Since my last blog, so many of my contacts from flickr.com have been asking me about my family, how they can help me with my cause, etc. I am flattered that people would think my life story is intriguing, but I think what we as a family went through was not any different from any other refugees' story, but nevertheless unique in it's own merit I guess. I will write more about my family in future blogs.

It's comforting to know that when it comes to assisting humanity, strangers are offering their assistance. Which makes me wonder sometimes how people whom we trust with our lives can mistreat us so badly. I'll never be able to understand why humans can be so cruel sometimes.

The world wide web is such a powerful tool. To be able to communicate and be connected to people from all over the world and all walks of life in real time is something I don't think was ever possible.

I have Vincent, one of my contacts from flickr.com helping out by offering to donate webcams to Empowerment International. This is quite remarkable because I have secretly wished that the kids from Nicaragua can somehow communicate through the net with some of their sponsors here in the U.S.

Vincent also introduced me to Brien, who is one his connections from LinkedIn. Brien is going to be donating some copies of Adobe Photoshop to Empowerment International. I am just overwhelmed with joy and gratitude because it is all going exactly the way I wanted and so much more. I want to thank everyone for your kindness and generosity. This means so much to me that people I've never met are going all out to support a cause that will impact the lives of the young Nicaraguan children that I will be working with.

Then there's Steve known as our man in granada, has been a tremendous help to me with this blog thing. I'm so new to this and I'm struggling big time to try to make this as personal as I can, but there's so much to learn. Steve's blog is quite insightful and his story is remarkable. He's been volunteering for quite some time now and was in Vietnam for awhile. As I shared with Ari, one of my contacts from flickr.com, I think it's intriguing to hear stories of amazing people who sacraficed their usual comfort for the sake of humanity. I will definitely be reading more of his writing and will be communicating with him more as my departure date draws near.

With all of this, I guess the only thing I'm waiting for is a response from BestBuy. I wrote them a letter asking them to donate laptops to the children down there. I hope it will work out.

It's been an interesting week last week. I have so many revelations and so far things seem to be going smoothly. So little time and not enough of me to do everything that needs to get done.

For a start, I have a new theme now. As I was introducing the concept for the Nicaragua Project to my students, I said, "everyone's got a story to tell about their lives, what are yours?" I was surprise when I said it because as much as I like the previous theme, "A Day in My Life" I think "My Life Story" is better and more powerful in so many ways. Janine thought it was a great theme too. So now that's what we will be doing. I got three lessons planned out already for this unit.

I finally got my proposal to do an Independent Study through the college approved by the dean. Now I just have to wait and see if the vice president will give his final approval. I was really grateful for having my instructor pursuing it on my behalf. I'm even more grateful that he would have so much faith in me and this project.

Then later in the week, I walked into one of the social studies teacher's room and the students just happened to be learning about Asia. She asked me if I would be willing to share with the students my experience living in Southeast Asia. I was really flattered to be asked to talk about my personal life experience with the students. Before I knew it, I was up there sharing the language with the kids, how my brother sacraficed his safety to come and get my mom and my siblings to cross from the Laos border to Thailand, and how my first experience was like here in America. I was choked up with emotions a couple of times, but I was able to continue on with my story. The need to share with my students my life experience overwhelms what shame I have about crying in front of them.

I shared with them the perils we faced crossing the Mekong River. I told them about the dirtiness of the refugee camps we stayed in. How we lived in a house built with straw thatched roof and cardboard boxes for walls, not to mentioned cockroach infested as well. Then how we moved to the Philippine Islands and stayed in the refugee camps there.

I told the students how life in America seems to be so much fun when I was a child. But looking back at it now, I remembered how mom would work so hard in the garden so we can have food to eat in the summer and freeze them for the winter. When it rains, we would be out looking for worms to sell them to fishermen. On garbage nights we would be out with huge garbage bags as a family looking through people's trash cans for aluminum cans to recycle and sell them. My mom would say things like,"being poor in America is nothing like being poor in Laos or China. America is a land of richness and gold. As long as you're not lazy and paralyzed, you have the opportunity to be successful."

The teacher cried after the kids left. I have nothing to cry about because as I told her, it's these experiences that made me the person that I am today. Because of my past, I was able to not take anything for granted. And because of all the help we received along our journey here to America, I want to return the favor to someone else. I remembered how I would look at the faces of the Americans in the American Embassy and would just be lost in my own childish imagination. I would imagine owning the beautiful things that I would see in the pamphlets that were distributed to the refugees about life in America.

This is my first blog entry. I finally got my tickets yesterday and I'm flying out on June 30th.

There's so much to do for Nicaragua. I have so many thoughts and ideas coming to mind that it's distracting me from wanting to put my foot down and say, "this is what I will do." The theme that Kathy and I both agreed on is, "My Life" or "A Day in My Life." Either way, I think it will work. I have a handful of my students here in the U.S. who will be doing their versions of it. The plan is when I go down there, I can show the kids in Nicaragua what it's like to be here in America through the eyes of my students from the U.S. My students are photographing tomorrow. So we'll see what their photos will show when I get the cameras back.

I'm pretty sure there will be many challenges during my stay in Nicaragua. One of them is trying to teach these kids with my limited Spanish art and photography in six weeks. Unlike teaching here in the U.S. the kids will need someone to translate every word and phrase that I say. Here, I'm the only teacher that my students have to respond to and besides that one class of bilingual students, I don't need anyone to translate anything for me.

The other is my comfort level. I've been studying in France for two summers and I could barely survive the heat over there, how will I survive the heat in Central America? I didn't live exactly like a bohemian either when I was in Europe...I have just about everything that I need and want.

Last concern is my empathy that I will have for the people when I go down there. It breaks my heart to see people suffer. As someone who's been living the "comfortable" life in America for most of my life, I don't know how much of the poverty I can handle. I remembered seeing the faces of the children coming out from the favelas when I was in Sao Paulo and my heart just sank. That was only for a brief moment. I don't know if I can emotionally detach myself from what I will see. I was sharing this very thought with my photography instructor last Wednesday. As I was telling him my concern, I can feel tears swelling up in my eyes and my voice quivering. I couldn't let him see me cry, so it took me a few minutes to finish my thoughts. I told him about *Kevin Carter *and that photo of the dying Sudanese child that won him the Pulitzer Prize and how he later committed suicide. I won't go to that extent, but I'm positive that it will effect my view of the world greatly.

In the end, I'm pretty sure that the people over there are alot happier than most of us here. They will probably feel more sorry for me than me for them. Sometimes the simplest of things bring the most joy when you don't have much of anything to begin with. I will finish my first blog with a quote that started it all for me:

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do
everything, but still I do something. And because I cannot do everything, I
will not refuse to do the something that I can do. _{Helen Keller}