Meeting with Vera #6 - A Final Farewell

After several months of meeting with Vera Wang and discussing life, it was finally time to see one another for the last time. We had never gotten the opportunity to go to the TCU Recreation Center like I had hoped, and it felt like just yesterday that we emailed one another for the first time. But as they say, all good things must come to an end.

Vera and I had planned to meet on Friday during dead days to cap off our semester, but it ended up being too icy for either of us to really want to make the trek to Union Grounds. Instead, we waited until Saturday when people finally stopped using leaf blowers on the ice, and actually made some real progress. When I first saw Vera, she looked incredibly flustered. With a large scarf wrapped around her neck and layers upon layers of sweaters and jackets, I knew she had never experienced icy conditions before. She probably looked at me with my light jacket and sneakers like a complete fool, but that’s okay.

Immediately after sitting down to begin our last conversation, she declared that she loved the snow, but hated the ice. We laughed and agreed that the ice was crazy outside, and how it seemed impossible to go anywhere without slipping and sliding around. Vera told me that while she had seen snow before, she had never really had to deal with it for more than a few hours until it melted. She did say that her roommate and friends decided to go and play in the snow/ice mixture that morning and tried to do some sledding as well. I told her all about the previous night when my roommates and I decided to go have a snowball fight at 2:00AM. She thought we were crazy, but we laughed about it in the end.

We then talked about how the Thanksgiving break was for each other, and Vera said that she simply stayed local, but had a nice time relaxing and taking it easy. Many of her friends also stayed in town, so she had plenty of people to see and spend time with. She asked about my trip back home, and I told her several funny stories about my time with family and friends. She hopes to visit Boston at some point, and hopefully we will still be in touch at the time so I can show her around the city a little bit. After several other side stories about various travels we wanted to do during our lives, I asked about her plans for Christmas. Vera said that she was really looking forward to going home to see her parents during the vacation, but was already excited to returning to TCU after the break and seeing her friends here in America. She leaves on Saturday after finals, so unless we run into each other before then, it will likely be the last time I get see Vera (at least in 2013). After rambling on about various topics, the time came to part ways. We wished each other well on our final exams, and embraced one last time.

All in all, I could not have asked for a better conversation partner to exchange experiences and laughter with. While there may have been a communication barrier during some of our conversations, we are both still college students at the end of the day and share similar experiences in everyday life. Whatever the future holds for both Vera Wang and I, I know that we won’t forget each other anytime soon. I will always look back and be able to say that I became friends with a fashion icon.

Study Abroad Thoughts

In my young and callow life, I always saw the United States as an honorable homeland revolving around the economy, and a place where people flourished in all walks of life. I believed this until it came time to board a big bus, bound for the copious mountains of Appalachia. I knew that I was going to be assisting in the construction of residences for the people of Eastern Kentucky, but I was not expecting any amazing realizations or changes in my own character. Little did I know that my whole future was about to change, from the moment my sneaker hit the Kentucky soil.

I arrived with my church group after a twenty-hour bus ride through the transition in terrain between New England and Appalachia. I could see the enthralling forestation, as well as the impoverished community that was going to be helped, but there didn’t look to be much hope for the area. My perception of the world was beginning to change already, and I hadn’t even been off the bus for more than a minute.

There was a full week ahead of me, to embrace the culture and to assist people in the area, who were in desperate need of some financial help. I wasn’t sure how useful I was going to be since I was a small and skinny young man at the time. The work that week involved intense manual labor, and by the end of each workday, my body was a limp rag-doll, almost unable to pick up my own legs to climb atop my rickety bunk bed.

However, after attending a service at a nearby church on Sunday morning, my realization was able to fully develop and my character started to change. The church congregation was a mere 20-25 people, but each and every person was incredibly outgoing, and the beaming smiles on their faces alluded to the appreciation they had for the work we were doing to help the local community.

After the week had come to a close, and the duffle bags were being hurled onto the bus once again, I felt closer to some of the people in Neon, Kentucky than I did to friends in my own school. Between sharing riveting stories about our own lives, to just letting each other know that we would keep them on our minds, I realized that I didn’t just help a struggling community in Appalachia. They also helped me to discover the true compassion and meaning worth living for in life, and for that, I was beyond grateful.

Following the trip, I found myself reaching out to others in more ways than I had been prior to the experience. I continually believe that I can make a bigger and better influence in people’s lives, whether I knew them personally or not. The trip assisted me in finding a positive way to look at every decision that I will have to make, and will ultimately help me in the future.

My Trip to Neon, Kentucky

In my young and callow life, I always saw the United States as an honorable homeland revolving around the economy, and a place where people flourished in all walks of life. I believed this until it came time to board a big bus, bound for the copious mountains of Appalachia. I knew that I was going to be assisting in the construction of residences for the people of Eastern Kentucky, but I was not expecting any amazing realizations or changes in my own character. Little did I know that my whole future was about to change, from the moment my sneaker hit the Kentucky soil.

I arrived with my church group after a twenty-hour bus ride through the transition in terrain between New England and Appalachia. I could see the enthralling forestation, as well as the impoverished community that was going to be helped, but there didn’t look to be much hope for the area. My perception of the world was beginning to change already, and I hadn’t even been off the bus for more than a minute.

There was a full week ahead of me, to embrace the culture and to assist people in the area, who were in desperate need of some financial help. I wasn’t sure how useful I was going to be since I was a small and skinny young man at the time. The work that week involved intense manual labor, and by the end of each workday, my body was a limp rag-doll, almost unable to pick up my own legs to climb atop my rickety bunk bed.

However, after attending a service at a nearby church on Sunday morning, my realization was able to fully develop and my character started to change. The church congregation was a mere 20-25 people, but each and every person was incredibly outgoing, and the beaming smiles on their faces alluded to the appreciation they had for the work we were doing to help the local community.

After the week had come to a close, and the duffle bags were being hurled onto the bus once again, I felt closer to some of the people in Neon, Kentucky than I did to friends in my own school. Between sharing riveting stories about our own lives, to just letting each other know that we would keep them on our minds, I realized that I didn’t just help a struggling community in Appalachia. They also helped me to discover the true compassion and meaning worth living for in life, and for that, I was beyond grateful.

Following the trip, I found myself reaching out to others in more ways than I had been prior to the experience. I continually believe that I can make a bigger and better influence in people’s lives, whether I knew them personally or not. The trip assisted me in finding a positive way to look at every decision that I will have to make, and will ultimately help me in the future.

The Bowling Alley Incident

By going back home to Boston for Thanksgiving break, I was able to spend time with friends and family members who I had not seen since leaving for school in early August. While we shared funny stories from the past few months and stuffed our faces with delicious food, there was one particular experience that had my whole family cracking up.

My family had nearly thirty people at our house for Thanksgiving dinner, and then we regrouped on Friday to have even more fun times with each other. We decided that it would be a great idea to go bowling as a large crowd, and almost everybody attended. We called around lunchtime on Friday to see if a place called “Lucky Strike: Boston” had any open reservations for our group, but unfortunately they did not. Lucky Strike is essentially the Rolls-Royce of bowling alleys in our area, simply because it sits right next to Fenway Park and has an amazing atmosphere. Although we struck out there, we still were determined to find a place to bowl, and ended up heading over to a 24/7 bowling alley in Dorchester, which is a rather seedy part of Boston.

Upon arriving to the rather dingy establishment, we began to play when we realized that we were the only caucasian people in the entire bowling alley. While this was not a problem at all, it just put us in a different environment than we were used to. Two lanes down from us was a group of young men who seemed to be taking their bowling extremely seriously. We watched as they would consistently get strikes and spares, while we continually rolled gutter balls.

Towards the end of our second game, my brothers and I decided to have a competition to see who could roll the ball down the lane the fastest. Unfortunately, my brother got his thumb stuck in one of the bowling ball holes during his turn, and could not release it at the proper time. Instead, the bowling ball ended up sailing over two lanes and rolled down the gutter of another party’s game. It was the group of professionals. One of the intense male bowlers just received a gutter ball during his tenth frame thanks to my brother. Everybody in the entire bowling alley stopped and stared. Then, the young men all started to crack up. Thank goodness!

Everybody started laughing and joking with my brother about his mishap, and luckily the group of guys were not mad at all. They had never seen anything quite like it, and so the laughter continued. At the end of the day, we made new acquaintances during a situation that could have ended up totally different. We laughed hysterically about how out of place we were in the bowling alley, yet still managed to have an amazing time. This story definitely seems to be one where, “You had to be there” in order to fully appreciate the experience, but it is one that I won’t forget anytime soon. With elements of unexpectedness, a cognitive shift definitely occurred, which made things so funny. Even though people were not in play mode, the situation was funny enough to make everyone laugh. Another aspect of the situation could be related to the fact that we felt superior to my brother when he threw the ball.