3 more days

3 Days..

Three days before I make my annual trip down to the US to visit my parents. Mixed feelings this year, while I'm excited to go, I kind of feel like I'm missing out here. I think Christmas time (and New Years') is a time you spend with your friends and family, but I only get the family part. I haven't spent a Christmas in Toronto in what will be 4 years now, and having spent Easters and Thanksgivings here, I feel like I'm gonna miss out festivities, and friends. Granted most people spend these times with their families, and leaving me out in the cold. But not everyone..

That being said I'm excited to see my parents and their new home, as well as fill up my stomach with yummy foods. Oh yea, and I'm excited about Urbana, and the fact that I will see my friends again there.. which is a real bonus.

Yesterday my friend Ken got baptised. I love Baptism Sundays, getting a chance to listen to peoples' testimonies and encouragements, and their spiritual growth. It's just very exciting to me, and one of the happiest days that I look forward to every few months. I'm glad I was dragged into singing for worship, I think I actually smiled up there, even though I hate smiling "for show".. I was actually happy for real.

It's especially exciting to me when I see younger people get baptised. Young people have so much more potential I think, than we "stuck in a career" people, or "I have a wife/husband and kids" people do. There's just so many more opportunities and venues they can reach. I thought it was pretty funny when one of the girls did a "Shout-out to my mommy", and other person said "God's got my back". That was classic..

Had a nice surprise waiting for me yesterday as my brother had come home in the afternoon and we spent the evening playing Wii, eating together and catching up. I haven't seen him since Thanksgiving, so it was pretty nice to catch up, talk about school, church/fellowship and women. (The latter is a new one.. we never really talked about that stuff before. I will remain silent on this subject.. you know, the whole big brother to little brother confidentiality thingy.)

My brother switched to Comp Sci this year and has really been enjoying it and that's really exciting since I haven't seen him all that excited about anything for awhile now. Even better is he's made a few Christian friends this year and hangs out with them. I feel this'll be great for his growth.. I've always considered it a huge blessing to have accountable friends to hang out with. And he's been going to church and CCF which is also great news.

We had great fun playing Wii.. it's the first time I've played Wii with anyone so it was definitely a new experience. We played Red Steel first, which was great fun. I think the multiplayer levels are a bit too big to find eachother, but it's still pretty good. The sword thing is the best.. reminds me a lot of Halo except you're not completely dominating like you would be with the Energy Sword. Then we played Monkey Ball, which is a game I had barely touched because it's not really a single player game. We noticed that a few of the (50) mini-games really sucked and were so bad they were unplayable.

After that we watched Survivor, the finale. Yul won! Finally an asian person wins it. That was awesome.. close vote too, narrowly edged out Ozzie 5-4 in the final vote. Becky got nothing, but then again Becky DID nothing, it took her 1.5 hours to start a fire.. WITH MATCHES! Me and my brother were laughing so hard because Becky and Sundra took so long to start a fire. They had tied at Tribal Council and the tie-breaker was to start a fire with flint, to burn a rope above the fire.

I have never managed to start fire with flint, but I also never spent 39 days on a remote island with virtually all the time in the world to practice doing it. They both started out setting up the wood, but I believe they were holding their flints too high. By the time any spark hit the tinder it was already too cold to light. The Jury started growing restless, and Ozzie and Yul were falling asleep. Finally at the 30 minute mark, Jeff (the host) told them to stop, and gave them matches. I thought that was really funny.. You spend nearly 6 weeks on a remote island can can't start a fire with matches? LOL