some of what I have been feeling and thinking.

“Life is happening… there is no afterwards.” – Danny Murphy

I don’t know if I’m having trouble adjusting still after one week coming back from Cambodia, or if everything is just coming to me at this time. It’s been one long week and it’s still going. I don’t really know how else to put it except that I’m sick and tired of school. It seems like it’s just there and I am just going through the motions every day. Maybe because summer is coming up and we are all anxious. Anyone else feel it? I just want to kick and scream and hope everything would be gone.

I was talking to a friend earlier this evening and I was mentioning to him how I was sick and tired of school. That’s where the quote above comes in, we talked about how life is happening. School and everything that’s been going on for the past however many years you have been alive, is preparing us for college, for something after college. It’s like it’s preparing us for something BIG. But there really isn’t, life is happening right now. And when we get there, to after college, it will be the same. It will be happening, like nothing special, except for that we will be doing something we enjoy. Maybe sometimes it’s like they make us think about and worry about the future so much, we don’t even realize the moment we are living in, it just seems to go by and when we think back, we wonder what we did.

So go and do something out of the ordinary. Do something that you enjoy. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do, Don’t please anyone but yourself. Follow God’s plan for you because it will make you an extraordinary person.

For us students in International school, Us students who have encountered many different cultures, lived in many different places, we would call ourselves TCKs. Third Culture Kids. It is a totally different culture than all the others. Only we would understand. Sometimes we have such a hard time being TCKs. At least I know I am, with people who have only experienced one culture. perhaps their own traditional Chinese culture. Every day, from being in an international school and having friends from all over the world, I feel like the gap between me and these people grow larger and larger. And there’s not much I can do about it. Sometimes they have to learn that there is a difference and perhaps deal with it. It feels like they are not willing to accept the realization that there is a difference and they try to do everything the same way. The way they were brought up and learned to do.

That is so hard to follow, easy yet so hard to understand. I hope some of you out there feel the same way I do. Every day I wish the gap would close up and I would be able to talk to them easily, but instead it grows larger even though it feels like it can’t grow any bigger. I am jealous of those who are able to connect easily so they can enjoy each other’s company. But for now, I can’t. It gets me cranky just thinking about it, imagine what I would be like when it’s actually happening.

Father God, You have given me so much. You have shown a slight light in my road, then you put darkness on the road again. Sometimes I can’t really see where I am heading, and it seems like I am heading no where. Especially with school, but I pray that you will give me the strength and the wisdom to get through it. You have provided me with amazing friends who are there for me all the time, I can not thank you more. You have provided me with YOU yourself that I can look to for strength. I pray that you will allow me to realize that school is not just part of the routine, but it’s part of your plan. I pray that you will allow me to find a way to stop allowing the gap between the TCKs and those who know nothing but one way. I pray that you heal me, heal my thoughts, heal my crankiness, allow me to realize I can be happy, have pure joy through You and You only. That I should be worry because each day has worries of it’s own and there is No point. I pray that instead of focusing so much on myself, that I reach out to those around my community. You are amazing God, I can not say that enough.

Loving only through You, Joanne Lam.