aphids

Some of the roses in the garden started blossoming this week, so I decided to cut a few and use them to brighten up the dining area today. As I began cutting away I noticed that some of the roses had spots on them... so I looked closer... the spots were moving... the realisation - an attack of the aphids! I was very sad and grossed out! Nevertheless, determined to have flowers in the house, I kept on cutting and then brought the cut flowers back home and started trimming them and started pinching the bugs dead and used water to clean them off the roses. I'm not a big fan of gross little insects, and seeing them made me have goosebumps. I kind of felt upset that I hadn't noticed that the roses had been affected so badly before, I was just excited that they were blooming. The rose and the aphids made me think about our Christian walk... often we get very excited about seeing a person blossom and mature, but how often do we go up close and personal and really see how they are going? I mean sure the flowers get watered, like going to church regularly, sure that's great but there's more to that in life. In this case the aphids made me think of sin, sometimes it's not deeply rooted in a person, but the world is full of it and it's determined to latch onto everything. It starts latching on one at a time when no one is watching or realises, and soon lays a zillion eggs, and before you know it it starts to attack into the core... Sure there is still a bud ready to bloom, but this bud isn't able to reach it's beautiful potential because it has been maimed by the sin. The sin has managed to detroy parts but not the whole thing, so at first glance it still looks fantastic... but as you look closer there are some crippling aspects evident. Actually getting rid of aphids aren't too difficult, but the roses need to be looked after a bit more, a bit more monitoring and observation could have prevented the roses from being covered in silly bugs. It made me think of accountability, you don't have to hang out with a person 24/7 but having a person that actually cares and notices what's happening around you is invaluable. Anyway this is just a bit of a random thought that I have been pondering today before and after tonight's amazing Purity Pledge at church. (In the end after peeling and cutting off the wilted petals and cleaning the pests off, I did manage to have a posy of roses for the dining room... the result is shown below.)

an entire uni unit in a week

I managed to get through an entire unit at uni last week. A crazy packed 5 days - an introduction to teaching The Arts (drama, music, visual arts, etc) and Health and Physical Education. Still an introduction isn't enough for me... I think I'm going to struggle with teaching Phys Ed... gulp! What I did enjoy during this intensive learning week was that we got to try make things in the Arts, like masks, creating music (that was a hilarious session!), drawing, and attempting to do some simple Phys Ed activities! At the end of the week we all had to give a group presentation advocating one of the aspects we had been learning over the 5 days. There were some very funny presentations but I'm pretty biased and reckon my group's presentation was pretty awesome.

My group decided to advocate hygiene in the Health learning area. One of my group members came up with the wonderful and ingenius activity. The activity was to show how communicable diseases can spread with just a few carriers. All the members of the audience (our classmates) received a cup with water in it as they entered the lecture theatre. Amongst the cups of water had 4 cups with glucose solution in them (which represented the disease carriers) which were marked at the bottom of the cups. We had the audience exchange their cups of water with as many different people as possible (the exchange = person A would pour all their cup's water into person B's cup, and person B would pour half of the amount back into person A). We then started our talk and during the talk we distributed Diastix (glucose indicator strips originally used as a diabetes test). At the end of our talk we asked everyone to dip their Diastix into their cup. We then asked who had a colour change in their sticks, and everyone raised their hand and then we asked the people who had the marked cups to raise their hand. We were initially very scared that the activity was going to be a flop but it was just amazing seeing everyone looking shocked and surprised at how quickly the 'communicable disease' had spread. The success of the activity left my group feeling very satisfied. (Now we just hope we get a decent grade for it!)

In other news this week: Congratulations to Christian and Esther who are now engaged! I was able to catch up with Lolly who flew in to Perth for a short work visit with Cathay Pacific over steak, cakes and tea. I finally finished knitting the baby yellow scarf for my sister Sarah... I remember Aimee stating she'd not knit but just buy a scarf, so why did I knit a scarf for my sister? I have no idea... I love my sister and she wanted a baby yellow scarf... go figure... Continuing about my sister, she shared (her first time at Riverview) a short message for the offering part of the Youth service on Friday night, and I thought it was really powerful - we are to offer something that costs to God (2 Sam 24:24)! Oh and Church started its 5th worship service this weekend up at ECU Joondalup campus! And Sy Rogers spoke at the Sunday night service about knowing God's character - awesome sermon!

a group presentation about music using angklungs & Sam being a very brave demonstration

my attempts at visual arts & my scary looking mask

my group presentation apparatus & Sarah's new scarf

my kunming - hong kong trip in review

Looking back I would have to say so many things have happened. I had an amazing time in Kunming, Yunnan province, China. Dad was there for a conference, so mom and I would go sightseeing during the daytime, and then meet up with dad for dinner. I had never been to Kunming prior to this trip so I didn't know what to expect. But I was very impressed with the overall outlook of this small multi-ethnic city, it was looking even cleaner and better than Beijing and Harbin in many ways to me. The city celebrates diversity with its 26 major minority people groups, and expressed through food, songs, costumes, etc. It was also very encouraging hearing the fantastic reports that the members of dad's conference brought this time. It's so inspiring and encouraging to hear how God has touched and changed different people's lives via various ministries around Yunnan province. Being in Kunming, seeing the amazing flowers, admiring the different cultural groups, tasted the delicious foods, hearing the amazing testimonies, made me fall in love with God all over again.

It was great being back in Hong Kong after leaving the city more than 15 months ago. It was really lovely seeing so many familiar faces, friends from church, old colleagues, etc., actually even bumped into a few people I knew on the streets! It was great seeing and meeting lots and lots of new people at church too. And I'm very impressed with the vine centre. I remember praying for church to find a place of its own before I left town, and now it has become a reality, and it serves good coffee as well at the coffee bar. Seems like everyone is getting ready for the opening of Disneyland... I got to meet some girls at church who actually sings and performs at Disneyland! Overall I did quite a bit of shopping, bought lots of knick-knacks, and especially window shopped the haute couture stores. I really enjoyed catching up with my friends, being able to spend time with them, eating heaps especially having my fill of foods that doesn't exist in Perth ie: ben & jerry's, haagen-dazs, starbucks, watami, i-cho, pocari, hawker-styled curry fish-balls and siu mai, cha-chan-tang, and the various yummy desserts etc... and of course staying out till late shopping. Btw currently loving my friend Tom Read's new song 'This is Love', check out his site and download the awesome song!

(Click on the highlighted words 'kunming' and 'hong kong' to check out the pics I took on my trip)

back in perth

Been back in Perth for a few days now and just been chilling out at home. Still trying to sort out all the shopping I did on my trip. The pictures of my travels will be up soon. Will write more later...