TTITF #2: Senior Year, Thanksgiving Break!

So I’ve been meaning to update this pretty frequently, but I guess that didn’t exactly happen :[

However, it's Thanksgiving break and there have been lots of things I've been thankful for, so here are ten of them!

Tuesday lunches with James. I've been super blessed by this cool kiddo. He's super honest about who he is and he always has something interesting on his mind, which leads to pretty awesome conversations about life, God, school and frustrating roommates (...his, not mine... although mine are pretty annoyi... jk. :P). It's DEFINITELY worth getting up super super early at 11:45am to eat lunch with this guy.
Having a job lined up for the spring! For those of you who don't know, I've accepted a job offer from Yahoo!, and my start date is January 25, 2010. (I only get one month to party like there's no tomorrow D:) While working 8-5 days are going to be TERRIBLE for someone like me (see the timestamp for this post), God's provided me clarity in an important aspect of my future, so I'm pretty excited to see what's in store... and to be able to finally treat my friends and family out to some nice meals [Yayuh... steak for my AACF seniors!] :)
Tuesday small groups with Michelle, Ryan and Maria. We’ve added a fourth member to our small group! It’s been fun studying the book of John, reading Mere Christianity on the side and chatting about life, Christianity and our weeks! It’s pretty sweet getting to co-lead with Michelle because she’s such a funny, random and punny person. And she feeds us with gummy hamburgers and hotdogs :D
Random visits to IV large group! I’ve always been really blessed by IV’s worship and messages, and I’ve really enjoyed getting to see some old IV friends and old old high school friends :). IV’s worship team rocks my socks, and their ‘Good Heartkeeping’ series has been such an encouragement to me… we’ve talked about humility, forgiveness and grace. Those are some sweet, sweet topics. I especially enjoyed it when one speaker kept talking about hamburgers, and another brought in children’s toys and a Spiderman figurine to illustrate some brilliant point about God’s grace :P
My parents! They’ve spoiled me for 21 years, and they still find more ways to spoil me. Even though I’m making my own money, they refuse to let me spend money on myself or on them. Whenever I pull out my wallet, they get super paranoid and are always like, “Pay with our credit card! Don’t use yours!” -___- I think I’m getting to that age where I’m going to have to start paying for dinner on my way to the bathroom. Sigh.. to be old(er) and Asian…
Hanging out with high school friends. I got to hang out with a couple of them tonight, playing random card games and gambling for happy points (20 happy points = 1 toothless smile, and 30 happy points = 1 toothed smile, btw if any of you were wondering)… and I don’t think that I’ve laughed more while playing card games for a looong time :D. It’s comforting to know that even though we don’t talk and hang out all the time while we’re in college, we’re still able to meet during a Thanksgiving break, hang out, play silly card games and laugh like insane people together :]
Living in Royston 110! I guess I’m a pretty reclusive person so it’s been pretty awesome having people over at my apartment all the time so I have no excuses to be a hermit and not hang out with people =P. I also have the three coolest apartmentmates evar: Greg to play Halo with, Jeftom to watch football with and Justin to watch High School Musical with (while he sings the lyrics to the songs). It’s a sweet, sweet setup. I bet you’re all super jealous… not all of your roommates can sing along to a Disney channel movie, but mine can. Hah.
The AACF Freshmen class! This year’s freshmen class have been prettyyy awesome. Most of them are pretty outgoing, like to hang out and really, really don’t like to leave 110. (In fact… we’ve had three of them sleep over already!) It’s been pretty cool because most of them seem very mature spiritually, and for the few times that I attended freshmen small group, I’ve been really blessed by what they’ve had to say and share. I know that God will use them tremendously in the future, and I’m excited to see them lead AACF to great places in the future!
A new toy to play with! My parents bought me a Macbook Pro for graduation, and it’s been pretty awesome getting to use it and familiarize myself again with Mac OSX. I’ve been pretty much an MBP fanboy since I got to use one when I interned over the summer.. It was sweeeet. Learning how to do new stuff on the Mac really pulls out the geeky EECS major in me :D. The laptop cost a lot, so I promise that I will use it well and take care of it!
Perspective. I think the theme of my senior year thus far has really been ‘perspective’. God has really shown me this semester how He works in every single aspect of my life, and how He’s really used the major points (and even seemingly insignificant points) in my life to bring me to where I am today and who I will be in the future. I realize that I am nowhere near perfect… that I’m still a broken person in need of love and grace, but without Him I would have had no hope of redemption.–I might have been some lost, depressed, self-absorbed fool. But instead, God has chosen to take me and mold me into a man after His heart. He has blessed me in sooo many ways (some are listed above), and I am super grateful. :]

OKAY. All 10 of those things are suuuper wonderful, but right now I’m grateful for sleep. I’m thankful that there are more than 5 hours before I have to wake up… because if there were less, I would go crazy tomorrow! D: Good night, world!