Wow. Another two weeks and I'll head back to Seattle. I've been reflecting on my time here in DC, and have concluded that the theme of this summer has been "God will bless and provide for all things." I want to list out those blessings as I think about it some more.

Thoughts of the new academic year and all the activities and busyness that will inevitably come have started to push out the feeling of summer. It certainly hasn't been a lazy summer, with 9 hr workdays at the office and almost 2 hrs of commute each workday. And yet, there's been a freedom of the soul or spirit. I enjoy the work I do while I'm doing it, and then when I leave the office, I leave the work at the office too.

And when I do, I've been a fairly good tourist. Here are things I've experienced in the past 9 weeks:

*National Gallery of Art (just the modern section and Houdon sculpture exhibit - not to mention the excellent cafeteria downstairs!)
*Lincoln Memorial
*Screen on the Green - outdoor movie (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)
*Boating on the Potomac River
*Outdoor film festival - The Sound of Music
*National Cathedral
*Museum of Natural History (and IMAX show)
*Museum of American History
*Georgetown
*Dupont Circle
*Friendship Heights
*The Postal Museum
*National Building Museum
*The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts (The Great Books, and on the way there I passed by the infamous Watergate Hotel)
*The White House (didn't tour inside, but walked near it)
*Thailand and India Embassies (IJM errands)
*Bookstores - Second Story Books (and another used bookstore), Kramer's Books, Barnes & Noble, Borders
*Baltimore airport :)
*Starbucks on weekends (oh wait, that's not a touristy thing to do)

Things I hope/plan to do in the next couple weeks:
*The National Espionage Museum (aka The Spy Museum)
*The Holocaust Museum
*FDR Memorial
*Jefferson Memorial
*The National Zoo (to see the pandas!)
*Georgtown University campus
*Franciscan Monastery
*National Gallery of Art (the classical permanent exhibits)

Am I so naive that a movie like Dirty Pretty Things would shock me?

It's a compelling and disturbing story about illegal immigrants in London - a somewhat dark suspense mystery that also acts as a wakeup call to the plight of the struggling and society's marginalized.

It stars Audrey Tautou, of the film Amelie, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, a British Nigerian who was also in Amistad. Ejifor is an excellent actor and his character Okwe is a very likeable hero protagnist.

Go watch it! (Note: it is intense and may be too graphic for young viewers.)

"Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering." - Hebrews 13:3

Imagine spending a third of your life imprisoned. Min Ko Naing (see post from yesterday) was only 27 when he was imprisoned. He is now 41.

As a student, I can't imagine being picked out of my life right now, having the next fourteen years of my life taken away from me, finding myself in my forties, and still with no sign of release. Not to mention the torture and the darkness.

On a related note to the post below - a bunch of interns were at this event. See the photos - Photo #2, the Asian girl was my cubicle mate!

Does this man remind you of Avery Chan?

But seriously. Min Ko Naing's story reminds me of the courage and bravery of those who are willing to fight for democracy and peace for their people, and how I live and breathe in this free country and too often take it for granted. MKN has been arbitrarily detained for 14 years and has suffered through brutal torture, including being forced to stand in water for two weeks until he collapsed and his left foot lost all feeling. It is also believed that he has very weak health and remains in solitary confinement.

This is a pretty good slide show (click once onto main page, then click "slide show" on left bar) that gives an introduction and overview of the current situation in Burma (the oppressive ruling military regime changed its name to "Myanmar", and you can tell who sits on what side by whatever name is used) and the democracy and human rights struggle that is currently taking place.

There are currently nearly 1500 Political Prisoners incarcerated in Burmese Prisons. They must survive on a minimum of food and water, inadequate medical attention where exposure to AIDS and other communicable diseases occurs on a daily basis. They also endure constant harrassment, physical and psychological abuse.

"As soon as a male political prisoner walks in the iron gate of Myngyan prison, his eyes are covered, and the jail guards beat him. Prison authorities refer to this event as "a welcoming ceremony with orchestra," -- clubs and 2" diameter bamboo rods are the musical instruments.

We were punched, kicked and beaten with clubs, jungle boots and bamboo rods at least 200 times by 4 or 5 wardens. We had already been chained, but while we were beaten we were also forced to crawl upon the sharp pieces of bricks until we reached the cells where we would be kept. The wardens shouted, "This is Myingyan prison! This is Myingyan prison!" while beating us. They treated us as if we were animals from the very first day, some even lost consciousness on the way to their prison cells.

When the prisoners reach their cells they are forced to crouch for an excruciatingly long time in a crouch position. They crouch in the corner, a dirt place otherwise used as a toilet. Political prisoners remain chained, some times with a long iron rod between the feet, or legs which forces them to stand, sit or lie with legs kept well apart. They are left this way for months. " - AAPP

These are the faces of just some of them.

Okay, I feel totally nerdy... but I'm actually looking forward to school again! My Evidence professor sent out the syllabus and the thought of going to classes, reading cases & studying... is actually rather appealing.

Another thing that makes it particularly exciting for our class is that the Law School is moving into a new building - it's been happening throughout this summer. We are REALLY excited... we were in a pretty ugly concrete one, so we can appreciate it all the more. It will certainly make the long hours there more bearable! :)

Here's a top view of William Gates (as in Bill's father) Hall. Here are some pictures of the inside (still not completely finished.) And of the new library (a disproportionate amount of a law student's time is spent here.)

Yep, I've decided. The new building looks like the Emerald City in Wizard of Oz.

Great prayer meeting time at IJM this morning!

Today a man who used to be the director of a prison in Haiti and his wife came to share about his experience in the Haitian prison system. He sought asylum in the U.S. after spending many years trying to maintain integrity and advocating for reform in the Haitian system.

This man was pivotal in aiding IJM in the case of Osner Fevry (in the story this man is the "the director of the National Penitentiary"), an innocent man and attorney working for justice in Haiti. Fevry was considered a political threat and there were plots to murder him whil he was being illegally detained. The former director refused to take part and attempted to aid Fevry as much as he could.

The former director shared his story, including a wonderful twist of how he met his wife in the U.S. because she volunteered for IJM and was his translator from the very beginning. After 5 long years, he was just granted permanent residency in the U.S.

We were all so encouraged by this happy ending for this man and his wife, and the direct role IJM played in helping them. His story also reminded me of the complete night-and-day difference of the world we know here in the U.S., and the world others experience in countries like Haiti.

A few highlights of their visit thus far:

+Sending postcards via computer terminals at the National Postal Museum, and taking part in other silliness there. (Don't let the name fool you, it's a really cool place with the original paintings of all these stamps that have been in circulation over the years.)

+Eating at the huge food court at Union Station at least four times over the past few days.... and McDonald's twice! (Ai-yah, you think, what kind of an older sister is she?!?!)

+Joy and I getting into an emotional argument at an ice-cream parlor, while Patricia sits by patiently but awkwardly. It really was a little silly and rather funny now that we look back on it! :)

+Shopping at Target with Joy! We spent a good deal of time looking at their shoes, and didn't buy any. I may have convinced Joy to consider wearing shoes with some height (for she has been rather adamant about only wearing flat shoes until now.)

+Eating Joy's favorite and daily breakfast: oatmeal made with vanilla soy milk & brown sugar, topped with raisins. I also introduced them both to lemon curd on toast! Yummm.

+A rousing game of "Squabble" (a great version of Scrabble that involves fighting and jockeying over words!)

+Going with Mel to see her try on her wedding dress!

+Joy helping Lauren (one of my roommates) wrap several gifts - Lauren is giftwrapping-challenged.

+Seeing Patricia absolutely bust up with laughter at one of my jokes.

Joy is in New York with Grace Chiu visiting a couple friends. I am already missing her. :( Patricia has been hanging out with Mel, but I'll see her today and tomorrow. A gathering of the CBCOC folks for dinner is on tomorrow's agenda, and they take off for California on Wed morning.

I knew it would be a quick week.

My sister Joy and cousin Patricia are visiting me in DC! It's very nice having them here. We were all in Mel's car (with Mel) and I remarked, "It feels like SoCal, with all these Asian girls together!"

Joy is great. She has this 300-megawatt smile when she meets people... when I'm away from her for a period of time, I forget how sincere and contagious it is. She also has this very genuine and sweet nature that rather disarms people... I know that people react differently to her because she seems so open and so glad to talk to them and see them.

Patricia also seems older and more mature. I can't believe she's a high school senior and applying to college this year! Wow.

It should be a great week.

The author below, Lilian Calles Barger, is director of The Damaris Project. Check out their website.

A discussion with my roommates last night, and also with a group of female interns at IJM during lunch hour a few weeks ago, about plastic surgery and the ethics or viewpoint of Christians on the subject has made me rethink and reconsider the issue of physical appearance, a woman's body and our society's obsession with youth and beauty ("lookism").

Here are excerpts from a book written by a Christian woman:

The power of the "beauty myth" must be understood in the context of our history, the body's meaning in that history, and the concrete limits of the body itself. In all of these, there is, however, one thing we have not been able to change: our relationship to our own body and how we negotiate that relationship. In our society, what women have attained in terms of social advancement - education, money, power, status and sexual freedom through contraception and easily available abortion - is meaningless unless we can also be young and beautiful. We've ended up with a need to manipulate our physical images in order to escape reductionistic ideas about our bodies. This despite Betty Friedan's counsel: "The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. There is no other way."

....

Thoughtful writers from Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth) to Joan Brumberg (The Body Project) have tried to express exactly what is bugging us about our bodies - and why. Feminism has produced a wide variety of reinterpretations of woman's experience in the world. It has rightfully questioned the meaning, value, and place that women have been assigned. It has attempted to provide political and social solutions. But when we look at what has transpired over the last forty years, we find that the enemy is ourselves. We are collaborators in our own marginalization. We have bought into the male standard as the standard for our lives. Our desire to be accepted in the male world leads us to forget that we are not men. But remembering that we are women causes us to return to the same old gender paradigms, because we don't know how else to live.

...

But must we subdue the fertility of the female body and truncate our emotional life to function authentically in a male world? Must we surrender to the images and meaning that our bodies have received in culture, embracing their assigned sexual power to further our own ends? As we silence our body or manipulate its meaning, we end up more alienated than ever, live sculptures for the male gaze and caricatures of ourselves.

- Lilian Calles Barger, Eve's Revenge: Women and a Spirituality of the Body