more grad pics...

the fam...
my advisor...
ning and shen-chihmy cheerleading section...did an awesome job! :) judy...with nat at dinner...

crunch time!

so i graduated last friday...technically, i'm not done, but i decided to walk since i'm close to finishing. i'm officially defending in three weeks (gasp!), after which i hope to file my dissertation and be fully, completely done, kinda sorta...i'll officially have my phd, but i still have to submit some papers for publication. at any rate, the real hurdle is my defense in three weeks, and i have so much to do that i have no idea how it's all going to get done. yup, it's going to be fun...

but back to my graduation...i did the whole walk and hooding (s.park made me take this pic with my fancy hood). i don't know what happened to the tons of other pics we took, but i'll post them soon.

so after the ceremony, we had dinner at ogamdo cafe...thanks so much to all the people who came out to help celebrate. it was truly appreciated. my only regret was that i had to take off to the airport right afterwards, so i didn't get to really talk to you guys...hopefully after all this craziness is over.
so yeah, i went to quebec for a conference and got back yesterday. back in april, i applied for a travel award, but when i got it, i realized that the timing was awful. so then i thought i'd just hang out in my hotel room most of the time, working on stuff...yeah, right. i ended up meeting a great bunch of people and having a really good, unproductive (in terms of my dissertation) time. i made some good friends with the other travel awardees...here's some of us at dinner:
there was a comedy festival that was going on around the same time we were there, and they were handing out clown noses...i didn't smile in this pic 'cuz whenever i did, the nose fell off (asian nose).
there are some really nice waterfalls near quebec...this one is apparently taller than the niagara falls. we decided to take the bus there, which ended up taking us about 2 hours. we took the taxi back...20 minutes. yeah...
these are the girls i got to know the best...dunno what i woulda done without them!

ensenada

went to ensenada this past memorial day weekend. mosaic has a relationship with a network of churches there, so we send teams down there twice a year. this time around, it was a smaller group, with just construction work and children's ministry teams.

one of my devotions during that trip was in luke 17. this passage struck me as timely:

"Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' "

the whole time we were there, people were so incredibly grateful. on our last day, a few of us ended up wandering over to the pier, where there was something going on for ensenada's 125th anniversary celebration. the theme was, "ensenada de todos," and there were food booths representing a variety of cultures, from asian to european, etc. at one booth, a native man approached susan h and asked her about our group. turns out, he and his family go to one of the churches in ensenada that we partner with, and they ended up giving us a bunch of tamales (soo good!) for free. he explained that he was thankful for our hearts for ensenada.

while we were having dinner and service at the church our last night, a few men stood outside the whole time, just watching our vans...all this because last year, the vans were broken into while the team was inside the church. then, there were so many people who supported our group, both here and there in ensenada, who gave up time and energy to help us out and make sure we were provided for.

we are unworthy slaves. we have done only that which we ought to have done...

here's our group in front of the school we painted...