Touring in Taiwan

            Hi again, everyone! I’m sorry I didn’t write last week, but so many things were happening! We had a wonderful time in Taiwan; I could go on about it for pages, but I don’t think any of us have time for that. I’ll try to pick out a few of the highlights and post a few pictures. If you want more pictures and videos, you should like Under Construction on Facebook; they’ve all been posted there. Here’s th link, if anyone is interested:

https://www.facebook.com/underconst?hc_location=timeline

            First of all, there was the weather. After being in Boston for so many weeks of winter, we knew how to appreciate the wonders of a tropical island. There were mountains covered in green, the sun shone every day, and we wore jeans and T-shirts whenever we weren’t singing. I had forgotten what heat and humidity were – not anymore.

            All of our performances were great; we had the opportunity to sing twenty different times, and we spent every day shuttling from one place to another, rehearsing on the way. It was great, even though we didn’t think so all the time. And every time we arrived somewhere, they fed us; we must have had six meals a day. Everyone was showering us with food and gifts and bubble tea. By the end of the week our floor was covered in bags and boxes of gifts; the hospitality and warmth of the people left me dumbfounded.

            We stayed at a church guest house in Taipei a few nights, at a bed and breakfast in Tainan a few nights, and at a seminary one night. We spent a little time sight-seeing; we had dinner in the third tallest building in the world and went to the night market and the Chiang Kai-shek memorial. We also spent a lot of time just getting to know each other and staying up late at night talking. In fact, since we left to return to the US at 5 AM on Friday, Taiwan time, we just stayed up talking the entire night.

            Speaking of talking, I now know 10 phrases in Mandarin, ranging from “hello” to “where is the bathroom”. Now mind you, I’m not sure if anyone would understand most of them when I said them, but it’s always nice to know a little. I hope I don’t forget too soon.

            Memorable moments? Well, we spent a lot of time with kids, ranging in age from kindergarteners to high school and university students. We had one concert with kids we’d been teaching from elementary school, and at the end of the concert, when we’d finished singing some songs of our own, we were all blown away when the entire wave of kids (and parents) rushed back onstage to shower us with flowers. It was amazing; there was more than one person crying. I also sang tenor for the first time during that concert, which I thought was pretty awesome.

            There was the time when we were at a middle school singing and then doing a Q&A session with the kids. The questions were pre-written, in English (all the kids study English), and ranged from “Have you played dodge ball?” to “What does life mean to you?” Guess who had to figure out what life meant to them… that’s right. We had a great time at that school, and at all of the other schools we visited. Being in college, I don’t see that many kids – I’d forgotten how cute they were!

            Oh, and of course there was the moment at the airport, heading back to the States, when I logged onto Facebook to see that a close friend of mine is now engaged! Congratulations again! You should have seen my face – I must have gone around for the next half-hour just repeating “she’s engaged. She’s engaged!” The fact that I hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours probably also contributed to the happy shock.

            I have a lot of other memories – not-so-funny jokes that were hilarious at two in the morning, riding a bike through city streets for the first time, trying new foods, eating with chopsticks (I can’t eat rice with a fork now – it’s just weird), having good conversations, playing games, sharing my testimony, (usually) hitting the high A on Crown Him with Many Crowns… I could go on forever. The trip was wonderful, and to tell the truth, I didn’t want to come back.

            Coming back, you see, doesn’t just mean coming back to the US or even to Harvard. It means coming back to constant Wi-Fi and cell phone coverage and consequently always being on call. It means returning to responsibility, returning to work. And of course, it means returning to winter – having to deal with all that weird white stuff on the ground. But oases aren’t meant to sustain us forever, just to ready us for the next leg of the journey.

            That, in my opinion, was the best thing about our trip to Taiwan. It wasn’t just a fun week we spent going around and singing. It was a time of good friendship and fellowship and prayer and worship and seeking God. I  came to know myself and the people in my group better, and I was able to reset my priorities, to step back from my life and remember the reason I do the things I do. Taiwan helped me prepare for the next part of my journey.

            And so now I’m off again, already in the middle of assignments and projects and readings and quizzes. There are so many things to do, and no one is in the mood to start doing them, but we’ve started anyway. Happy Spring, everyone! Time to get back to work!

Spring Break and Snow Days

            The first time I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I remember being struck by the spring imagery; as the winter loses its power, leaves appear on trees, birds start to sing, and grasses and flowers begin to appear. I don’t think I ever understood the real power of the regeneration metaphor until now. After weeks of nothing but patches of dirt coated with hardened snow, finally – finally! – green plant life started to show its face.

            And this morning, it snowed again. And then froze.

            Oh, well. In four days I will be on a plane on my way to the tropical island of Taiwan. We’re flying out of New York, not Boston, which means that for an afternoon flight, we are leaving Harvard at 12am Wednesday night/Thursday morning.  That means we’ll miss Housing Day and all its included activities, but hey – we’re going to Taiwan.

We’ve been rehearsing a lot for this trip, and there are still several more songs we need to finish memorizing before we perform, including one in Chinese (not as scary as it might sound – except for the soloists, we all just sing ‘doos’ and ‘das’ like normal). We had a three-hour rehearsal yesterday, and it’s the hardest I’ve worked at singing for a long while, between memorizing the tunes and needing to sing at the top of or above the staff for long periods of time.

I came out of rehearsal with a tired voice and an energized spirit; we have some great times of community together. Speaking of tour, thank you so much to all of you who have supported and continue to support us through prayer and donations! As treasurer, I am doubly aware of what you’ve done for us, and I can’t say thank you too many times!

Hopefully I’ll have time to write a blog next week, and I’ll take lots of pictures and let you know how things go. Until then, though, I should probably stick to talking about what’s already happened. It’s been a pretty good week overall. I made an A on my physics module quiz, watched three different film versions on Pride and Prejudice (and finished the book), and had time to exercise. And besides that, my parents pleasantly surprised me by announcing that they would be flying up here at the end of the semester to help move my things into my House*!

The high point of the week was an a cappella concert I went to with Charlene, one of the girls in my a cappella group. The Radcliffe Pitches and Harvard Krokodiloes performed, and they did excellently. Their singing sounded wonderful – they sang a lot of older songs, from “When I Fall in Love it will be Forever” to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”. They also had a lot of comedy incorporated, and we had a great time.

It was also an interesting week in Hebrew. Last Wednesday, in the interests of developing more abstract vocabularies, we had a discussion on ethical dilemmas. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a moderated discussion on philosophy or ethics, but no one ever gets to say everything they want to. The problem is exacerbated when no one is using their native language – I’ve never seen a group of people that looked so frustrated. Our TF nearly died laughing.

The only bad thing about going to Taiwan is trying to finish my normal homework, plus the physics take-home midterm and four papers I have due the week I get back. I'm not sure how everything is going to get done, but it'll get there somehow. I hope I get to post next week to tell you about Taiwan, but if not, you'll have a very long post with lots of pictures in two weeks. Until then!

*I don’t think I’ve explained this yes, but Harvard freshman live in Dorms, while upperclassmen live in Houses. Housing Day is the day we find out where we’ll live for the next three years, excluding transfers, and everyone gets super excited about it – upperclassmen run into the Dorms screaming their house names to let people know where they’ll be.

Planning and Prosecuting

            I’m not sure if watching a popular movie for analysis purposes is a blessing or a curse. On the one hand, your research assignments consist of reading and watching the things you watch for enjoyment in any case. On the other hand, when you’re watching them, not for enjoyment, but for close analysis, you end up noticing all the things that are wrong with them – in the end, at best they’re boring and at worst they’re disemboweled.

            At least, that’s how I’m feeling about Pride and Prejudice about now. I’m watching several different versions and re-reading the book, and while there are fruitful grounds for analysis, I kind of like to suspend belief for a while when watching; it just makes things more agreeable. I suppose, though, that if given the option to watch a popular movie for homework, I should take it.

            Pride and Prejudice isn’t the only movie I watched this weekend. On Saturday several Christian groups on campus and a couple of local churches hosted a documentary showing on sex trafficking (It was called Nefarious if you want to look it up). It was very intense; I think most of the people in the theater started crying. I’m not sure if that many people will actually do something about it, but awareness was raised.

            I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, really – about the gap between thinking and doing. I mean, let’s face it. It’s not usually the best idea to throw yourself and your money into a cause because a movie made you cry. Yes, this is a horrible thing. But there are a lot of horrible things out there. The entire world is broken, corrupted, cursed. You can’t fix everything. But you have to do something.

            In DOXA, the weekly large group of one of the Christian groups on campus, the speaker last Friday talked about habits – about how habits, not thoughts, really influence our actions. How our souls and spirits are shaped not by what we know or even what we believe, but by what we do. About how it’s important to implement habits that will point your heart’s longings in the right direction. Too often I sit and think and plan and don’t ever get anything done; I find myself desensitized to the brokenness of the world around me.

            In a cappella we learned a new song on Sunday. Well, I say song. It’s actually an epic compilation of eight different songs, all of them centering on the theme of being asleep and numb and then waking up to God’s love and salvation. It sounds awesome – or at least it will, when we finish learning it – and it also made me wonder what I’m asleep to, what I need to wake up to.

            There isn’t a definite ending to this musing – I’m still figuring it out. It’s life, after all – nothing is ever neatly wrapped up. And there are always other things going on; it’s rarely clear what events are really at the center of the story. It’s just something to think about, something to help guide me in an as-yet-undetermined direction.

            Speaking of undetermined directions, Housing Day is coming up. At Harvard all the freshman live together in several different dorms, while the upperclassmen are divided into houses, which they belong to for their last three years here. The house selection is completely random, but today opens the applications for ‘blocking groups,’ which is where you specify which other people you want to be in your house (it doesn’t assign roommates, just which house). I’m blocking with another girl from my Hebrew class, so we’ll see what happens.

             A few things happened over the weekend. I spent a good part of Friday finishing my Expos essay – yep, the same one I mentioned a couple of weeks ago – and turning it in. I always end up rewriting my papers several times before they’re much good, so I don’t really mind, but it was good to be finished. I ended up at the MIT ROTC unit most of Saturday; a Rear Admiral came to visit who is in charge of Israeli-Palestinian security. The talk was really interesting, and the sandwiches and cookies weren’t bad, either.

I also prepared a presentation for this morning’s Naval Science class on Texas Independence, since yesterday was Texas Independence Day *cue patriotic music*. It went pretty well; instead of putting relevant pictures on, I filled in the PowerPoint slides with cartoons about Texas, and I think everyone liked them. Overall, it was a pretty good week – no busier than usual, and no major disasters, or none that I know of.  So best wishes until next time. Have a thoughtful week and a late but happy Texas Independence Day!