musings

This past week without a computer has provided for some great lengthy discussions with my int'l friends and their diverse backgrounds and views. Some of the topics have included:
- African perspectives on difficulties and prejudices experienced living in a very monoethnic Korean culture and analyzing/discussing that culture and its people who are very group orientated.
- Listening to the multiple Korean views on issues of U.S. troops in their country, whether reunification with N. Korea is possible and/or a good thing
- Trying to gain understanding into the ethnic tention and Korean dislike of Japanese
- Getting a better background in Korean economic issues and why intense loyalty to Korean brands and nationalism are having a negative effect on their market
- Multiple perspectives (African, Central Asian - Muslim, Korean) on war in middle east and what should be done
- disecting hypocritical christianity - as seen in various cultures and students at 'christian' schools in particular
- Gaining insight from my African friends about the numerous issues they face back home. examples: why corruption is unavoidable and a necessary evil; what poverty really is and its causes

Outside of talks with friends, I've learned quite a bit from my academic courses, particularily Int'l Business, Int'l NGOs, and Law and Contemporary Issues.
A few days ago, I gave a 'fundraiser' speech in my NGO class about one of my favorite NGOs: Word Made Flesh, which lives among the poorest of the poor establishing communities, places of love and hope in the world's darkest places: slums and red-light disctricts. While researching for the project, I was able to critique my own tarnished view of poverty as a Christian and how that should influence the way I live. A few insightful quotes:

"The biggest tragety in the church is not that rich dont care but that they dont know poor folks" - shane claybourne
"if you care so much about poverty...name the poor" - mother teresa

Food for thought. With all the Bible's talk on social justice and concern for the poor, you gotta wonder why we're so comfortable and complacent in the west.

PS. God often chooses to bless us through people - connections, relationships, doesn't he?...
So it turns out that one of my coworkers at the English Academy has the same Apple computer as me and he has a ton of experience fixing the hardware of apple computers for a number of people. Not only was he able to extract all the important info that I needed from my deceased hard drive (pics, documents, applications) but he went out got me a great deal on a new 80GB hard drive and is installing it for me free of charge!