Light

"There is nothing, naturally speaking, that makes us lose heart quicker than decay—the decay of bodily beauty, of natural life, of friendship, of associations, all these things make a man lose heart; but Paul says when we are trusting in Jesus Christ these things do not find us discouraged, light comes through them." The Place of Help, 1032 L

Back Back to Cali Cali

Hahhaa, that title is so overused.

I'm in the Heathrow Airport right now with only 2 min left of my internet time. I did a poor job of updating this blog!! Darn my P in INFP.

Fortunately, I do have a random mix of pictures because I have wonderful friends who have let me borrow their camera or take pictures for me for the remainder of the trip. I'll be sure to post later for my own memory of Europe Excursion V2.


1 minute left!!! See you all in the states.

Unrest

I couldn´t sleep right now, so I came out to clean my luggage and shower. I ended up talking to another girl staying at the hostel too. We talked about having travel buddies, about Spain, about my theft incident, about other hustlers we saw, about this shady district Kristen and I passed through. I told her how Spain currently has 20% unemployment and so people are more inclined to steal. She said how it explains the HUGE protest that took place today against capitalism.

As I went to go shower, I felt a sudden feeling of impending doom. What if a terrorist bombs the train I´m in? What if a protestor decides to mess with the airlines? What if I go back to France soon and something happens to me? And I´ll be traveling alone... and to so many damned locations. What the hell was I thinking? Oh my gosh. What if, what if, what if? Reading the news: european cucumbers killing people through e. coli, more evidence on the air france plane crash, terrorist bombers convicted in europe... Oh my gosh, all this fear - I am becoming my conservative dad.


I thought of my phone incident, and how I felt devestated that all my personal aspirations (to do lists) and conveniences were taken from me. I think, I´ve been imagining a better future once I get back to the States. ¨When I get back, I´m going to live like this... I´m going to take an art class... I´m going to read more news... I´ll be happier... ¨

I told myself my phone was taken for me with purpose. Now I am starting to realize the truth in this statement. It made me realize how I´m always building my joys around a supposed future. When I was working I thought, only when I go on my vacation, I will be happier. One day when I leave my job, I´ll be happier. Tomorrow, when I buy the La Mer cream, my face will look better and I will be happier. God took that away from me symbolically by taking away the phone that held this SUPER long ´to improve´and ´to do when I get home´list, and with all the pictures I had saved to bring me joy in the future. He yanked it out to show me my error in holding on so tightly to my life and my future.

Even now, as I worry about my life and survival in my remaining days of Europe (I know it sounds crazy), I pray for my future and hold steadfastly to my life. But I am reminded of the verse (Job 1:21),

¨Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart.
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
may the name of the LORD be praised.¨


A friend once told me that if I kept worrying about this or that, terrorists, car accients, plane accidents, I would never live. I am realizing that I will be able to live sufficiently in the here and now being hand in hand with God, praising Him, rejoicing in His mercy and love. The future will be awesome no matter what with faith, trust, and hope in God. Praise Lord for giving and taking away.

Robbed

Sadly, I won´t be able to post pictures for a while as my phone was stolen in Barcelona yesterday. All the work of figuring out how to take pictures on my phone and upload them for nothing! It´s funny / sad because I only posted one part of my trip! I still had Paris, Geneva, and Barcelona!

Here is the story:

Kristen and I were eating an afternoon lunch outside at a pretty nice restaurant. I saw two guys in the distance that looked kind of shady. One of them started walking over with a sign in which at first I didn´t think they had specifically targeted us (stupid me, I know... as we were the ONLY Asians sitting there). But I made sure our purses were safe and out of reach nontheless. To my surprise, he shows up right at our table with a sign in Spanish and he begs for money. We say ¨no¨, and he keeps asking us to read the sign, while both of us hold on to our purses for dear life.

Little did I realize, but my phone had been under his sign, on the table. 30 minutes later, I realized I couldn´t find my phone and immediately knew he stole it. I normally don´t keep my phone out, but had been trying to wait for a website to load on the slow wifi.


I was so sad I almost cried! I mean, man, I´ve never been literally robbed in my face before. But more than anything... I just needed the phone! It was my internet / alarm clock / camera / internation skype phone / navigation / notebook. He could have had it after I was finished using it or something.

I was pretty cool and calm about it at first, but then upon thinking of all the personal information on there I panicked. What about my contacts? What if they try to reach my friends or my family, as they now have numbers and addresses and try to trick them? What if they access my email and see sensitive information? Or my Facebook? I don`t know how high-tech these thieves are, and if they would look into personal finances. I´m not particularly wealthy, but I suddenly felt vulnerable and naked. I immediately changed all my passwords so that the phone wont be able to sync anymore, and called Verizon to let them know. But I still felt uneasy wondering what other stuff I may have missed. My imagination also started to run wild, and suddenly I felt so unsafe traveling, suspicious of who´s out there to get me because I´m obviously a ¨Japanese¨tourist. Crazy past news stories of travel woes started populating my thoughts.

Anyway, one of the worst parts was the fact that I lost all my pictures. :( I´m kind of a weird person with my own particular perspectives, so I feel like a lot of the pictures I took were only for me and my thoughts. Although Kristen took pictures too and of me, I feel like it´s just not the same. They were MY pictures, and I was going to frame them in my room, and they were certain detailed parts of sights that I wanted to remember. Additionally, I had pictures of friends doing wacky things, and although I´m not in it, the point was for my memory and not just presentation to show where I was. That made me really sad to think I lost all of that. Stupid me, I should have uploaded every moment I had the chance.

Also, I had a BUNCH of notes on there. Notes of music to try, restaurants to try, things to improve on, things I´d like to accomplish... There was a wealth of personal ¨stuff¨ that only I would value. They stole my phone in vain - they cant even use it as it´s Verizon. And now that I reported it to Verizon, no one can re-activate it. They could either use it for wi-fi or just sell the parts. But all my life was on there, including my primary means of contacting people at home, or Googling for helpful information wherever there is free wi-fi.

So that´s my story. It´s crazy how dependent I´ve grown on that Droid. I was pooing today, and instinctually, I tried to reach over to my purse to play with my phone, only to find it wasn´t there. :( And yes, I do play with my phone while pooing... don´t act like you don´t do it too!


I´ll write down some of my adventures next time... Kristen will probably provide me her pictures when she gets back, and I will have to revise all my entries so that they´re clean and neat.

On another note, maybe it´s good I lost my cell phone:

http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/31/cell-phone-carcinogenic-possible/