here & there

I am thankful for the Church, love, good home-cooked food, snow, autumn, train rides, good conversations, warm water, Scripture, dessert, friends, and music, just to name a few things that I can praise God for among the many blessings He has given me.

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding."
Prov 9:10

I just realized it is October now. I mean I knew it was the month of October already since the 1st of October but it never settle into my mind until now. This first week of school has been busy since I had to catch up on the readings and assignments but I am happy to say I just completed my first written assignment for the course, vacuumed (or hoovered, as they call it) my room, and am doing laundry now. :)
Autumn is here (possibly my favourite season of the year)! I have to go out and take pictures of the changing leaves soon.
Oh, and I just realized that there is no American-style apple cider and pumpkin spice latte goodness in the UK (or at least they are not that common here).
Anyway, happy fall or whatever season you are in now!

"And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years..."
Gen 1:14

God is the one who set time and the seasons in place. Let us continue to be amazed by our Creator and live each day in thankfulness to Him.

I feel like I should write a good post about this.
Where am I? What am I doing now? Why am I here?

I decided to pursue a MA in Applied Linguistics: TESOL (instead of the initial enrolled MA in Theology) because...

"I actually prayed about changing majors these past few days and thought a lot about what I want to do realistically in the near future and I came to this conclusion: my heart for doing full time ministry/helping people to come to know the Gospel has not changed, but I guess just the method has changed. Theology seems to be too "up there" for now for me, so I chose TESOL so I can have a job and share with people by being alongside them (they won't immediately think of me as the "other" spiritually since i don't have the theology major label anymore.)
I think this will be a good opportunity for me to learn how to teach (which I can apply to other aspects such as teaching Bible in small group etc) and to get a job skill that can be useful for missions in the future.
I feel like I'm not matured enough to study theology now, so maybe I can go into theology in the future when I am more ready. God seems to have made the programme change process really easy (which I did pray about--if God doesn't close the door, then I can take it as a yes to go for it) so I feel at peace with it."


It actually fits me quite well because it involves:
-teaching, which is what I want to do (whether it is in Bible, English, music, etc; and I'm sure the skills I learn in this MA is transferable to these other areas).
-linguistics, which I have always been interested in.
-psychology (cognition, learning etc)
-biology (yea, terms for the brain which thankfully I still remember vaguely)
-a job skill (useful for missions also; and is more closely related to my passion of working with normal people in the Asian context).
-the skills of learning a language. If I decide to study Greek, Hebrew, German and other languages in the future, some of the theories I learn will apply and help me learn new languages faster.