I heard that the contestants of Survivor were in Brazil last week, where they saw a capoeira performance. Well, it must be Brazil week because the models of America’s Next Top Model are also in Brazil – Sao Paulo to be exact! During their first photo shoot, they learned capoeira and had to take pictures while (sort of) playing capoeira. How exciting for me to blend one of my fave shows, my dear Sao Paulo, and of course, capoeirraaa!!

OK, it was kind of silly to watch the girls just do random moves and stretches in their photo shoot, pretending to play capoeira, but it was still pretty cool to watch (and fun to see glimpses of Sao Paulo!). If anyone’s interested, here’s the clip…(Don’t judge me…I like the photo shoots, but I have to admit – the girls can be annoying.)

And speaking of traveling, Matt and I are most likely on schedule to head to Mexico. It’s been quite an interesting experience to decide whether to go or not – and to not have a hard and fast yes or no about traveling. Even harder for me is to not know what to expect, especially for something as major as an international trip. I’m surprisingly calm about it all, about not knowing whether or not we will be leaving in just a few days, and also the uncertainty of whether or not things will be open for us to visit. I can actually say I’m going with the flow! Wow. hehe…

On another note, my experience with the Toastmasters speech contest has come and gone, and it definitely was a challenge – but a good one – for me. Even more than the actual speaking parts, I was reminded about some aspects of myself, and I hope to write about them sometime soon.

In the meantime, adios – hasta luego!

I came across this article by a pastor in Seattle about Rep. Betty Brown who suggested that Asian-Americans adopt “easier” names to simplify the voter identification process. Yes, Ip, Wong, Lee, Chow, Chang, Ko, Cho – boy, those are tough ones, for sure. (Surprisingly, I’ve had my last name mispronounced!) But even with first names (like Ngar Lai or Man Wai), or how some Chinese transpose their last and first names, it’s a matter of people become educated about - and not simply disregarding – another culture. And, hello, there are many European names out there that are way more difficult to pronounce.

It would be easy for me (and others of Asian descent) to start bashing Brown – and you could almost say that we had a right to. There are articles and blogs out there that have blown this out of proportion, outright accusing Brown of not welcoming Asians to the U.S. because of her statement. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. But I think because I came across Eugene Cho’s blog entry first about this (before reading all the other ones about this topic), I was reminded first that we all have grace through Christ – ignorant comments and all. Cho doesn’t deny that Brown’s comment showed her ignorance, but he also doesn’t criticize her for a comment that was supposedly made with good intentions. Yeah, her comments made me roll my eyes and shake my head, but at least she wasn’t being malicious about it. (Here’s something malicious for you: Matt told me about a Jewish guy who got his S2000 fixed up after a car accident, and the next day, some anti-Semitic losers scratched swastikas onto the car’s body, poured sugar into his gas tank, bashed the car’s engine, and more. Now *that* is malicious and horrible.)

On the other hand, don’t get me started about people who feel like they have a right to be here – but not people of “foreign” descent (because Europeans aren’t really foreign, apparently). How can these people think this way, yet are still able to look others in the eye and say things that imply, “Your ancestors should never have been allowed in. And if they weren’t allowed here, you wouldn’t be here – and I’m OK with that.” Just because you can trace your ancestral line further back here on American soil, does that give you the right to say that – because I’m the first generation of my family to be born here – we really don’t belong here?

NOW my heart rate is going up. Grace. To EVERYONE.

I’ll get around to posting a “real” entry one of these days…

In the meantime, here are two videos that my dad e-mailed me that I really enjoyed. The first is a clip of a contestant from Britian’s Got Talent. This woman has an amazing voice, but what I love more is the fact that the audience and judges wrote her off before she even got a chance to prove herself. And prove herself she did. I have never seen Simon Cowell so moved before.

The second is a surprise mass dance in a train station in Belgium. Our family was there in 2003, and it reminded me and Na of Hogwarts! What a fun treat for everyone who witnessed this.