Easter Weekend

Hello, it's now 09:57 and I have to type real fast before heading off to work. 

Last Friday was Good Friday and I attended a baptism in the evening.

It is always a blessing to watch a brother or sister in Christ decide that they want to give up their old life to be born again in Jesus. And how significant a day that LC chose to be baptised!

Since the whole Easter season celebrates Jesus' resurrection from the dead, it is only fitting that we also recognise a born-again Christian's death to sin and new birth into a life of freedom in Christ.

We had big BIG dinner afterwards.

And Cinderella cupcakes with sparkly sprinkles on top! I wasn't able to capture it in this photo, but the cupcakes glimmer and glitter under the light. 

Soooo pretty and sooo delicious!

On Saturday evening, I headed to the new mall JCube (built where Jurong Entertainment Centre used to be). I was really skeptical about the new Chili's restaurant there, but decided to join my friend for dinner anyway.

Overall the interior of the restaurant was quite similar to what you'd expect in an American Chili's. However since it's new, it's also really clean and nice-smelling. We'll see what happens in a few years though...

They ordered fried chicken thingys which cost a whopping $22 per plate! I imagine this should only cost about $12 in the U.S.

To the left of our table, we could see the new Olympic-sized ice skating rink aptly named "The Rink". 

Since there were three of us, there was no one sitting in front of me and I could look directly out to the escalator on the other side of the glass. It was the most awkward seating position ever! Each time people went down the escalator, they'd stare at me eating (undoubtedly with my mouth half-full, talking). And I'd stare right back at them. Where else could I look?

o__O

Awkward. Very awkward indeed.

I ordered shrimp alfredo pasta for $18. Again, another terribly expensive dish that made me feel cheated of my money. However, the one saving grace is that it's not as oily as its American counterpart. This was also way cheesier- just the way I like it.

After dinner, I met up with some of the rest of the rollerblading crew since we were going to go ice-skating. Spent some time on the DDR and JuBeat machines. 

Oh yeah! *Does happy dance ^^v*

We'd bought tickets to the 21:45 skating slot since all the previous ones were already sold out by 19:00! Just a note if you want to skate there on the weekend- BUY YOUR TICKETS EARLY! 

By the way, Saturday nights are disco nights and that's when all the really good skaters come out to play. It's fun to watch them go round and round the rink super fast (like penguins), though it's a bit scary to feel them whoosh past you.

Because we were playing an intense game of tag and throwing ice at each other in the rink, one of us was bound to get hurt. Poor Bernard fell and his head started bleeding. Well, I guess he kind of deserved it since he was the main culprit throwing ice at all of us! HAHA!

The nice thing is, we all got to see what the first aid room looked like...

Sorry Bernard, if you read this, I hope your head is fine now, but THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR THROWING ICE AT US! xD

This probably won't be our last outing here...

It took us about six jumps to finally get this shot right! Wheee!!

Alright Sunday morning after church, I went to visit Ah yee and Tori, the cute widdle schnauzer pup that they got recently.

She's at least three times her size since I last saw her now!

And besides being extremely cute, she's also picked up a few tricks such as learning how to eat on command.

*I want food nao please :(*

Went with them to have a quick lunch at Yuhua.

When all of a sudden it started pouring heavily. Thunder, lightning, etc. If you were in Singapore, you'll remember the intense rain that caused flooding in various parts of the island.

But even in the intense rain, we would have fun.

Guess what...

It's the perfect time to play with paper boats!

Fortunately I still had some scrap paper in my bag that we folded into little sampans.

At House of Bread, we dyed Easter eggs. Annie got creative and wrote "hope" and "peace" on her eggs. I want some of that!

I took to getting my eggs multi-coloured.

To whom do these eggs belong?

In case you were wondering, we used food dye with a bit of vinegar to colour the eggs. For words, we wrote with crayon on the shells first. The crayons are from crayola so they're not toxic. Thanks to Kim who provided all the eggs and dye and crayons!

I love eating the eggs afterwards. My favourite is to take the hard-boiled egg, dip it in soy sauce and eat it cold. Yummmm! There are six still in my fridge if anyone wants some.

This time last year, I celebrated Easter in another country, with different people... 

Sigh.

Where will we be next year?

Easter Time

Went to the Bronx on Thursday with girls from Bible study at school. We were there to visit Khadeen's mom in the hospital.

What a humbling experience it was, to be reminded that good health is a blessing from God. While we prayed together in the ICU, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by it all... The tubes, the smile in her mom's eyes despite the pain, Khadeen's quiet strength, our shuffling feet, the beeping machines... All the troubles in the world seemed to diminish in comparison to what I saw and felt.

I got home feeling drained from the four hour commute.

Drove back home from school on Saturday afternoon to play with the boys.

In the evening my mom and I went to Lowes to pick up some new flowers to plant in front of the house. She did all the digging because I hate earthworms.

This morning at Easter service, the pastor basically talked about Christ's resurrection giving us victory over death, sinful behaviour, etc.; it also gives us power over past sins and peace concerning the unknown future.

I guess what I've been feeling recently is inadequacy. I feel as if I don't deserve to come close to God, because of what happened between my roommates and I and various other things.

Every time I open the Bible, I read things like "and the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful" (2 Timothy 2:24).

Verses like that just cut right to my heart when I think about how I have to battle with resentment and counting wrongs each time I see or hear my roommate in the dorm. Not only that, but I feel like I haven't been fed spiritual food recently because I haven't been surrounded by a lot of Christian friends. Instead, I've been hanging out with lots of anti-Christian lifestyle people in an effort to reach out to them.

After all this time, I feel like I am just drifting further and further away from God. I really don't want to end up in a place where I've become numb to sin.

In any case, the rest of the family just arrived for Easter dinner.

Gotta go!

Blessed Days

I feel so blessed right now because yesterday and today were really good days.

For one, Mo came to visit us with her baby girl yesterday at track practice. It's so weird to see her as a mom now. When she graduated, getting married and having a kid were among the last things I'd expected her to do. But here she is, still seeming like the same person but different...

How time flies!

After practice, Nat and I pranked Telly by pasting Post-its all over her door.

We'd actually planned this for a long time now- since last year! We figured that Tuesdays evenings were the best time because Telly would be at work. Who knew that YESTERDAY of all Tuesdays, she would be getting a room inspection?

So yes, unfortunately we were caught red-handed by Miss Telly herself. Not that she minded at all.

Because they were messages of love.

After pranking Telly, we went (once again) to Kean University for a dodgeball game.

This time, there were so many people jammed into one court that I got bored halfway through and dropped out to play something else on my own.

It was nice though, just to hang out and stuff.

Fast forward to this afternoon- we had to do community service after track practice.

Street cleaning...

Holding up signs to get cars to honk at us. We wanted them to know that this was a grassroots movement in keeping the city clean; and that we weren't inmates.

Everyone had a lot more fun than we expected.

After that, I had a bunch of girls over to dye Easter eggs and hang out.

It was interesting to see what designs all of us came up with.

Hidden artistic talents in all of us!

I am really enjoying my last few weeks as a college senior- so much so that I don't really want to leave. Why why why do I always begin to really enjoy myself when I'm about to leave a place?

Well I'm just going to keep giving thanks to God who is awesome and from whom all good things come. I can't control my life and where I'll be in the years to come, but I can and will always give thanks for the grace He's giving me day by day.

Still, spending time with people is draining and distracting. I need some quiet time with my dearest God, pronto.

Goodnight world.