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| 'Kay, this is gonna be one loooong entry, so if you guys don't feel like reading this, that's all right....For the rest of you who actually want to read what my experience in Mexico was like, well....Here it is: Hey, guys! So I came back, like, 4 days ago, but I was so freakin' tired that I just plopped on the bed and fell asleep for about 15 hrs.... Yeah, haven't slept that much since I was what...10 months old? LoL! But we had a red-eye flight (Left at maybe around 12 midnight, arrived at Atlanta about 6:00 am...Then came to Baltimore at 9:45 am.) and I didn't get a chance to rest at home cuz I had to go to church as soon as I got off the plane....*Grumbles...* But I have to say...Mexico is a very poorly developed place....I mean, I knew it was, like, a 3rd world country or w/e, but I never expected it to be this bad....Graffiti was EVERYWHERE. There wasn't a single building clear of some signature or words sprayed in Spanish. And the houses that surrounded the dorm we were staying in were made of garage doors...Can you guys imagine that? It's not even concrete, or cinder blocks, or wood....They were built of freakin' garage doors that most likely would never keep a person warm in the winter. I have to admit, before I went on this trip, I was pretty selfish. In fact, I was going to use the remainder of the money I brought to spend in Mexico for an i-pod, or something. But then at a group meeting, I heard the Missions trip counselor, Betty (who was a very nice lady), say "Ask yourself if that's what you really need, or what you really want...." That was kinda scary....it was as if she could read my mind and tell me what to do...It was weird, but after I saw so many of those who were less fortunate than us, I agreed right away and decided not to buy an mp3 player....Maybe I'll get lucky someday, and get it for an X-mas present, or w/e, but for now, I'm trying to think less of myself and more of others.... The little girls at the orphanage were the ones who changed all of our views, I think. Everyone was touched by the way the girls were so bright and cheerful, even though they knew their parents couldn't support them financially. It kinda gave us a wake-up call and made us realize that even if your family's sorta dysfunctional or w/e, you can still find happiness in the small things in life... Ok, that sounded really corny and soft, but they really made me appreciate the simple things, or the complicated things (that doesn't really sound right, but oh well...) I already have. I guess it's stupid for me to say this, since it's an obvious, "no, duh..." kinda lesson....But lessons like these just come and go for me...For example, if I hear something like, "Never take things for granted," I'm just like, "Wow, ok..." Then I forget about it in a few days.....It's not until I actually experience what the heck it's talking about do I really get it. The most memorable thing that happened to me during this trip was when I was outside, re-painting the sad, dilapidated looking walls of the girls' orphanage. Everyone else was inside, playing with the little girls, having a great time, so no one heard the wailing of a baby from the baby room..... Except me... So I rushed in, and, looking wildly about for a few seconds for the source of the cry, found the toddler girl (only about 2 yrs., I think...) sitting up wearing a small, red dress with disheveled pig tails... My first thought was "Oh God, she's crying..." Then I ran over, swooped her up in my arms, and patted her back over and over again, trying desperately to stop her sobbing. Then I sang her a lullaby my mom used to sing to my bros. and I when we were little. After that, I sang her some random songs (Mostly some Jesus songs that I doubt she even understood.....) And, after going through about 5 more tunes, I tried lying her back down on the bed. But then, as soon as she touched the sheets, she started whimpering again... "Oh crap..." I picked her back up and rocked her back and forth until finally, her older sister came in (probably not more than 5 or 6 yrs. old,) accompanied with one of the ladies in charge of the orphanage... "Gracias, Gracias!" she kept saying over and over again, and reached for the sleeping form in my arms... "No problemo! De Nada, De Nada!" (probably the only words I ever spoke, since my Spanish was VERY limited....) After reluctantly handing the child to the lady, I shuffled back outside to finish the mural on the wall.... You guys keep telling me how cute Elijah is, and how adorable his behavior is, etc....I always thought he was just another annoying brat (like S-I-M-O-N) who had come into my life to torture me... But after holding that little girl for some time, I realized how much I missed Eli., and sort of just stopped painting for a while, and reflected on my thoughts. Someone from our group had made a fitting analogy of the girls at the orphanage the previous night, and this is what she said: "It's all sort of random, you know? It's not really fair....It's kind of like that story of a farmer, who has a handful of seeds, and just carelessly throws them around...Some land on fertile soil, where they grow well, and others land on thorny bushes, or dry land where they die easily and suffer...It's like that with the kids....They could have easily been born into a rich family and lived happily ever after, but they weren't..." She was right, of course. Life wasn't fair. But I sort of disagreed with her on one aspect. She made everything sound so negative, and forgot to add the part where there's always hope.... Well, I had the experience of a life time...And I really, really wish I can go to a place like that again next year, where I can help countries in need one by one, just like those little girls.... PS- Mary, I think, was the most popular one of our group to interact with the girls....They just LOVED her! She spoke great "Spanglish," too! LoL! Mary: "Hola! You look very, very bonita!" Me: "Wtf...." Translation: "Hi! You looke very, very beautiful!" The dorms we were staying in were nice, but the thing was, you couldn't flush the toilet paper down the toilet, b/c it'd clog the drain....Yeah, so you could say that it wasn't very..um...pleasant, to say the least...Another thing was, the water-heater for the shower only lasted for 4 min., so we had to keep turning it on and off in the middle of the shower, since we wanted the hot water to last as long as possible....But unfortunately, one day, the 2 girls who were sharing the room w/me.. (One of them just had to be Mary, of course....Ha, ha! So that made things...interesting...) Anyways, they took forever showering and I ended up with all the excess cold water for the night.... It was very, very....cold..... Ok...what else?? Oh, yeah! There were no heaters, so we woke up in the morning freezing all the time..... But the people of Tijuana warmed our hearts up!  So I guess that's it....In a nutshell....A whole lot more happened, like the culture day, and singing, etc....But I'll tell you guys all that on another day.... Joey Lin | | |
| You know, the longer I stay here in Cali., the stronger it hits me that I'm in a different state.....Remember I said in my last entry that I still felt like I haven't left MD? Well, small features like HUGE mountains (they're really ugly, btw....It's not the grand snow-capped purple mountains majesty, or w/e....It's just dry, brown, and very, very, rocky.), orange groves (instead of the classic MD corn...), and REAL palm trees (instead of the ol' MD pine trees) are starting to kinda shout out to me:
"YOU ARE NO LONGER IN MARYLAND....WELCOME TO CALI!!!" LoL!
All right, so I was wrong. We're going to Mexico TOMORROW, not today.....Today we went to this place called "Flower Village," where people who were abandoned by their families/society received the love and care they deserved...We helped out by cleaning algae from their pond (algaes are HEAVY, people! Never try picking them up...EVER!!!), where Mary fell in the pond cuz she slipped....LoL! That was pretty funny, raked leaves (don't rake them on windy days....Trust me, just DON'T....), and cooled our feet by the swimming pool (we didn't bring our swimsuits cuz we didn't know Flower Village had a pool...). Then we drove to the place we were staying at, which was the group leader's friend's house.
OMG, we saw this huge, beautiful PEACOCK staring at us nonchalantly in the middle of the road.....It was totally WEIRD, man! I thought peacocks were in the tropics....Or wherever else they were supposed to be, just not here....in Cali.....
Well, it was a pretty uneventful day, besides that random peacock....I'll try to see if I can update in Mexico....If not, then I'll see you all later when I get back!
Joey Lin
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| Ok, peoples. I am here at San Diego, Cali. and have arrived safely on an airplane from Atlanta, Georgia. I know, unbelievable, huh? It feels so weird, though! Even here at Cali. I still feel as if I've never left MD at all! I keep thinking, "Oh, we're gonna all drive back pretty soon and go home...." Of course, that's not the case...
So what happened was I had to wake up at like 3:15 am, and arrived at the airport at around 4:30 am to get ready for my flight and everything. Ridiculous, right? And I was so nervous, b/c the last time I was flying in an airplane was when I was 7 yrs. old, and I got EXTREMELY sick leaving and entering the U.S again.....Yeah....Not a pretty sight...
But thank God I didn't get sick THIS time! In fact, I had so much fun watching the buildings get smaller and smaller from the air...I can't describe the feeling you get when you look out a plane window....It's just so...so....ENORMOUS, I guess, and it makes you feel like you can take on the world.....But that's just crazy ol' me...LoL! But flying through the clouds.....Now THAT was fun. At first, when we were ascending towards the sky, you look out and you see.......Nothing. It's all just white smoke, basically. Once that clears, though, you're riding ABOVE the clouds, so it kinda looks like you've entered heaven, in a way, with the clouds beneath your feet (more like airplane.....). They were so fluffy and white, and cottony, I wanted to touch them! They looked so touch-able! And solid! A floor made of cotton! But that probably wouldn't have been the best idea...LoL!
When I'm looking at the sky, I think that the clouds are AGAINST the blue sky, not SEPARATE from them...But they are. The clouds are just.....FLOATING in the air, it's really weird....and then the sky is, like, hundreds of miles ABOVE that, so we didn't even TOUCH it. Kinda awkward....Ok, picture this....
Sky
Airplane
Clouds
That's basically what it was. We were smack in the middle of the cloud and sky. It was an awesome sight!
But yeah, so this is the conclusion of the first day....I don't think I'll be able to make entries daily, since I'm not sure if they have internet/computer access at Mexico....If they do, though, I'll be sure to update to tell you guys more of my little adventure! See you guys later! Gotta go eat.....
Joey Lin
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| Ok, pplz.... I was planning to write this LAST week, right after it happened, but I was so freakin' tired that I kept post-poning till....Today....LoL! Well anyways... Last Sun., we were driving home late at night after a party at church. Mom had hardly driven out of main road when I asked if I could drive the car... Me: Mommy... Mom: ... Me: Can...I...D-d-drr-... Mom: No... Me: Ok.... Mom:... Me:........... Mom:.................... Me:.....................PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE?!?!?!?!?!?! Mom:........... Me: -PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE- Mom: Ok, fine... Me: .............Aw, man! Fine, then be that way.......Wait......... WHAT?!?!? Mom: Here, take the wheel *turns off engine* Now you have to understand here, pplz......I've NEVER driven before....Ever. No, scratch that. I've driven at the church parking lot....At, what, 5 mph?!?!?!! And that was only ONCE. But now.....I was still in disbelief that mom actually said YES. Totally unexpected. So I got out of the car in a daze, and sat at the driver's seat, and started to drive. It started out ok....PUAHAHAHAHA! For, like, 3 min! After that, it got crazy....There were so many cars in the highway, even at 12:00 am! I was hyperventilating so much, that I thought I was going to faint right then and there...No joke. Then mom suddenly told me to turn right.... RIGHT?! I thought. There was a huge line of cars over there! I could never merge that way! Merging was always my #1 fear. I was afraid I'd somehow lose my grip on the wheel and go careening into another car....Then get sued. Or die. Either one is enough to make me worry. So anyways, I swerved to the right, when mom screamed, "THERE'S A CAR, THERE'S A CAR!!!" Panicking, I wrenched the wheel back to the left....And then mom told me it was ok to go to the right again. I was never horrified as I was at the time. Then surprisingly, everything went smoothly....Until we got near Patapsco Middle and Hollifield Station. There's this weird, random traffic circle splat in the middle of the road, and you have to be one heck of an experienced driver to do all that turning. If any of you live near Town & Country, or went to Patapsco or Hollifield, then y'all know what I'm talking about. So I arrived at that point, and all I'm thinking in my mind at that point was "Imaliveimaliveimaliveimaliveimaliveimalive..." And then I saw it.......The....Traffic......Circle!!!!! My mind freezes for about 10 sec., then I can only think of 1 word that described the bulk of my emotions...... "shit..." While I was trying to turn, mom kept yelling and hollering at me in her seat, which was not helping at all. Plus, a car was behind us, and I was afraid that it would honk at me for going so freakin' slow, or for turning so badly. I kinda turned at the wrong time, and the inevitable happened- we bumped into the curb, and, not knowing what else to do, I stopped. It was a miracle that the vehicle behind us didn't crash right into us, or cursed/honked at us. It got all quiet for a few sec....Then mom said, "What are you waiting for? Go, go!" And, with nothing else from my dear, patient mother, I drove on home. I thanked God that the driver in the car behind us was patient and non-aggressive.....You don't know how much that really helped! When we arrived, mom hugged me and said (I'll never forget this for the rest of my life...), "Honey, that was a wonderful drive! You're not bad for a beginner!" ................. .................... ..................... | | |
| AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *Takes deep breath.....* WWHHHOOOOOOO............... Ok, I AM SO FREAKIN' EXCITED!!!!! The last 5 episodes of the MOST PHENOMENAL TV SHOW ON THE FACE OF THIS FREAKIN' PLANET is starting TOMORROW!!!!! Omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAHHHH *GASP!* Wait.....Did you just ask WHAT THE HECK THE SHOW IS CALLED?!?!?!?!? SHAME ON YOU!!!!!!! It's the one and only............... HEROES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Holy crap, that is like one SERIOUSLY AWESOME drama/action/suspense/thriller!!! Ok, so for those of you who don't know what the heck I'm ranting about (even though it should be a CRIME for the people who haven't even HEARD of this show), it's about these people, all over the planet whose genes get mutated somehow, and b/c of this genetic mutation (Ah, ya gotta love bio....), they have extraordinary powers. Yeah, kinda like super HEROES, GET IT NOW?!?!?!?! So, this guy, who's Japanese (his name is Hiro and he's THE FUNNIEST GUY EVER!!!!! He's also my fave character....LoL!) can travel back and forth in time, and so he travels back to the past from the future.He does this to warn those who have the certain supernatural abilites to protect this cheerleader named Claire Bennett (she also starred in the movie "Bring it On" about cheerleaders...Bleh....), b/c if something bad happens to her, it could be the end of the world. She has the ability to heal herself, btw. And so he meets allies, and enemies (There's this company whose sole purpose is to track down these "special" people and use their powers for evil) who have varieties of powers. So it turns out that Claire's biological father (she's adopted) has the ability to fly, and her uncle can absorb other supernatural humans' powes, and use it for a certain amount of time. And there's another guy who can read other people's minds, and a dude who can emit radioactive energy, and use it to blow stuff up, and another dude who gets visions of the future and paints it very clearly, but he can't control himself..... Yeah, it's TOTALLY unbelieveable....There's a lot more people who have certain abilities, and there's a lot of twists and turns in this show...For example, although Claire's biological father is a good dude, and can fly, it turns out her adoptive father is working for the other side (figures, huh?) and "collects" supernatural human for the evil company. However, since he's developed this "father-daughter" bond with Claire during the time she was born up to now, he recently turns good.....However......there's some SERIOUS trouble going on, and there's only 5 MORE FREAKIN' EPISODES TO GO!!!!!!!!! AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! I'M SO EXCITED!!!!!! You guys HAVE TO go to the library or somewhere like Blockbuster to rent the whole season! It's so good! Now, I'm not much of a TV show fan, cuz let's face it: Some of the shows on TV right now are pretty ugly......But this is just one of the few I enjoy watching VERY MUCH.... In fact, I only have 4 on my list right now: 1) HEROES!!!!!! (Of course.....) 2) Ugly Betty (This one's HILARIOUS!) 3) Numbers (Trust me, at first, I thought this was a show for some nerds who actually UNDERSTAND number concepts/equations, but you don't have to be a nerd to get the point of the show. These CIA detectives solve crime WITH MATH........How wicked is THAT?!?! I know, I know, it sounds lame, but give it a try! It's pretty good......It's on Fri. at 9:00 or 10:00 pm....) 4) Everybody Hates Chris (This one's hilarious too.....) So........you guys will know where I'll be on Mon. nights for the next 5 weeks...... AAAAAAAHHHHHH CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!!!!! Joey Lin | | |
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