Good Weekend

Pretty good weekend; on a scale of one to ten I’d have to rate this one an 8½. It was one of those weekends where I wasn’t stressed, wasn’t frustrated, and for once wasn’t tired. Not to mention the weather was awesome to say the least, a little bit hot on Saturday but I’ll let it slide. I didn’t want the weekend to end, basically; it was too nice. On Friday afternoon, actually every Friday afternoon I take a physics quiz, this one was one of the easiest I have taken in a long time. I understood absolutely everything that was on it- which I admit is pretty rare- and it’s like after that I immediately felt like a million bucks. I casually handed in my paper, opened the doors to leave Robeson Hall, took in a few breathes and walked across campus back to my dorm like it ain’t no thang.

I dropped my bookbag on the ground, plopped down on my roommate’s hokie beanbag and watched some ESPN. “What should I do tonight,” I kept asking myself as ESPN went over the upcoming college football games. Then it hit me, “it’s parents weekend… shit.” It’s not that I don’t like my mom (my dad didn’t come), I love her, it’s just that, well a couple of things. One: the campus is gonna be packed full of parents, and that might, or actually will get annoying when I’m trying to buy my food. Two: I’m gonna have to get up somewhat early to greet my mom and let her in to my dorm. Three: I’m gonna have to walk around campus with her and my brother (who is a senior here at tech) when I could be sleeping or playing Mario-kart. Four: I probably wouldn’t be able to go out on Saturday night like I usually do. Five: I would have to push all of my homework and studying onto Sunday night, which I hated doing.

So there I sat, irritated, feeling more like ten bucks rather than a million, watching sports center. I was still thinking of what tonight might bring, though: “Well I could go to my brothers, cuz he’s always having something,” well it turns out he wasn’t. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my options for Friday night shananigans were little to none. My good friend Chuck who goes here went back home along with his roommate, Chucks roommate’s friend’s were both sick, my roommate was out at sigma chi all night doin’ his thing, half of my hall mates either had parents already in town or went back home to chill, My Junior friend Mike was working, and my brother was downtown, bar-hopping. I had a few more options, but they were with people I hardly knew, and I didn’t have audacity to ask them.

I gave up, plugged in Golden-Eye to the N64, laid back down and accepted the truth: this weekend was going to suck. About three hours and 7 levels of James Bond in, I got up and depressingly walked down to 7-11 to get me some hot pockets and an energy drink. This cheered me up, when all else fails to make you happy, eat something. After the feast, my roommate invited me down to his room to play some Halo 3. This cheered me up a little bit more. I’m no good at Halo, in fact I suck real bad, it’s no fun when you play someone who’s not bad, so I got crushed but I still had fun and we all had good laughs. “Whatev” I said after being slaughtered several times. I shuffled back to my dorm room. I decided since I wasn’t going to have much time to study this weekend, I should finish my Aris chem homework. I got that out of the way then watched Thursday night’s episode of The Office on Hulu. I was feeling unexpectedly good after that and decided to get on Facebook. I don’t get on Facebook that often because I feel it’s tedious to write everybody; it just takes a lot of time. I got on and wouldn’t you know it, my best friend from home is on and we have long talks about how life’s rough these days. I finally got done writing everyone who wanted to know how college was and realized it was 1:30am. I snuck in another episode of The Office then called it a night.

The next two days- that I thought I would be dreading over- went pretty smoothly, for the most part. I ended up sleeping in till 2pm on Saturday, missing all 14 calls and 5 texts from my mom on my phone that I didn’t know was on silent. She brought a boatload of snacks which was awesome. We ended up not walking all around campus but instead walked straight to Mikes Grill around 3pm (surprisingly the place was empty), had some extra delicious pizza, then headed out to my brothers place in Pheasant Run where I was met with my dog that I hadn’t seen since before July. That might have been the best part of my weekend, seeing my dog. After this, we all decided to go to the VT soccer game against UNC, we lost 1-0 but still had a good time. After a windy 90 minutes of soccer-watching, it was time to eat dinner. I thought I was just gonna go back to Pritchard and cook up some Ramen noodles, but instead me and my bro were treated to Olive Garden. I stuffed myself to the rafters with bread sticks, salad, mozzarella sticks and chicken parmesan. I got back to the dorm around 11 and took an online quiz; got another thing out of the way. The next morning we all went to church, had communion then went out to IHOP for some blueberry pancakes and coffee- real coffee, not like that cheap junk at D2. My ma decided to stick around for a while and actually cook us dinner, which was nice. I then gave my dog a bear hug, kissed my mom goodbye, and said my farewells.

“Well that was pretty painless, I guess,” I said to myself as she drove away. I got back to the dorm studied some calc and geometry and got done all of my homework before 9 o’clock. I couldn’t believe I actually had free time. I cooked up some leftover Olive Garden and sat back for a while. All in all, I was satisfied with last weekend. Despite not going out Friday or Saturday night, I got done all of my work before 9 on Sunday, I got to see my dog, I didn’t have any hangovers, I saved some money on my meal plan, I ended up beating Golden-Eye, and I had a ton of food in a previously barren mini-fridge. I had a lot to look forward to as well; Halloween next weekend, only four more weeks until Thanksgiving break and only 3 more chemistry labs. Pretty good weekend.

Rhetorical Analysis

So, I missed the memo about doing a rhetorical analysis last week for our blog, sorry about that- here it is...

I decided to analyze Marlboro Cigarette advertisements. I figured it would be easier to analyze pictures rather than an essay or a speech, etc…. If you haven’t seen very many Marlboro ads, they’re usually represented by some kind of western front and cowboy snapshot; rough-edged, old and wise looking cowboys riding horses and looking off in to the distance, lassoing horses and bulls, branding cows, filling their canteen from a stream, leaning on a fence post pondering life… you get the point. These ads usually come with a catch phrase: “Come to where the flavor is. Marlboro country,” probably suggesting that America is more than just polluted, drug-fed and crime driven cities and suburbs that have lost or have no ‘flavor,’ but is also a land of unsophisticated, beautiful, rich, plentiful and immense wilderness full of cowboys, farms, and anything else beautiful that goes along with this kind of environment- including cigarettes.




To begin with, the main purpose of these advertisement is to persuade buyers (smoker and non) to buy their product over all other brands of cigarettes. 2: These ads persuade buyers that Marlboro’s are better than other cigarettes by implying they have more flavor; richness of flavor equal to that of the wild western front. 3: It persuades buyers that Marlboro’s are cool to smoke because rough and tough lookin’, hardworking cowboys smoke them on a regular basis while doing rough and tough cowboy like work.




The audience could be anyone who is old enough to buy cigarettes. I think the main audience would have to be men, from age 20 to 60. Men look for ways to look cool but not cocky, rugged but not ragged, tough but not a jerk, down-to-earth but not careless, strong but not sterodic, wise but not critical, and intense but not aggressive every day. What better way to portray these feelings than with a cowboy. If you’re a true man, you’re ultimate goal is to become an astronaut, a pro football player or a cowboy. These are the only three ways to attract attention, a lot of attention, a lot of attention from girls, hot girls. And who doesn’t want to be a cowboy? Who wakes up and says, I’d rather keep my 9-hour-a-day job inside of a cubicle than be a handsome and strapping cowboy who gets to explore the country and live in peace… queers, that’s who say it. The Marlboro company, obviously understanding that pro athletes don’t smoke for health reasons and knowing there is no oxygen in space to light up a cigarette, grab the American cowboy perception and slap a cigarette in his mouth.




Marlboro depicts the cowboy life as a kid would dream about: the cowboy is lean and cut, wears old rugged button down shirts with the cuffs rolled up just a bit. He wears his tan colored cowboy hat and work gloves along with the rawhide leather jacket, with or without sheep skin, and dirt and sweat stained chaps. The cowboy never smiles, he is always hard at work and he shows it with his stern serious and focused look, and if he’s not working then he’s looking off in to the distance taking in the cool mountain air breeze and thinking about how awesome his life is and how much cooler he is than all of them city-slickers with their fancy ties and white-collared shirts.



The background to these advertisements is of course a wild western frontier; pine trees, mountains, horses, snow, rivers and streams. It’s what we, as Americans like to see; it’s what we’re proud of in a sense. It’s peaceful yet energetic, subtle yet forthright and adventurous, dirty yet beautiful. The cowboy is just the icing on the cake; the butter on the bread. It is an incredible scene, something you don’t see every day. The pure manliness and masculinity of the bronco wrangler catches our attention as that of a gorgeous and slim Top Model does to a young woman, and makes us look at him/her over and over again leaving us to question ourselves, “what can we do to look more like them, how can we be that frickin awesome?” for the men, the only way to look like a cowboy is to smoke Marlboros, for the girls to look like Top Models, its abstaining from eating.



It’s movie-like really; practical but at the same time seems unrealistic, it’s like seeing Kobe Bryant break through a line of defenders untouched before his one-handed dunk finale, as if there was nobody in front of him the- beautiful, even if you hate basketball, you know it’s beautiful and it makes you wish you were Kobe, or makes you actually want to watch NBA, maybe, probably not, but still.

SOURCE: http://marlborocigarettesblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/marlboro-cigarettes-ads.html

October

October is here at last… the never ending heat is finally showing some sign of departure and the long awaited cold front is finally beginning to accommodate itself in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Blacksburg, Virginia. As of now, I can say we are half way through the fall-semester (FINALLY), and of course three quarters of the way through the year. October is awesome, it is undoubtedly (to me), the best month of the year. So many good memories and familiarities pop in to my mind when I think about beautiful October, in fact, no kind of bad memories or thoughts come to mind when I reminisce this month- except having my wisdom teeth pulled last year.

It is likely that some, or probably most of you wouldn’t agree, and attest that some month like July is the best month of the year because of it being in the middle of summer, and that is when the “livin’s easy;” some of you might even go ahead and confirm December to be the best month of the year because of its long winter break, or even just Christmas day. I deny these undeveloped theories, these fifth-grader-like statements and attempt to persuade people otherwise, even against these theories by trying to bring to light the sheer attractiveness of what October means and brings to the world. I look past the thought of more school work, the thought of more studying to come; the ending of beach volleyball and shirtless grill-outs with Frisbee and Cornhole on the side. October is the best- I don’t care what nuhna yall say.

The summer months…

Okay, I’ll have to admit, summer is pretty sweet- anyone can agree to that. Although, this is only to an extent; what I mean by this is that summer can be awesome, amazing, spectacular but at the same time crappy/boring/same old and/or a drag (for some people at least). Think about it… It’s May 31st, the last day of school for the year, the 3:30 bell rings and of course, the indescribable joy and happiness skyrockets. This feeling proceeds for the next couple of days, and then it’s practically gone. You’re in the real summer now; you’re working full time at Rita’s or Burger King, trying to make some dough and saving every penny of it before heading off to college. After getting off work, you go straight home to escape the desert heat of July then nose-dive into the living room couch in front of the TV. You take a nap, watch day-time summer TV then consider your limited options for the night ahead: “should I go out to that farm party, get a few drinks and pong games in like I do every night? Should I stay here and play Halo live by myself for 7 hours straight? Should I stalk my friends on Facebook to see what they’re up to? Or, should I just call it a night since I have to work again at 10 tomorrow morning.” And so, this routine continues throughout your summer- or at least until you go on vacation (if you go on vacation), and even then a quick relaxed week of playing in the sand goes by like a New York minute and then it’s back to the lab again. You’re sleeping in till 3:30 on weekends, waking up and sitting around all day, maybe even going to the pool for a few hours only to find out its swarmed with bratty little kids half your age… another week starts, another week ends, and in conclusion by the end of summer you’re left with a slight tan and memories of excessive relaxation and insignificant nothingness.

The winter months…

The winter months are pretty cool as well. College kids, of course have a month long break and there is certainly enough ugly sweater/Christmas and New Years parties to keep one busy. The family usually comes together at this time, which is nice, and most kids don’t have to worry about work when coming home from college. Those are all pluses, but what about the negative sides? The weather… it’s below freezing at all times, and the wind makes your face feel like it’s gonna fall off. There is no going outside to run or shoot hoops so you can abandon that idea right off the bat. You have to scrape the ice off of your car every day before going anywhere and the roads might be slippery so you have to drive slowly, which is never fun. And the atmosphere is by no means pretty- unless you get a heavy white and beautiful snowfall (even then, what it comes down to is a lot of backbreaking shoveling)- it’s usually cloudy and murky, there’s no one outside walking walking around, the grass has lost its luminous green color, the trees are bare, and roads are dried up with salt and have ugly brown and charcoal colored slush lines in fixed patterns following an array of tire marks.

October…

My impression of October: the leaves are changing to the alluring colors or yellow, orange, red, purple, and brown which soon start to fall and create a beautiful murals on the ground. The sweaters, sweatpants, long sleeves and jackets that have been suffocating and collecting dust in the attic are being withdrawn from cardboard boxes to embrace our bodies with snugness and warmth. Fall decorations such as scarecrows, pumpkins, and Halloween ornaments flood the foyers and front porches of every American home. The day of oppressive heat and humidity is spent; I can now go outside and enjoy the crisp coolness of an autumn breeze on a still sunny day, play a game of basketball, backyard football, or soccer, all without breaking a sweat.

I love October because it is a time for hay-rides, pumpkin carving, pumpkin pie, apple cider and sweet potatoes; a time for making bonfires to actually keep you warm and not just to keep the bugs away like in the summer. I can’t help but think that there is a nostalgic sensation of country-side calmness, beauty and balance in October that is hard to come by in all of the other months; it generates a down-to-earth state of mind that not only hinders stress but invokes peace, tranquility and harmony in everyone’s heart and soul.

8 a.m's

I don’t know about you guys, but I think 8 a.m. classes suck- suck real bad, in fact. Now, I don’t complain often but when I do, it’s usually about 8 a.m’s. I never thought I would have to get up at 7 a.m. or earlier ever again after leaving high school. I thought, “I’m gonna be sleepin in till 9, 10 or even noon when I’m at college just to go to two or three classes every day.” Not so much; for this semester I have an 8 a.m. class every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And not only do I have four 8 a.m. classes, but I have 17 credit hours as well including two labs. Going to sleep around two a.m. and waking up at about 7 a.m. on four out of the five school days (8:30 a.m. on Tuesday) and getting about an hour’s nap in somewhere between was not my ideal of a college experience. I would have never thought college would be so harsh. Then again it is freshman year; my brother, who also goes here, told me that that is basically how freshman year is for everybody and that I should just keep pushing on. “Alright,” I said, “I can do this, and I’ll manage to tough it out this semester.”

So I’m sure some of you, or probably all of you have an 8 a.m. wedged in your weekly planner somewhere, and if you’re anything like me your daily routine looks somewhat like this: alarm goes off at 6:50 a.m., still 90% asleep I hit the snooze button and in two seconds I’m 100% back asleep. 7:00 a.m., the buzzer goes off again and I once again slam its snooze, then, halfheartedly make an attempt to rise up with the warmth of my mattress and comforter pulling back down on me. Finally making it off of my loft I scramble around and quietly (while trying not waking my roommate) try to collect my things for the shower. I open the door and am immediately hit in the face by the hall lights, my eyes clinch shut and I duck and shuffle to bathroom only to find out that I have somehow or another forgotten my towel. The shower does a decent job of waking me up or at least making me a bit less pissed. After a quick wash down, I briskly walk down to D2 for a normal breakfast of pancakes, old re-heated bacon, scrambled eggs, Lucky Charms and a small cup of coffee and then I’m off to Calculus 1206 class followed by Physics 2305.

I cannot wait till this kind of day ends, when I can sleep in on a Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and not worry about falling asleep in class. It’s gonna be great; I’m already beginning to fantasize what it must be like waking up after 8 or 9 or 10 with time to spare before making it across the drill field to the first class of the day. My roommate is a business major and his schedule is about half of what mine is so he gets to sleep in late, take his time getting up, and then attend his geology and psychology classes etc…. I’m in University studies right now but am fixing to be a Mechanical Engineer someday, this entails a lot more work than one would expect so I’m trying to get all of the preliminary classes out of the way as soon as I can, which include Physics, Calculus, vector geometry, English and my least favorite, Chemistry. Having all of these classes in the same time frame is what really blows; I have little to no time to get everything done and I’m almost always studying something or other. What freshman year really comes down to is a lot of busy work and basic understanding. There is always homework to be done: book problems, lab reports and pre-lab questions, weekly blog posts, online quizzes- and always concepts to be memorized. It’s overwhelming at times and sometimes I even start to freak out but I never completely break down, and It’s at this point in time when I wish I would’ve taken AP physics and chemistry in high school; even if I didn’t get credit at least I’d understand it more and have more time to sleep and chill. I would not recommend taking all of these core credits all in the same semester, to any 2010 freshmen.

So here I am with 7 or 8 weeks left in the semester and I seem to be doing alright- besides the extreme lack of sleep and social activity. I attend all of my classes every day, do all of my homework and study what I can until past midnight and later, taking a break every now and then for lunch and dinner, and of course to see how Tim Tebow is recovering from his concussion that happened last week. Keeping focused is the main thing, I think; keeping an eye on my dream and future is what keeps me and probably everyone motivated. Without a dream I wouldn’t be here, no one would be here; come to think of it 8 a.m’s don’t seem so bad, I know it’ll be worth it in 10 years. So I guess I’ll just have to tough it out, all of these 8 a.m’s and busywork; man up and do work towards my… pursuit of happiness? Something like that, all I know is that I’m never taking another 8 a.m. for as long as I live.

My Scrapbook

It was about three or four years ago on a Thanksgiving night when I found myself sitting on a 50 year old baby blue couch in Grandma’s living room. Finally being alone, I nonchalantly stretched out my gut and started picking at turkey scraps stuck between my teeth. I decided to rest my eyes for a while from an exciting and long day of Macy’s Day Parade watching, relative/friend visiting, and 40 degree weather backyard football. I let out a loud groan then lay down to sleep off some of the tryptophan. After about a half hour I finally arose and sat for a while, zoned-out, staring at the wooden coffee table and its embellishments. There they were: four large scrapbooks of my family’s history; a countless number of Polaroid’s and portraits just sitting there waiting for someone to look at them again.

I loved coming to this room in my grandma’s house; I loved staring at these pictures over and over again for hours on end, thinking about what it would’ve been like to stand at the Grand-Canyon forty years ago with my aunts and uncles beside me and at the same age I am- I wonder was life was like back then. I wonder what it would’ve been like, saying goodbye to my Grandfather as he caught a train to be sent off to basic before being sent off to France. I wonder what it would’ve been like to stand next to my mom and dad as they huddled around their first and newborn son- my oldest brother- 26 years ago. These thoughts may seem odd but they’re what get me going; they are the thoughts that make me think about what my family scrapbook is going to look like 60, 70, 80 years from now when my grandson walks in to my living room to better understand his heritage.

Late that night, after all the goodbyes and after the last of the Apple Crusty was gone, I headed home. I couldn’t get it out of my head; I even turned down my music to think clearly about how awesome I wanted my scrapbooks to look. My creative side was bangin’ on all cylinders at this point; I not only wanted scrapbooks with pictures, I wanted photo montages, video montages, journal entries from anyone in my family who has a journal. “It’s gonna be big, it’s gonna be ridiculous” I kept telling myself. I wanted it to consist of thousands of pictures from eighty years ago today, as well as tens of thousands of pictures from today on out, so, starting on this project as soon as possible would be the best idea.

I decided for the first chunk of my project, I wouldn’t be making a scrapbook but rather a scrapbook/photo and video montage/movie clip DVD. I started off easy; my mom had thousands of pictures from the last 20 or so years stuffed in several old shoe boxes under her bed- it was my job to start sorting through them all. I woke up late Friday morning, brewed together a large bowl of corn-pops and got to work. With the radio blastin’ and a stomach now full of Pop’s, I was makin’ progress. I was sortin’ pictures, left and right like no tomorrow to whatever beat of “today’s best music hits” was giving me. After finally sorting through the never ending mound of still frames I took a break and sat back for a while.

“What am I getting myself into,” I’d been building upon my so-thought ingenious ideas for the last 12 hours and hadn’t really stepped back to take in the enormity of Project: Scrapbook until now. When I had finally stepped back to take in the big picture I sighed; it was an incredible idea but seemed almost impossible to finish- or at least in the next year or two that I had planned. I realized I just didn’t have the time. I would have to scan every single one of these pictures on to the computer, crop them, maybe tune them up a little bit and then organize them. Then, I would have to go through all of our home video cassettes, find some way to covert and upload them on to a computer, and chronologically organize, edit, cut, and paste everything in the way I wanted it to be. Next I would have to search for certain clips from good, inspirational and loving movies that would fit well with the Scrapbook genre, and find a way to legally incorporate them throughout my show. I figured the last step would be the organizing, the cutting and pasting of photos and videos and movie clips and songs- and then of course the credits. This would by far take the longest amount of time. All of this could only be possible with the use of a computer that was somewhat new (2004 and up), had a lot of space, a lot of memory and had its own video editing software program, none of which I had (at least until recently). I remembered hearing about how long it took my friend to make a 15 minute movie for his history class, he had a month to work on it and he said he worked on it for about 9 hours every weekend until it was due, and he was used to making movies, I wasn’t; I didn’t stand a chance.

I realized I had better think this whole thing over again, but for some reason I couldn’t; I couldn’t bear the thought, the thought of making just another boring old photo montage with a cheesy Five for Fighting song playing in the background, like everyone everywhere has done already. I just couldn’t drop this assignment. I was sick of starting things I couldn’t finish, and this was just too big to not finish. I wanted to finish this, I needed to finish this. I also later realized I wasn’t doing all of this for myself, I wasn’t doing this to impress anybody or for any grade, I was doing all of this for my family, past, future and present; for the people who mattered most in my life. I knew that they’d appreciate this movie so much if I put in as much time as I knew it would take, and more importantly I wanted to show them that I cared about every single one of them (which I admit I’m not the best at showing )- uncle, aunt, cousin, sister, brother- as much as they cared about me.

It’s been 4 years since I’ve started the project and I’m hardly anywhere near done. I can’t say that’ll be done anytime soon either. All I can say is that it hasn’t been completely forgotten about, just as family shouldn’t be forgotten about. Every day I think of something new to add in; another song, another movie clip. I just keep building and building, thinking of ways to make it perfect because in my mind It needs to be perfect. Plus I’m older now, technology is getting easier and easier to use (even for me), and my motivation and commitment to complete this undertaking hasn’t ceased. I’m representing what matter most in my heart by doing this, my own family, not a close group of friends, not the people I work with, my own loving family…

'Get Money'

I woke up at 1:30 pm this last Sunday; needless to say I had a late night- mainly due to the fact that our football team pulled out a ‘W’ over the Nebraskan Corn Huskers (or somthin’ like that) in a “make or break” game for our Hokies. Ironically that was the worst VT game I have seen in a long time, but a win is a win and that’s all that mattered after that last 2 minutes.
“What a headache…,” I mumbled as I slowly sat myself up, wiping the grease and crusty residue left over from the night before off my face. The room spun quickly for a moment, from getting up too quickly then settled back down. I felt gross, but at least totally rested which was a feeling a have not had in a long time. As I got down from my bed I noticed all of my pocketed items that I had thrown on my desk before going to sleep. There they were: a bent up football ticket, a dead phone, a Hokie passport and key, a lighter, a wallet, and a balled up 5 dollar bill. “I wonder how much I spent last night…,” I checked my wallet only to find empty space. “What!? This can’t be right. 5 measly dollars is all I have?” I remembered having at least 40 dollars withdrew from an on-campus ATM around 8:30 pm Saturday night. I remember not eating much that Saturday, so by night I was practically starving (especially having seen all those people at the game with turkey legs). All the restaurants were packed full so I decided 7-11 would be my haven for hunger. I wasn’t planning on spending more than 10 to 15 $ on everything but I was planning on getting a lot of grub. I bought 2 personal pizzas, BBQ chips, a monster energy drink, and some peach ring gummies. So that was 15 bucks at most. I recollected spending the rest on, one: repaying my brother for the football ticket, two: repaying my roommate for lunch last weekend, and three: a cup to fill up.
Money accumulates slowly and disappears very fast; I’ve realized this all throughout different times. “I wish I had more money” is what I think about all too much, “If only, if only.” Not just money to buy more food, more football tickets, and a little bit more of everything… just enough to be comfortable/happy; enough money to not have to worry about how much I’m spending on a triple-quarter pounder at McDonalds or how much I’m spending to buy the 4th season of Lost. I realized I would never, maybe in my entire life, have that kind of money (especially after college), and that got me down. It would remain (at least for the next 4 to 10 years) a dream- a very blurred dream.
I guess you could say I’ve never been the kid with all the money; the rich kid (the spoiled kid essentially). I’ve never been the kid whose parents buy them 12 new outfits from Hollister and A.E. every year, the kid who has the red Mazda 6 (who would later on wreck it backing out of a parking lot too quickly only to be rewarded with another one from Mom and Dad), or the kid who has the Xbox 360, PS3, The 3G iPhone, the 17-inch MacBook Pro, and the 42in Sony Plasma all five feet away from his bed. In fact I despised those kids yet I was close or even best friends with every one of them. I was far from their kind of lifestyles, though- the ‘dad’s wallet’ lifestyle- and it just pissed me off whenever I saw all of them taking their good-fortune for granted. I couldn’t blame them though, hopefully they’ll learn one day how it feels to make their own money and to pay for their own belongings.
I didn’t have it hard but at the same time I didn’t have it easy. I started working at the age of 14, busing at a fancy restaurant, 6 to 7 hour shifts after school four days a week for below minimum wage and hardly any tips. It sucked but I kept at it for about a year then quit just to go bus at another fancy restaurant closer to home and for a little bit better pay. I started to mow lawns during the summer, four lawns to be exact, on top of 5-day/week busing. I needed as much money as I could get. I had a trip to New Mexico for scouts I had to pay (1200$) for this summer and a trip to Germany (est. 2600$) the next summer that had to be paid for out of my pocket. I hated having to pay for everything; I’d make so much money and never get to spend it on little things I wanted. I was the kid who had to buy his ‘P.O.S’ car, pay for its gas, its checkups, its flat tires, its engine checks, and its insurance. Then of course there were all those cell phone bills and school lunches every day. It seemed like I was paying for just about everything. I wasn’t mad or bitter though, in fact I was fine with everything. I’m just glad I had breakfast, dinner and a roof over my head at night. I have to keep in mind that there are kids out there who have it just as “bad” -I guess you could say- as I do. And there is definitely no doubt that there are kids out there who have it twenty times worse than what I have to actually get through every day: kids who have to dig through the trash to savor a meal of what they call “lunch”, kids who spend their nights in the basement of a church or a beaten up house with no heat or running water, kids who have to worry about getting jumped or shot when they walked to school. Yes, I take these kids, these heroes to mind every time that I feel like I don’t have enough money- and then I feel like the spoiled brat.
But growing up in this state of condition has given me a plethora of wisdom that’ll someday save me in the future: learning how to save money and spend it only on things you need, to pack lunch as much as possible without getting sick of pb+j , to stay away from fast food restaurants that eat holes in my wallet more than anything else, to ride my bike to work and school whenever possible, etc…. There of course will be times when I splurge my money, but you have to every now and then in order to stay sane. I take breaks from work and use the money I earn to reward myself. There will be times when I need to go see a movie, or I need to go have dinner with my friends, or I need to see Blink 182 in concert. But of course I keep track of how I spend and make sure not to exceed a limit.
I’m here at Virginia-Tech (as I’m sure everybody else is) for one reason and that is to ensure a stable future, let alone a successful one for the life ahead of me. And although I won’t ever make as much as Tiger Woods who according to Forbes.com makes 110 million dollars a year (that’s about $3.49 a second), just to hit a white ball 350 yards while wearing a hat with a Nike check mark on it, or Shaq who makes 35 million a year just to dunk a (for him) grape-fruit sized ball into a basket a foot and a half over his head, or Michael Jordan who gets paid 45 million dollars to wear a tagless Hanes T-shirt or have clips of him playing basketball 15 years ago on TV, or even A-Rod who signed a 275 million dollar 10-year contract with the Yankees in 2007; although I’ll never make as much as them, I’ll still make enough to live happily, and for now I’ll continue to work hard during the summer to pay for only a small fraction of my tuition and leave the rest to loans, grants and fate. I don’t have enough to pay for college right now but know someday after a lot of hard work and integrity, money won’t be the issue (at least for the most part).

Na'Leans!

Nothing like it. Going to New Orleans that summer was by far one of the best decisions I’ve ever made (next to coming to Virginia Tech). My church attends these Lutheran ‘Youth Gatherings’ that take place every three years, for Lutheran high school students across the country. It’s a time to meet people, to give back to the community, and to serve the Lord. The event is hosted by any city large enough to comfortably withhold a very rapid population increase of about 35 to 40 thousand kids, plus adult leaders. That being said, the city needs to have enough hotel rooms, a big enough arena/stadium, and a big enough convention center to fit this crowd in- not to mention plenty of restaurants to accommodate these hungry people’s appetites whenever needed. You can’t really understand the feeling of being close to and among 40,000 kids, every day of the week if you’re not there; it’s like high-def, you’re just not getting it. It’s not just like college; you’re not just walking by these people, completely ignoring them shutting yourself off from everyone with ‘The Carter III’ blaring through your ears until class starts. No, at the Youth Gathering it’s different, it’s much more different. At the Youth Gathering you notice people, you interact with people, and you go to the Superdome and interaction center twice or more a day with these people. You remember faces and names of every person you meet. You exchange hugs, phone numbers, and facebook information with kids you met just for a minute in your hotel lobby, maybe see them once or twice more for lunch and then never see them again because they live 2,000 miles west of where you live. And yet you’ll still stay in contact with them until the day you die. That’s just the way it was- crazy right? The atmosphere of this place was absolutly unbelievable. I’ll never in a million years find this many people who are just as, or even close to being so nice, so giving, so happy and so loving- I loved it and didn’t want to leave.
The whole ordeal started years in advance, three years in fact. Right after the last one had ended in San Antonio, Texas. We started planning, coming up with fundraising schemes, traveling methods of getting there and back, listing the names of people most likely to go and not go this time around, and so on (they were spur of the moment ideas but legitimate planning nonetheless). The ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) already has arranged where the next Gathering’s going to be about 5 years in advance. So two years before San Antonio, we already knew where our next plot of adventure would be. Then a little girl named Katrina came along and kind of put that image on hold. So where would it be? No one, knew how long it would take New Orleans to completely recover, I mean, it was under 9 or so feet of still water. And Time magazines photos of “Katrina plus 1 year” weren’t very promising pictures that NOLA would have us as their guests in two years. Cars were still in trees, roads and sidewalks were still pulverized, houses and buildings still lay shambles all over the streets, and a lot of NOLA’s citizens were still homeless. Despite all of these appalling facts, New Orleans carried out her promise of hosting the 2009 Gathering.
18,000 dollars- that’s how much money it cost for all 17 of us from Hagerstown to go. That’s a lot of fundraising- and a lot of fundraising is what took place from the months of July 2008 to June 2009. We’d have bake sales almost every Sunday. Chocolate chip, sugar, oatmeal raisin, you name it we’d have it, 1 dollar four a bag of four. We’d have lunches composed of hundreds of cheap Sam’s Club hot dogs and ruffle’s potato chips after the 10 o’clock service. There was even a day when all of us gathered in the church’s kitchen one Saturday morning to dip cherries and pretzels into chocolate for 8 hours straight. We went through hell to raise that 18 thousand dollars. “It’ll be totally worth it,” we kept telling ourselves.
The day finally came, we were headed to Nalins! All packed up, backwards hat on, and cargo-short pockets stuffed packed with my phone, sunglasses, sunscreen, iPod, and wallet. We got to the airport, boarded the plane and by 4pm we were swimming in the Deep South heat and humidity. The first night was just a break-in night. After we unpacked everything in our luxurious hotel rooms at the Monteleon, we decided to go out on the town. The town was beautiful! So artsy and colorful and not caved in like so many other skyscraper cities- no building was painted white either, all dull yellow, red, green, purple, or blue with iron pillars and decks- the sidewalks were made of brick, there were exquisite pictures painted on the side of almost every building, there were a few street corner trio bands playing their jazz and blues medleys on their rustic, beat up guitars and trumpets, and the energy was alive. The food was of course phenomenal. There’s no other place that I’ll have shrimp for breakfast lunch and dinner and be totally fine with it. Every day seemed like the best day of the week. We would get up, shower, grab a quick bite to eat at the KFC down the road and then head to the convention center. The convention center was like 3 super-sized Walmarts stacked on top of each other then multiplied by 20 across. We played soccer, kickball volleyball and moon-bounce basketball inside of this place, we rappelled off three story walls, we rock-climbed and we of course made bracelets. It was impossible to do everything in that room in just one week. After wearing ourselves out on the moon bounce we’d get some lunch then chill at the hotel (which by the way had a pool and bar on the roof) for a few hours, get a nap or two and then head on over to the Superdome to rock out to some sick bands and listen to all the speakers from around the world give their spiel. Then after this, there would be dance parties and more crazy activities at 4 of the major hotels every night. The excitement didn’t stop until 1 in the morning.
On one of the 7 days we were there we had to take part in a service project, which could be anywhere from reading books to underprivileged children all day or picking up trash in a nearby park. Our church group got the environmental task of clearing out a lagoon at a community park. So, early Thursday morning (5am) we got up had some donuts and OJ to go and headed to the Superdome where one of the thirty charter buses was waiting to take our group to Joe Brown Park. After a thirty minute drive out of the city and into the suburbs, we arrived at Joe Brown Park. We thought the place was gonna look like hell when we got there; trash everywhere, trees down, but to our amazement it was the total opposite. Then we found out that that wasn’t the part of the park we were working on. The project leader led us to this lagoon/swamp that looked like it hadn’t been touched or walked on in years, you couldn’t see through any of it. “Grab a hoe, shovel, weed whacker and clippers and get started.” That’s all he said, and for about 6 hours, TLC (our church) and about 7 other charter buses full of kids in matching orange shirts, whacked away at vines, tall grass, dead trees, and weeds in 103 degree heat and humidity. I didn’t know I could sweat so much until that day.
The aftermath had everybody in awe; it looked like we had made a whole new park next to the old one. It’s amazing what that many people can do in one day, and the feeling you get when all is said and done is above gratifying. Then came our tour of the ninth-ward; the part of New Orleans that was hit the hardest during Katrina. We crossed the steel bridge and there it was. The bus fell silent for the next 20 minutes. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, the houses were wrecked, bent, crooked and boarded up; the streets were pounded just like I had seen in the pictures. Torn down houses were left only with their concrete steps, driveways and foundations that had 8 ft. weeds and grass growing out of them. Yet still people lived back in here in this foul wretched place, in their warped, cracked and dead smelling houses that wouldn’t stand a chance of being fixed, and all of this 20 minutes away from the nearest church, food market and hospital. Why? Because it was their home and they wouldn’t live anywhere else. The levee’s were rebuilt but are still only strong enough to hold a category 2 or 3 hurricane. This got me going, I wanted so bad to help this place out, to rebuild everything, to fix these peoples lives, but I couldn’t. I would have to come back sometime, a couple years from now with another church or mission’s group- I promised myself I would. But for now it was time to leave the beautiful city of New Orleans. “So long,” we all said as the plane lifted off the ground and above clouds.
“To be honest… that was the best trip of my life,” Were the words that sailed out of my mouth after my uncle asked how the week went.” It was late; I’d say 12 or 1 am on a Tuesday night two months ago, when our plane finally landed back in BWI. “It was awesome, riveting, eye opening, electrifying, inspirational…,” adjectives kept popping in to my head; how was I going to describe everything that happened to the folk back home the next day, and in a timely manner. I decided to let go of the thought for the night, seeing that I had been up since six and had to go to work in about 7 hours. I switched on my iTouch, corked in my head phones and nestled down in to a bulky Chevy Suburban front seat. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that it was over, that a week’s time flew by in a matter of what seemed like 3 hours. All of that preparing, all of that fundraising, all of that waiting! It took so long just to get here and BAM, it was gone just like that. I was sad to say the least; I felt like a ten year old on December 26th. And it wasn’t just me; it was everybody who had traveled this long and brutal path to get to the Gathering; all 5 sleepy and drained kids behind me in that suburban, all 9 bushed and whacked kids in the commuter van behind us, and all three dog-tired and exhausted adult leaders who took on the burden of looking after 14 high schoolers for an entire week during their 2 and a half month break they had from teaching us. One day I’ll go back to that city, of course it won’t be the same without 40’000 other kids my age there, but still… best time of my life.