Hi guys,

My name is Yitian, pronounced E-T-on, but most people just call me "ET". I get a lot of jokes about it in the beginning, but it's expected. I started out this school year, my Freshman year, studying Visual Communications at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but I'm kind of taking this semester off; I moved back home and I'm taking only a few classes at my local community college. 

As I am an art student, I love any medium of visual arts. My strength is in drawing, but I also enjoy painting, photography, sculpture, collaging, and ceramics. I have some older stuff from high school uploaded on my Flickr, if you wanted to check it out: http://www.flickr.com/etroxon. I also enjoy knitting and scrapbooking... haha, does it sound like I'm 70?? But on the other hand, I love sports! My favorite sports to play are volleyball and badminton. During high school, I did bowling and track. I'm pretty competitive, so I'm always up for a challenge in any sport. I've recently gotten into cooking, so there's that, too. I love to serve, so I've done a lot of community service at nursing homes, care centers, a children's hospital, and of course, at my church! But to be honest, I'm online a lot. You'll see me on Facebook and Tumblr more often than not. Follow me on Tumblr if you have one: http://etroxon.tumblr.com/. I'm really passionate about music, as well. I regret quitting piano, flute, and guitar, but I spend a lot of time exploring new music. I have a large music collection on iTunes of over 8,000 songs. I'm sort of OCD about organizing my music on iTunes... everything has to have an album cover and all the information. So since I'm on the computer so much (a bad habit I need to break), I'm a self proclaimed computer expert :D

Besides wanting to see how God will impact us this summer, I'm ready excited for the food! I'll eat almost anything; I've tried some pretty gross stuff, like rabbit head and different types of insects and sea urchins. But I'm not too fond of tomatoes, is really the only thing. My favorite food is meat. I love meat. So much. I love eating different cultural foods, especially Chinese (cuz I'm Chinese!), Japanese, Italian, and Mediterranean. My family and I do a lot of traveling. I've been all over the States, including Hawaii, the Bahamas, Canada, Japan, and many regions of China. I've had experiences attending the underground churches there, which was really inspirational. However, this will be my first ever missions trip.

Initially, I had planned on going to Poland and its surrounding countries with my best friend and her family, and one of our other friends, but about a month ago, the Lord convicted me to go out and serve Him this summer, instead. I prayed and consulted with my college group pastor, and he suggested that I look into missions. I decided to give up the Eurotrip plan and now I'm going to Guatemala with all of you! I really hope my 5 years of studying Spanish will pay off, even a little bit, for this trip. I'm so excited to see what God has in store for us this summer!!!

In Christ,

Yitian