I never pack until the night of my flight, or rather, morning of, and this time it’s no different. We stay up until 3:00AM packing and watching movies all the while. I head off to bed without setting an alarm thinking that someone will wake me up tomorrow, but it turns out I should never make such assumptions. I’m stirred from bed by the ruckus at 8:00AM and we don’t leave the house until 8:30AM for our 9:55AM flight. It’ll be a miracle if we make it. For the record, it’s not my fault we’re late. Mom’s still showering. I don’t understand how anyone could be calm enough to shower with so little time left. Really, negative time left.

In the car we get to the topic of anime, although I’ve only watched up to episode 5 of Clannad because it’s too much of a commitment reading subtitles. Ken calls me a noob and says that I need to watch so much anime that I no longer need to read subtitles. He’s speaking from his own experience I suppose. I challenge him, ordering him to say something in Japanese. He quickly backtracks and admits he only knows a few phrases, and because he mostly watches fantasy, the phrases he knows aren’t very practical, but at least I know I’ll have someone to turn to if ever I need to say “let the battle commence.”

Graduating from high school, I jokingly announce that I will be retiring from swimming. But I should have known better. Once a swimmer always a swimmer.

I haven’t been going to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship large group meetings very consistently. There always seems to be an excuse like having some other thing I need to be at or just being “too tired” to go. Because I don’t see the girls at large group as often as they see each other, I feel like I don’t know them very well, certainly not as well as they know each other. Sometimes I don’t even know who to talk to, except for the leaders, and that’s because it’s their job to welcome me.

So I surprise myself when I sign up for Chapter Camp, an InterVarsity Christian retreat. The upperclassmen who had gone before raved about it. Many of them joined their sophomore year but wished they had done it their freshman year as well. I don’t want to find myself in that position, so to heck with it! I sign up. What sold it for me were the pictures from previous retreats. I saw the lake, the zipline, the blob (see above)… It’s like an actual camp! Not just some program on a college campus. I’ve never been to an actual camp before. Seems adventurous. And like there’d be many photo opps 😉

I put my fear aside and sign up for the retreat despite there being a bunch of things I don’t have to be but am worried about, because I know that this will be good for me. Signing up is the easy part. Actually following through is the hard part. But by signing up, I have committed to going, committed to the people who will be organizing the retreat. So I will go. And I’ll face fear when it finds me.

Japan wasn’t part of the plan. We had already been in Taiwan for a month when my parents randomly asked me and my siblings whether or not we’d like to visit Japan with what was remaining of our winter break, and of course we said yes! Without any plans, we bought our tickets and hopped on a plane.

Every winter break I go back to Taiwan to visit relatives. Since my family and I only do this once a year, we have very many relatives to visit and very little time to spare. The experience is more tiring than heartwarming as I don’t share many memories with them, but they never fail to welcome me with open arms, commenting on how much weight I’ve gained and subsequently offering me tons of food.