A Full Deck

She's dealt herself quite the hand this semester, but she doesn't think she'd have it any other way:

Class: Japanese Language classes twice a week, Japanese Short Stories classes twice a week, Japanese Literature focusing on completing and deconstructing The Tale of Genji three times a week (all three classes so far requiring daily homework assignments to be completed and daily quizzes to be prepared for), and a nice Social Psychology lecture twice a week;

Work: The standard two weekday shifts and two every-other-weekend shifts at the WC Desk (~9hrs a week average), working twice a week at the Library in the Special Collections room (~6hrs a week), and volunteering two more times a week (~4hrs a week);

Ministry: Co-Leading Bible study on Tuesdays, leading a Discipleship partnership, attending the weekly services and events;

Life: preparing for the JET interview in the coming month, friends to not neglect, making sure to eat regularly (vegetables included!),  trying to find to run so her lungs don't burst, sleeping for more than 6hrs a night for weeks straight...

This semester will truly be a testament for relying on Christ's strength and not her own (because she's already had to fight down the quitter in her more than a few times these past weeks).

Week Four mostly down. Only about 10ish to go until graduation.

Graduation.

And then an open world full of opportunities to take advantage of and paths to explore and holes to fall down and strange-yet-endearing people to meet....

I will make this feeling last.

Paper Thin

Book Review: Paper Towns by John Green

Paper Towns has been on my reading list for quite some time. To be honest, it was the first John Green book I wanted to read, but I heard that it was usually considered to be his "best" novel (this being said before The Fault in Our Stars was published)and I didn't want to be disappointed if I read his other two novels afterwards, so I read them first. Over two and a half years later, after having a copy physically put into my hands by my roommate and having read first An Abundance of Katherines, Looking for Alaska, and then his most recent TFiOS, I read my favorite John Green book.

And I know what people say, "TFIOS IS THE BEST WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!?!", and I'd agree that it was beautifully written and felt, and that I shed none to few tears through out the course of its pages. However. TFiOs wasn't written for me, in the same way that his two novels I read prior to it were not written for me. And Paper Towns was. (No, I obviously don't mean that John Green interviewed me, or dedicated the book to me, or that I've broken into Sea World after hours...).

I tramp a perpetual journey

It wasn't the familiarity and validation given to the paper homes and paper lives in Florida; nor was it about the nuances of who you love when you love a person (between the "them" you see, the "them" you fabricate in your mind, the "self" they attempt to create for others, the "self" they actually project, all of which are at a disconnect to who they (and you) really are...) and the way that we go about our lives looking into/out of mirrors to our observable surroundings; nor was it about what happened to the characters at the end of this snapshot of their lives.

I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven/     O suns-- O grass of graves-- O perpetual transfers and promotions/   If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?

The prose, the meta-knowledge of the narrator and main character, the silences. The strings interconnecting it all. We are all apart of a field of grass growing out of the past and reaching for new light. But we are also individual blades in our own right with unique purpose and design.