a whole new world: one week has gone by

so this marks a full week that has gone by in the land where the cold is an ever-present presence although the sun sets at about 10pm!
things will start to get a bit crazier in the following weeks so i might not have the leisure to blog much...meanwhile..i should blog more while i'm in the mood..

things has been good. even though it's a battle to NOT get emo=p haha yes you heard me right, i am not emo! haha..it isn't easy, not when i'm mostly alone in my room...and the weekend..well weekends are mostly hanging out with friends...just spending time together..(all you people who are reading this,.BE GRATEFUL FOR THE TIME YOU HAVE WITH GOOD FRIENDS!) ..have chats with my parents...and this weekend...was well..different=) haha to put it mildly.

fyi..I HAVE BEEN TO CHURCH. haha for those of you who are wondering whether i took the chance to backslide or something..well i've been to 2 churches. hah. =p both were interesting. the first was the Liverpool Chinese Gospel Church. (yes..yes all you ex-church office 'colleagues' this is the one..) that was interestingly..chinese. haha it's strange to be at a church where the pastor of the church is a white man and the congregation mostly speaks chinese. but they are really nice people.
the other church is called Hope City church. this was even more interesting..the moment i walked in..the person speaking boomed out, "GOD IS IN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE!" wham...what a direct word. =p and what's even more 'coincidental' (with what that has been happening in my life,i now find it hard to believe in coincidence anymore) was when the pastor's whole entire message was about how BiG our God is. that He can turn any bad stuff in our lives into something that glorifies Him. it may seem that there is nothing good in our lives, that everything seem to be going wrong but God is always in control. He is in control even when we are in the valleys of disappointment, valleys of down times..He is in the valleys as much as He is present on the mountain tops.

God didn't call us into a life of hill walking, He has called us into a life of Everest living!

anyone can walk a hill. but not everyone can climb up Mount Everest. that takes discipline..preparation..mental intuition...bad stuff will happen in your life. BUT God takes everything that happens to you for good. For the good of the people around you. Are you willing to go thru it all, no matter what, even when times where everything seems to fall apart, to run after God, and see how He takes your life and everything in it, the good and the bad, to touch the lives of people around you, to ultimately bring glory to Him?

Are you willing to run the race, trusting in Him ALL THE WAY and finish well?

and that is my challenge to myself, and to you. =)

on to more pics...

my fellow classmates (chinese classmates..hence the lot of the peace signs).....on the top deck of the tour bus on the way to Chester..

the sign below explains it..

told you i love the buildings! it's like a mini castle..weeeeeee..can't believe normal people actually get to live in it!!man...i'm so deprived...

inside the Groversnor Museum.. love the stairs.. haha..i like winding stairs..always thought it looked cool...

caveman era reenactment..(i mean the animal thingy and the furry man statue. NOT me.)

Roman Gardens...there was a group of students there rehearsing for some play...with cool looking shields..too bad couldn't get a better look..

tired dy..sat down awhile to rest in one of the exhibition rooms....we walked from one end of the map of the Chester Town to the other end..and a little further..no joke.. we walked so much and saw quite a lot..we took like 150 pics between 2 cameras in Chester itself.