Ryan's Journal

I'm back from Toronto now, and the weather seems to have taken a turn for the disgusting in my absence. I really hope the air conditioning in the dorm doesn't break down half the time like last summer. That was pretty gross, and now that my room has all this electronic junk plus a ton of sunlight, things can get kind of toasty here. Anyways, while I wait to cool off before I grab a shower, have a brief Toronto summary and other thoughts.

My cousin Mandy (or Amanda, as everybody seems to call her these days - I guess it's not so far from the 'Mandy-ah' pronounciation Chinese people sometimes use) got married to a man named Fei. Lucky for her, his family name is the same as hers. Also lucky for her, he seems like a good man. But I know her quite a bit better since I didn't just meet her the day of their wedding as I did Fei. About an entire lifetime's worth better. She's older than me (sorry Mandy, don't know the exact year you were born...), but because we saw each other every other year or less for my past 22 years, I never really got to try talking to her until last summer, where I found out she was one of the very few people in the world I can actually talk with. She loves and trusts God in an understated way (I don't know if everyone even picked up on her quoting Ruth), an approachable way. So even though I don't see her all that often and we don't email all that frequently, she's definitely one of my favorite people and I had the blessing of talking with her for all of five minutes during the 50 hours I was in Toronto. Oh well, it was a wedding day with 150 people, I was expecting as much. Maybe I'll get a chance sometime to visit her and her husband and we'll get to talk and I'll get to know him and it will be good, but for now I'm very, very happy for her.

I got to hang out with my other non-marrying cousins Rina, Jason, and Julianne along with their parents and my own family, which was brief but nice. We ate all kinds of fobulicious food. I don't think I could ever live in China. Too many Chinese people at once kind of unnerve me. But the food's good. And Canada is kinda cheap for USian salaries ( no offense; I have no idea who that would offend, but sorry anyways). Family is good.

While I was there, my parents and I finally came to an understanding on the apartment issue, where they decided I did indeed need to sign onto a lease as soon as possible, which at the time meant joining JP et al. above Pu Pu Hot Pot (that's a restaurant, friend) near MIT. However, they informed me of their decision a day too late, since JP had to find a lessee before he went to California and China for the summer. And he left for California the day before I called. Now, the thing about this that's more remarkable other than the utterly terrible timing is the fact that I'm willing to accept it and believe God's got something else out there. That's not really the way I think I'd normally react. It's reasssuring to know He cares so much that He wants me to find somewhere else to live that is, somehow, better than the super-PPHP JP et al. pad. And I don't know exactly what that is, obviously, but He does.

That's what my God has been doing in me, a rather conspicuously imperfect member of His creation. That's all Him. I hope I keep letting Him, because I can screw so much up on my own. But He's watching, and He cares.

Maybe tomorrow will suck as much as tonight was a blessing and a joy (and that would mean it really, really sucked), but God doesn't change, and His goodness is for eternity.

And I, I'm going to go grab that shower now.

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