Southern South Korea vacation

Hey everyone,

This is in response to Wes' challenge about postiing something memorable that has happened in the past week to the family blog. Here are four of my favorite memories of this past week. As you all know, your Momma and I went for a short vacation to the south-western area of South Korea from Sunday through to Friday. Here are a few of my favorite recollections:

1. Camping on a sandy beach in Geoji-do (Geoji Island). We had a fantastic spot right near the shoreline - the morning after a restful sleep, we woke up to find the sun warming the earth and a nice, cool refreshing breeze that was gently stirring the sea-water in the bay and rusting the poplar tree leaves - it was great making bacon and eggs on the beach and anticipating a wonderful day, which it was!

2. Camping on a rocky beach on Namhai-do. We found an area off a harbour that had huge trees and a good washroom - there was all kinds of motor-vehicles coming from the nearby village to the harbour for various purposes but that mostly died out about 8:00 p.m. Little did we know that at precisely 5:00 a.m. the next morning, the loudspeaker would start blaring something in Korean - whatever it was that was said, all kinds of engines and people were roving around the area shortly afterwards - it felt like we were right near the Indianapolis 500 speedway - haven't these Islanders ever heard of sleeping in?!? Needless to say, Mom and I were also up well before 6:00 after having listened to that racket for awhile - not restful by any means, but certainly interesting!

3. By day three, after 2 days of camping, Mom and I agreed we would stay at a place that had indoor showers - by that time we had driven to the city of Yeosu, which is at the end of a long peninsula - Yeosu will host the next world expo in 2012 (this year's expo is being held in Shanghai, China). Anyways, Mom had her heard on getting a pension (a cross between an apartment and a cottage) so we drove just north of the city to a beach - to get there, we had to drive through a narrow tunnel that was about 1/2 km long - it felt really weird but was interesting - southbound traffic had the right of way so, if we met someone, there were areas every 100 meters or so where we could pull off to the right to let them pass. Anyways, we found this amazing pension for only 60,000 won - two full bathrooms, a kitchen/dining room area, a full bedroom and a balcony overlooking the ocean about 20 meters directly below - absolutely gorgeous!!! Needless to say, we made the best of this opportunity while there!

4. On day 4, we decided to head out to Jirisan (Jiri Mountain) National Park, which contains the second highest mountain in South Korea - not much by European standards, Wes, but impressive to us "Prairie folk" flatlanders nonetheless! We decided to take a backroad in after visiting the city of Namwon - I had visited the city with some friends two years ago when Mom was in Canada with you kids and wanted to show her the area - anyways, after visiting, we took this road that was full of switchbacks up and down a mountain pass - there were times when I couldn't even get up some of the 20% + grades in second gear and had to downshift to 1st - a real challenge of my driving skills but so rewarding when we finally got to the top and had a view of both where we'd been and where we'd be going, both far below us!

We wished we'd remembered to pack the camera - shortly after we'd left Handong, Mom asked "Did we remember to pack the camera?" My response was "we?" Anyways, we had to be at the hospital by 10:00 (the surgeon was late so we would have had enough time to pick it up had we known that but that's the way things so sometimes. It was really too bad, since we'd seen some mighty beautiful areas, but there was no sense in whining about something it!

That's it for my favorite recollections of this past week - I'm looking forward to hearing from Mom and you girls, since Wes has already posted!

Love always and forever!!!

-Dad-
XOXOXOXOXOXXOXOXOXOXOXOXXXOXOXOXOXXOXOXOXOXOXXOXOXOXOXOXXO

I am sorry that I have not posted for a while but I am back

Hi all

I know has been a while since I have posted anything and I intend to change that.  To be honest I was trying to think of a new challenge for everyone however I am lacking ideas, I am not sure about everyone else but I am not really in a position to make elaborate meals at the moment as I am preparing to leave Slovenia and I am still camera-less at the moment so I can not challenge people to submit photos.  So I will offer another challenge, post something that has happened to you over the past few weeks that sticks in your mind.

For example for myself I would say that this last Monday night will stand out in my mind for a while.  It was a normal night with nothing really that special but a number of friends got together for drinks and just to talk and as we talked we all realized that we will all miss each other next year as we are all off to different places for our studies.  It was an unexpected realization and I think that realization really helped to make the night (what was by any other standard a completely ordinary night and not something that we had not done many times before) something that I will remember for a while.

So there you have it post a special moment that you had the past little bit.

Love

Wes

1 John Tests

Hey Family!

I was listening to a preacher online and he was talking about assurance of salvation. He talked about 1 John and how this book has a bunch of tests on how a person knows if they are saved. We know that we are children of God:

1. If we acknowledge Jesus as Christ, who came in flesh as the Son of God? (2:22-23; 4:15; 5:1)

2. If we living in the light: hating the things of the world, living in righteousness, loving our brothers and obeying God's commands? (1:5-7) (2:10; 3:14) (2: 3-6; 3:24) (2:29) (2:15-17)

3. If we confessing our sins and have we stopped living or continuing in sin? (1:8-10) (3:6-10)

4. If we have His Spirit? (4:13)

We are saved by grace 100%. But the evidence that we are saved is by a changing in our lives because of the Spirit that lives in us. Not by a prayer that we said at one time in our lives.

I was thinking about this and I believe that when I was saved was not when I was 6 as I had thought. I think that it was later in high school because that is when changes started happening in my life. That is when I wanted to conform my life to Jesus. That was when the Holy Spirit really convicted my heart for the first time about my need to change in my relationship with dad and where He began a work in me. That is where I began to love more and began to see the things of the world not so desirable.

How about you guys? When would you say that you've gone from death to life?

Love you all lots!

Lynne

Life Lesson 159: No matter how much your hair is bothering you . . .

DONT CUT IT YOURSELF!!!!

Monday was a crazy, frizz, almost an afro hair day. I mean it was out of control - I was sporting a very "nice" finger-in-the-light-socket 'do'. Annoyed and frustrated by this fly-away mop, I decided to do something about it - cheap style like. I cut it myself. Thats right, I, the girl who can't cut a straight line even if my life depended on it, stooped to the lowest of low in cheapness. Instead of coughing up a bit of cash a month before my next hair cut was due, I cut it myself. Now, here I will try to place the blame of my loss of sanity on my roommate and mother. You see, I figured to myself, that 1. Shelley and Rachel (and I think Kerry, and even Santana), often have taken a set of shears to their golden (or maybe ebony) locks, and they have survived (with nicely coffied tops), and 2. Mom has often taken the bull by the horns and chopped her own waves (and Dads - though I'm not sure that that counts), and still is as beautiful as ever. So I figured that I, a bright, relatively energetic individual could master this hair cutting thing - Hey I won a gold medal for microbiology so how hard can it be. Well, cutting your own hair is much more difficult than you would think. A LOT MORE! Here are some lessons that I learned: 1. if its your first time cutting your hair don't just start hacking - THINK ABOUT IT FIRST, 2. wet curls are longer than dry curls, and 3. sometimes you just have to STOP, but down the scissors and WALK AWAY!!!!

Actually, the hair cut isn't too bad, a little short, for sure, but I can live with it until it grows out in, lets say, a week. As you will probably notice, the hair cut didn't relieve the frizziness - curses upon humidity and thunderstorms and all that horrid rain!!!

Readings from Ezekial

Hey Family,

Sorry I missed talking to you guys on Skype last week. And I probably won't be able to talk this next week as well (I'm going to Gramsh to visit some friends).

Anyways, I just wanted to share what I was learning as I read Ezekial. I'm in the 11th chapter now. Before that it talked about how the elders of Israel would worship other gods even while they paid lip service to God. They said to themselves, 'O God has left, he doesn't see'. God's response to this was letting Ezekial see the Cheribum who had eyes ALL OVER their bodies. As well, God told Ezekial to open a wall and then to go through a doorway and He showed Ezekial what He saw, people worshipping other gods. It was like God was saying, there is NOTHING hidden from my eyes. He sees all their deeds, even done in secret, as well as their thoughts and their hearts. Then in verse 9, the Cheribum went and put a mark on the foreheads of the people that wanted to follow God.

This got me thinking a lot about the verse in 2 Chronicles 16:9 "For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him..." I always thought that 'the eyes of the Lord' were like me, 2 eyes, but after reading about how the Cheribum have sooooooo many eyes and that they go throughout the WHOLE world, it gives new meaning to this verse!!!!

So I just want to encourage us as a family to really desire to walk in ALL the ways of God and not man. For God sees all that we do, think and is in our hearts. There is nothing hidden before Him and we'll be held accountable. He also sends grief and afflictions our way, not willingly, but so that we'd return to Him and follow Him with all of us. God knows His own and will take care of them (like Ezek. 9).

Love you all so much!

Creativity

I was doing some research for a class I will be teaching on Monday for the Advanced Communication Class. I found this video on Ted Talks that I found which is very interesting.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Also Ken Robinson has a website - his passion is encouraging creativity in education.

He has a link on his website http://www.sirkenrobinson.com/ to the Blue Man Group. It looks really interesting, very unconventional. Has anyone heard or seen this group? http://www.blueman.com/about/whatis

Check it out and tell me what you think.

Something interesting to read

Hi all

I know that it has been a long time since posting and for that I am sorry.  I was looking through a blog today and I ran across this article which I found fascinating and I thought that I would share it all with you.  Just to give you a heads up it is a little on the long side but it is a really good read, take a look and let me know what you think.  Becky I am especially interested to know what you think about this from a scientific view (things like genes and that I don't understand, give me some good old debt to equity ratios any day).

The Science of Genius: A Q&A With Author David Shenk

By DWYER GUNN

Photo: Heidi SchumannDavid Shenk

Practice makes genius? That’s the idea behind the research of people like Anders Ericsson. It’s also at the center of a new book, The Genius in All of Us, by journalistDavid Shenk. Shenk robustly disputes the popular belief that intelligence and talent are genetically predetermined, and methodically explains the thousands of hours of practice behind the “genius” of a host of musical and athletic superstars (and those amazing London cabbies).

Can anyone be Michael Jordan?  Probably not, but Shenk believes that most people are capable of a lot more than they realize. His book explores ideas similar to those recently covered in books like Malcolm Gladwell’sOutliers, Geoff Colvin’s Talent Is Overrated, and Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code, but there are plenty of new angles in Shenk’s Genius. He has agreed to answer a few questions about the book.

Q.

The idea that genes simplistically dictate both physical attributes and intellectual capabilities (or lack thereof) is pretty widespread, perhaps because of thoseMendel-inspired eye color charts everyone fills out in high school biology, but the truth is a bit more complicated. How do genes work? Most importantly of all, can two blue-eyed parents really produce a brown-eyed child?

A.

They really can. The key thing for people to understand about genes is that, while of course they substantially impact everything about who we are, the actual end results for any trait — eye color, height, athleticism, musicality — is the result of a dynamic interaction between genes and their immediate environment. Genes don’t contain instructions for eye color per se; they contain instructions on how proteins should be assembled. Exactly how those instructions get transmitted and subsequently become eye color, etc., is constantly affected by hormones, which in turn can be affected by nutrition, stress, activity, even thoughts. Genes are not blueprints — they’re more like switches that get turned on and off.

This may seem jarring to a lot of people who, as you say, learned the more simplistic Mendelian version. But the gene expression paradigm is widely accepted among geneticists.

Q.

So if intelligence isn’t predetermined by genes, what does determine intelligence?

A.

Genes influence intelligence, to be sure. But fundamentally, intelligence is an accumulation of skills — not an innate thing. We all have genetic differences that are going to impact how we develop and learn. But that’s a far cry from saying that some people are just genetically doomed to be lackluster and others are destined to be brilliant. Intellectual skills and the psychological motivation to develop them begin to develop not long after birth and remain in play until you take your last breath.

Q.

What about pure geniuses like Michael Jordan or Mozart? Those kinds of extraordinary people must just be different than the rest of us — more genetically gifted, right?

A.

That’s what it looks like from far away. Jordan flies through the air with such grace and abilities so far apart from mine that it seems he must be some sort of genetically gifted super-being. The rebuttal to this actually takes an entire book to convey, but it first involves helping people understand that everything about talent is a process. There’s the genetic piece, and then there’s the ability piece. When you look very closely at Jordan’s life, you see a rather ordinary teenage athlete with no particularly grand ambition until about mid-way through high school. (Don’t take my word for it – read David Halberstam’s Playing For Keeps.) After the deep disappointment of not making the varsity team, Jordan developed an unparalleled ambition that quite simply dwarfed that of his schoolmates in high school and later his teammates at the University of North Carolina. Jordan’s abilities developed according to what he demanded of himself.

The same is true of other super-achievers. From a distance, it looks like they’ve got something almost super-human about them. But when you look up close, at the moment-to-moment lives they lead, the sacrifices they make, the extraordinary resources they have around them, their abilities actually do make logical sense. If it’s documented closely enough, you can actually see how they went from mediocre to good, from good to great, from great to extraordinary.

This is not to say that anyone can literally became anything, or that we’re equal in our potential. But from my vantage point, the true genetic gift is the design of the genome itself — our bodies and our minds are simply designed to respond to environmental demands.

Q.

You give evidence in the book that child prodigies are often not successful as adults. Why not?

A.

Several reasons. First is that the skills are quite different. Child achievers are masters of a particular technical skill, which is impressive compared to other children; adult achievers have technical skill too, of course, but also a creative layer which is quite different. It often doesn’t naturally follow that the young technical achievers will also become creative masters.

The second reason is that early super achievers often get stuck in the psychology of their own success. Children who grow up surrounded by praise for being technically proficient at a specific task often develop a natural aversion to stepping outside their comfort zone. Instead of falling into a pattern of taking risks and regularly pushing themselves just beyond their limit, they develop a terrible fear of new challenges and of any sort of flaw or failure. Ironically, this leads them away from the very building blocks of adult success. Boston College’s Ellen Winner has written eloquently about this issue.

Q.

The Genius in All of Us is “not a instruction manual about how YOU TOO can become JUST LIKE WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE!” but you do offer some suggestions for how the average person can achieve greatness. Can you share a few of them with us?

A.

In the book, the suggestions are made specifically in the context of understanding the science that lies behind them. Without that scientific underpinning, they’ll likely come off as motivational pablum. But here goes…

BE YOUR OWN TOUGHEST CRITIC.
Nietzsche wrote: “All great artists and thinkers [are] great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering.” His observation was dead-on, and timeless. Hollywood movies suggest that genius is a series of Eureka! moments, that true greatness flows effortlessly. We live under the great myth of the perfect first draft. While moments of inspiration do exist, great work is, for the most part, painstaking and cannot happen without the most severe (and constructive) self-criticism.

DELAY GRATIFICATION AND RESIST CONTENTEDNESS.
In consumer culture, we are constantly conditioned to gratify our impulses immediately: buy, eat, watch, click— now. High achievers transcend these impulses. Like the Buddha who waits patiently at the gates of heaven until all others have entered before him, young Kenyans are content to run for many years before they can even dream of competing in a major international contest. The tiny violinist screeches out earsplitting sounds not because he thinks a dazzling concerto is right around the corner, but because there is something satisfying in the struggle and in the tiny improvements made along the way. The big prize is envisioned and appreciated as a far-off goal— it is not lusted after. Small accomplishments along the way provide more than enough satisfaction to continue.

Q.

What does this new understanding of genetics and intelligence mean for parenting? What can parents do to help their kids achieve greatness?

A.

In this limited space, let me just stick to one point, which is that parents need to model a life of delayed gratification and persistence if they want their kids to embrace those values themselves. Show your kids how hard you work, how often you experience disappointments and how you respond to those disappointments. If you blame others for your failures or simply give up, that’s what your kids will learn. If you take on a long-term challenge, show a deep commitment to the process and a refusal to give up in the face of adversity, your kids will pick that up instead.