Rangeela 2010

Epic, wonderful, inspiring, beautiful. Oh, sorry, just describing Rangeela over here. It is a showcase of the many diverse cultures that Calvin is host to, put on by students. And it is awesome! One of my favorites was the Chinese act that combined a traditional fan dance, wushu martial arts sequence and an energetic Taiwanese hip-hop dance. I also enjoyed the Indonesian act, which had a kecak chanting sequence done by a small choir, accompanied by dance. These two were particularly interesting to me because I had experience Chinese culture in a very real way over interim (and knew some of the students) and had studied Indonesian music for my World Music class last year. It was cool to see an actual performance, even if it wasn't actually trance-induced ^_^. The last dance was great too. It was an African dance, all of the performers were dressed very colorfully and had lots of energy. I can't help but smile when I see all of the people up there. It's quite the event.

What makes you happy?

I like my roommate a lot, because he makes me think. Don't get me wrong, I think a lot. About heat transfer, thermodynamics and how to compute surface integrals. Those are all fine and good, but I think that other questions are usually more important.

On the way to Founders last night Mark asked, "Are you happy Steve?" Wow. I had to think about that (I think the question may have been in response to some of my bellyaching). I concluded that I was happy about some things and not others. The learning that I am able to do, and the problem solving are my favorite parts about studying at Calvin. Those parts that pertain to my future career. No problem there. The things I'm not happy about are maintaining a GPA at a certain level, trying to keep scholarships up and the constant nagging feeling that I should be working on hw, when I'm not. I think that these things have a place however; they help build character and mold you (just so long as you don't let them break you that is). I hope that I can keep asking myself this question with little deviation in answer.

That said, I think that we put too much stake in being happy. Perhaps fulfilled is a better way to be, or even are you in a position to make a real difference? I want to be both, but I'm not there yet.

How about you? Are you happy/fulfilled/doing something about something?

Una otra vez por favor!

Well, my time in China is done. I could not have enjoyed it more, in fact those were the most amazing 20 days of my life thus far. Immersion in another culture was amazing, especially in one so foreign to me. We're back now though and another semester must begin. It's been nice to be back in the house; I really enjoy living with these guys. Thus far the semester is looking pretty ok. I'm very much enjoying my German class as well as the engineering workload. This Monday I even did something crazy: instead of sitting in my room and doing hw all night, I went out and hung with new and old friends. Can you imagine that? This semester should be a little less busy for me, so I might have a social life for the first time in years. We'll see how this goes.

Tschüss.

P.S. Shrews in haus; woher kommen sie?