Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Bible studies will resume in the 1st week of the Winter Quarter (Friday, January 9, 2009) – see you then!
It was wonderful to check out the awesome Planeterium and exhibits at the Griffith Observatory last Friday together with the LCF Undergrad group! This week, we’ll resume our regular Friday night grad bible studies (7pm, Ackerman Viewpoint Conference Room). Please feel free to join us for a break from the hecticness of the week to as we study the Gospel of Mark together to learn about Jesus together.
In lieu of our normal Friday night bible study, this Friday we’re doing something a bit different. We’re going to the newly renovated Griffith Park Observatory to enjoy the night view of LA and watch the planetarium show. Bring your student ID to get a student discount. We will meet at Ackerman Turnaround at 6:30 pm and carpool there together. Email us at timdong@ucla.edu or call us at 626-233-6450 if you are planning to come or if have any questions.
* Please also note that there will NO regular Bible study this Friday. We will resume our Bible study next week on Friday, October 24th.
The day started off innocent-looking enough. We would drive down to Mother’s Beach in Marina del Rey, enjoy some BBQ, relax, and then go home. BBQ tasted great (special thanks to our grill-masters, David, James, and Atsuro!). After we had lunch, we looked into renting bikes and riding around the area for a bit – the rental rates per bike were $10 for 1 hour, and $15 for the whole day, and I had every intention of saving the $5. There are several bike paths in that area and we simply started going down one of them (The Strand). With the beach and Pacific Ocean to our right and beautiful beachfront houses to our left, the view from the seat of a bicycle was great! (It must have also been quite a sight to see from the pedestrians’ perspective – what would you think if you saw a column of 15 bikes riding single file along the beach?).
We eventually ended up at Manhattan Beach, where our bicycle gang took a group photo. We were tempted to stop for ice cream, but there was still a 10-mile return trip to do. Everybody got back ok – we even passed by the UCLA Marine Aquatic Center on the trip back! Go Bruins!
Total time: 2.5 hours
Total Distance: 20 miles
Beaches passed through: Dockweiler, Manhattan Beach
We had our Student Welcome Nights on Thursday and Friday night. We performed a short skit called “True Reflection of the Heart” and several people from our group shared about their experiences in our bible study – two of our graduate students, Lydia and Tim, in addition to the directors of our Bible Study, Ken and James.
On both nights we wrapped up the evening with a midnight food run to Noodle Planet in Westwood. All in all, it was a wonderful way to end Zero Week at UCLA. Please join us as we begin our regular bible studies on Friday nights (7pm, Ackerman Viewpoint Conference Room). This school year we’ll be studying the Gospel of Mark.
We had a great time together at the Getty Center (free admission, and only 15 min from UCLA!). In the beauty of the Central Garden, we sat down to enjoy a feast of steamed dumplings and KFC (East meets West). During the subsequent architecture tour, we learned about architect Richard Meier’s fascination with 30-inch squares (the entire structure’s tile pattern and window sizes are based on some factor of 30″ by 30″) and learned more than we ever wanted to know about Travertine (which is also the main building material for the Colosseum in Rome).
The Fall Quarter kicks into full swing next Thursday (7 days away!), which means the next couple of days are extremely precious. Why not spend this Saturday (9/20) seeing the sights of LA AND getting to know us? (after all, grad students are experts at multitasking). Our current possible itinerary includes:
- Getty Museum
- Griffith Observatory / Griffith Park
- Santa Monica Pier
- and (possibly) more!
We’ll be meeting together at 11am this Saturday (location TBD), but send us an e-mail (uclagrad@lifecf.net) if you are interested in coming and we’ll make sure you have the most up-to-date info.