january 9, 2001
(warning: this entry is long! didn't think it would be, but it is. my bad!)
i was out of town this weekend, explaining my most recent period without an update! ha ha. columbus, ohio is a nice place - the people are friendly, they love the ohio state buckeyes, and the only fast food you can get is wendy's! apparently, dave thomas, the dude in the wendy's commercials has ties to the area and to ohio state, and donates lots of money to the school. i also learned that temperatures in the 20's really aren't that bad!
as promised, here is the first part of "phil kim 2000: year in review!"
january - before the clock struck midnight and year 2000 officially began, i was at a new year's party at the house of a friend from stanford. i went with sterling, clinton, and sonny, and it was cool - very relaxed, met some new folks. oh yeah, much like in college, i was the only korean for miles around. ha ha. i left early to join my parents and sisters at church for our annual midnight service, which i referred to in an earlier entry. stanford happened to be playing in the rose bowl the following day (you can see pictures here), and although we lost, it was a great experience. later that month, i saw les miserables for the first time. okay, check this out: i went with the youth group staff, which is good cuz we were bonding and hanging out together, but the show was in los angeles! so, we got in a van and left san francisco at 6 in tha morning ("police at my door"...if you know the reference i'm making, send me an email and i'll buy you lunch - i'm serious) for a show at 2 pm that afternoon! and then, we left los angeles at 9 pm that night to make it back to the bay area for church! i'll never do anything that ridiculous again! i also got to spend some time with a friends i hadn't seen in a while (from boston, from high school). all in all, a very enjoyable, very busy month. i remember thanking god simply for blessing me with a fun, relatively stress free month - after a somewhat rough 1999, it was a real blessing to have so much time to spend with friends and family to start the year.
february - the fun slowed down a bit in february as i got back into the swing of things at work. i was finally making some good progress on a project i had been working on for quite some time, which kept me pretty busy. however, i still found ways to make use of my free time. mondays and thursdays were pretty much devoted to wrestling; my boy jang bae and i followed the every twist and turn in the developing saga between the evil wwf champion triple h, and the hardcore legend mick foley with the enthusiasm of little children at christmas. man, that was fun. february was also significant cuz it was my first season playing softball at berkeley. for years and years, i had been envious of the college people at my church from berkeley cuz they had so much fun playing intramural softball throughout the school year. being at stanford, i couldn't really participate. now i'm a full fledged softball junkie, which i guess makes me somewhat of a loser, i admit. ha ha. but it's fun. the coed team i played on eventually won the league championship (and therefore, the championship...t-shirt).
march - i got to take a week off in late march to visit friends on the east coast. it was pretty exciting, since it was my first time out there. before my trip, the furthest east i had ever been was the grand canyon. that's right - arizona. ha ha. i flew into philadelphia on a saturday night and immediately thought, "man, ugly city..." i went to church and hung out with some friends from kcpc one day, and with a friend from stanford another day. it turned out that i really liked the city a lot, but in a way i consider my time there unfulfilled cuz i didn't have a cheesesteak! before my trip, all i heard was, "you gotta get a cheesesteak! you gotta get a cheesesteak!" and like an idiot, i didn't go. well, despite my failure to experience philadelphia's finest culinary treat, i pressed on to boston (a much more attractive city than philadelphia), where i hung out some more. i stayed with my friend hyun soo, a student at gordon conwell theological seminary; we served in youth group together while he was a student at berkeley. he's a great guy - even before he was "studying to be a pastor", the guy had always been an awesome friend. always an encourager, always a comedian, always someone to listen and give sound advice as well. i also got to spend some time with my friend lani, a dental student at harvard. she is my "stereoisomer" (and i, hers), since, according to her, we are essentially...the same! mirror images of each other. uh...we don't look alike, but i suppose we're similar in lots of other ways. ha ha. the last stop on the east coast leg of my world tour was new york, where i hung out with sterling k. brown, another good friend of mine; the "k dog" is a student in the graduate acting program at nyu. needless to say, we had a really good time talkin and hangin out, watching a couple plays, watching basketball, etc. i could go on and on about my friends and about this trip, but it's getting late (if you wanna know more, you can always email me, of course).
i'll end with this - it goes without saying that i had a great time on this trip. as i returned to the bay area, i couldn't help but thank god for the blessings of friendship. however, i also thanked him simply for his presence in my life. i got a chance to attend two different churches while i was out there, and worshipping with other christians made me realize again the utterly simple, but still amazing fact that god is everywhere. i make the mistake of compartmentalizing god sometimes, narrowing my experience of him to a single church, or a particular group of other christians, or to specific occasions and events. but he is the omnipotent, omnipresent god of all creation, who moves and changes the lives of people all over the world. it was a reminder to me, to be a light that never goes off, a light that reflects his glory wherever i go...
matthew 5:14-16
next time, the way things change, and how i deal with it...
thanks for reading this far!