And even if it be true that I have erred,

my error remains with myself.

Job 19:4

It’s hard to write updates when I feel like not a whole lot is happening. But there is a whole lot happening! It’s not the same as living a novel day-to-day life in another country where you have a lot of material to share the background of cultural differences as those back home. I made beef noodle soup, got a prize in the mail, went on a swim and smelled the roses. We said goodbye to Enze as he moved back to Hawaii for medical school, and celebrated our pastor Samuel’s birthday.

Pink Day in LA

Back in October 2018, one of my guilds in Guild Wars 2 got super involved in a huge fundraiser event in-game called Pink Day in LA to benefit the Canadian Cancer Society. The event was hosted in one of the main cities in the game called Lion’s Arch (thus, LA).

I spent the entire day helping to host in-game events and even ground out a legendary-tier item to donate for a giveaway for the donation streams (you could donate a money to CCS for a raffle ticket to win one of those rare/expensive items). In the end, we raised over $5,000 in the span of the six hour event!

For donating to the cause during the event, I managed to win a plushie of one of my favorite characters in the game, Rytlock Brimstone (he looks a little like an angry cross between a lion and bull).

He’s technically a Charr, which are like these horned feline-like creatures. One of the main characters I play is also one, but I modeled her after Tobi. She looks a lot nicer because she’s geared to be a healer so she can’t look super intimidating like warrior Rytlock over here.

Anyway, this happened in October, so why am I writing about it now? Because MY PLUSHIE FINALLY CAME IN THE MAIL! Ahahahaha. I had basically forgotten about it. Rhonda, the event organizer, was really apologetic in her letter for it being so late and explained that basically immediately after the event happened the Canadian postal system went on strike, which lasted quite a while it seems and created a backlog since prizes had to be mailed from their various donation centers to her in Canada before being distributed. Talk about bad timing.

In any case, I finally got to snap a photo of plushie Rytlock hanging out with the IRL Tobi.

For someone who plays GW2 as much as I do, this is my first (and only) piece of fan merchandise that I own. Some people have like cool box sets or collectors edition statues and stuff, but I never found the need to get any of that (as big of a fan as I am). I’m really glad I got it though, because it still serves a reminder that real-world good can come from a virtual world.

Productivity

My mom bought some beef shank, so I made beef noodle soup, one of my specialties. It takes a lot of time to make since you have to simmer the soup for several hours, but it turned out really good.

Here’s what you need:

Also, oil, brown sugar, doubanjiang (soybean paste?), cooking wine, soy sauce, star anise, and water. The amounts pictured are good for about 2 lbs of beef shank.

You want to “blanch” the beef first. That’s just boiling a pot of water then tossing in the beef and boiling it for about ten minutes. It gets out some of the blood and not so tasty other things that might prevent the beef from pulling up the flavor (maybe. I’m not an expert but it definitely tastes better when do you do this step).

After I blanch the beef, I wash it a bit and start the soup stock in another pot. Chopped veggie ingredients in first with oil, brown sugar, and doubanjiang (about 2 spoons of each). I cook it down to a mush before adding the beef. Then I cook it and coat the paste over the meat before adding the cooking wine (about a cup) to deglaze. Then add soy sauce (a cup), water (a quart), and star anise (about 2 full stars worth). Bring the whole thing to a boil, then lower the heat so that it can maintain a simmer. Simmer for about 4 hours.

You can see a time lapse of me making the soup here:

It boiled down a lot during the simmer process so the soup was SUPER concentrated and actually really really good. We had to add some water so it would actually be drinkable in more than one spoonful at a time.

Serve with baby bok choy, noodles, and freshly cut green onion.

More cats

Roy and Tiffany were out of town, so Jasmine and Enze were taking care of their two cats, Miso and Peaches. Roy and Tiffany adopted them when I was on the ship, so I hadn’t met them yet. They were the last two of the cats during that adoption blitz that I needed to meet. They’re really cute. Miso is really funny and social but Peaches is really skittish and prefers to be at a distance (unless she’s hungry, then you can pet her). They’re really cute and soft.

It’s a “surprise”

We tried to surprise our pastor for his birthday during the Thursday night gathering, but his birthday was on Monday, so he walked in, saw the sign, and was like, “Whose birthday is it?”

Anyway, everyone pitched in to make some of our shepherd’s favorite foods and we had a grand old feast at Felicia and Jeff’s house. I learned how to choose and prepare the appropriate kale for a kale salad. I did not eat it, though.

More farewells

We had to say goodbye to Enze this week, because he moved back home to Hawaii for medical school (he’s from Hawaii). It was weirdly deja vu, sending someone off back to somewhere that you might not see them for a long, long while. I didn’t get to know Enze that well until really recently, but he’s a really funny and caring guy and I’m sad he didn’t get to stick around longer. But now we get pictures of his dogs at home in our cat-only group chat. >:(

His flight was super early so I had to wake up at 5am to get to the airport to say bye. I stayed up until 2am gaming (as you do) then slept for a few hours then got up, went to the airport, then went back to bed. By the time I woke up again he was already in Phoenix, hahahaha.

Stop and smell the roses

I had a really nice lunch with Sisi followed by a really nice swim with Felicia followed by a little walk through the rose garden at the community center (and a chat about bonsai trees).

I’ve been feeling really isolated and depressed from not living in a community anymore. I spend most of my time at home alone, don’t have an occupation, have been struggling with my physical health and, as a result, my mental and spiritual health. It’s admittedly been really difficult to feel like I belong in my old community because every encounter requires so much planning and energy. Relatively speaking, I live so far away from where I used to, I have to plan out my time, try to avoid traffic, while making sure I have everything I need. It’s not a lot, but it makes it really hard to build and maintain a meaningful relationship with my friends from church and feel like I’m a part of the group anymore. In the past, it’s been really easy to just call someone up and hang out or eat dinner, but now it takes so much more effort. I want to be a part of it, but nowadays I mostly feel like an outsider, even though I know I’m still welcome to join and hang out and crash any time like before.

This continuous struggle over the last several weeks drove me to the brink of having a depressive anxiety attack over old problems that resurfaced and newer ones from coming home to this big change I didn’t expect. Lots of tears, lots of hurt, lots of confusion and feelings of being lost and alone. The community I had relied so heavily upon has become a crutch to my own spiritual growth and personal relationship with God, and I’m finding it really difficult to walk without it. I don’t think the solution is to really throw myself back into it, but I know that the solution is also not to cut off the arm. It’s been a time of refocusing and rediscovery since then. I finally managed to really open up about it all with my parents, which has been a huge burden off my shoulders, since they’ve been so supportive of me since I got back (and well, my whole life). Being honest with them has been really helpful for me to be honest about everything with friends I didn’t open up to as much before.

-Jasmin