Transfiguration and Confidence

Hello my loyal readers!! I'm not sure how many of you there are, but my blog has steadily had page views. We're over 3500 views to date. Awesome!!

I think its been a week since my last check in. Well... Not much has been going on. My days consist of biking to school in the morning, teaching, biking home for lunch, biking back to school in the afternoon, teaching, and coming home. Being back into a routine has been pretty nice, although I do miss those white sand beaches. ;)

Some fun things about being 'home' is that it turns out I live here pretty well. By that, I mean, it was rather easy to jump back into the swing of China. Over Spring Festival I was using all english, and the people spoke english. In Shaoxing, its rare to find an english speaker outside of the college students. But in my first few days back here, I've been ordering food, directing taxi drivers and basically thriving all in Chinese. It is a good life lesson to know that perseverance really pays off. I'm not saying this is the first time the trait has been portrayed in my life, but it hit me the other day. I am living in China and I'm not afraid. I don't have any reservations about trying to communicate, about navigating, or about finding daily necessities.

That's where the title of this post comes in to perspective. This past Sunday in the chu/ch year was Transfiguration. Which, as some of you may know, was the event in the life of Je$us where he displayed his nature as G0d to his disciples. I won't make any comparisons between myself and Je$us, but the talk on Sunday talked about change. In the last 6 months I've changed. I'm not sure how... I'm not sure if it's good or bad; probably both. But the point is that I'm a different person than I was in August of 2013 before I left. This change has a connection with confidence. I've always been a very confident person. Talking to strangers, following directions to a new place, exploring the woods by my cabin all were exciting adventures to my younger self. (Ask my mother, haha. Love you Ma) China wasn't a scary event for me, it was a nervous exciting adventure. I am so glad I decided to come here. It's been so great, and I'll never forget all the time I've spent here.

I thought I'd share those thoughts with you. And to give you these parting words of 'wisdom' from a older than her years (i hope) twenty three year old. \\ Don't ever stop changing. Don't fear the unknown. It is change that allows us to grow, to mature, to explore. If we never change we'd never advance through school, grow out of diapers, mature to be parents and grandparents. Every experience we have changes us in some way. You can fight it or you can embrace it. Embrace it. //

Until next time.