From the Midwest and Around the World

Hey y'all!  I haven't posted in more than a year or two: partially because I was busy...but also I'm lazy and not good at blogging. So anyhow, this Saturday, I'm going to Beirut, Lebanon for a 10 day mission trip. I will be visiting refugee camps and helping to distribute food and other necessities as well as visiting refugees and learning about their experiences. During that time, I will only have my iPhone...so blogging will be scarce. But I will be keeping a pen and paper journal and once I get back, I will transcribe (with pictures!) those entries and share them with you here. This next week, I will be reflecting on a few questions before my trip, and will also be focusing on questions during and after the trip. If you wish to follow along during the trip through prayer and reflection, please sign up for email updates here .  Ignore the dates, the actual trip is June 18-28. Pre-During-Post Trip Questions 1. What are the 3 greatest needs of the refugee? 2. Wha...

   Hello everyone! It gets harder and harder to update, especially since I've fallen behind a bit in my posts as well as I've had a few busy weeks recently.    About three weeks ago, I visited Kyoto with some of the Japanese students who were studying English here at JCMU. We visited Yasaka Shrine and Kiyomizu Temple. Because much of Japan is very open (and semi-secular) about religion, but their faith is based in polytheism, there are many shrines (both large and small) and a lot of temples. It is not uncommon to see a very small shrine squeezed in the alley between two houses. As a Christian, I also have not gotten a chance to see inside another religion's house of worship.    Yasaka Shrine has a large white and bright orange gate. When you walk inside, there are food-booths and a lot of mini shrines. There is also a place where one can buy protective charms (usually about $10 or more), "mikuji" (which are fortune sheets...I will talk about t...

Note: This is a review at first, but afterwards it turns into a rant about societies ills...as I see them...so read on with caution!    The other night, I was able to finally see the summer movie "The Great Gatsby." Over the summer, I had read the book so as to better measure the accuracy of the film interpretation. I really appreciated and enjoyed Baz Luhrmann's modern/20's era hybrid. The film had the style, music, morals, and dance of the '20s...while also integrating the music, dance, and morals of the contemporary '10s.     However, are these two eras (separated by nearly a century) really that different? In this post, I want to examine the aspects of the movie that overlap and identify that the two decades are, in fact, the same. The social battles may not be the same, but the thought behind them is very much the same.    First of all, music. In the '20s, a lot of the young people's music that was new at that time was considered very cru...

     Only two classes on the beautiful Wednesday...Religion and Japanese (both classes taught by representatives of the Asian continent). In Religion (Prophets), I found to my dismay that I had to manually copy perhaps 100+ pages (after the tenth copy, they all blur together) of articles that would be supplementary reading in addition to the text. A bit of my heart died with each fallen tree...and I now have a deeper understanding of "The Giving Tree." Despite this paper-wasting, the professor seems demanding (in a good way), funny (in a healthily irreverent way), and easy to understand (wonderful images and metaphors). Hopefully the rest of the semester will represent what the first day showed.      I am in fourth year college Japanese (at Calvin, it is JAPN-311). In comparison to last year, there is more of an emphasis on individual learning. While we learn grammar and vocab as a class, we also have individual "themes" on which we will work through durin...

     This is the first of (hopefully) many entries that I will post throughout this year and beyond. I am now entering my Sophomore year at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. This year I will be pursuing my double major in International Relations (IR) and Japanese by taking three IR classes in the fall and then traveling across the world to Japan in the Spring Semester. Hopefully this blog will follow that journey.      While this blog is mostly for family and friends, I welcome any readers that do not know me personally and I hope that you will enjoy my musings, rants, and narratives about my life. Please feel free to comment or email me ( elizmarfos6@gmail.com ) with any questions.      Generally, I will post narratives about my life. However, I will often post political opinions and thoughtful musings about pop culture, Christianity, etc. If that is not your thing, then this may not be the right blog for you...but I always enjoy a civi...