gotta go gof more Biochem and study for all the other lectures and exams.... tons more work.

By the way, my previous post were here
This was before I've found this to be user - friendlier that xanga.