I hope I am older and wiser, but other than that, I want to simply be living in love...
In love with my God, and in love with those around me.
But such a fate cannot stop me from continuing to dream my dreams, quietly, hopefully, whenever I am alone, or even amongst a throng of people. For sometimes, dreams are the only things I can really call my own, still. Things that no one will ever be able to take away from me.
After that week, my team members and I realized how much those children had taught us: worlds more than we could have ever taught them.
And I personally realized a quiet, almost faint, tugging at my heart; one of those divine interventions that can only descend from above. I knew that God wanted me to work with children in the inner city, in some measure and manner, in my future.
This was further supported after the summer before my senior year of college, when I spent eight weeks in Newark, NJ, at Sacred Heart Elementary School.
30 kids, one teacher, two TAs. Humid, sweaty, and hot. The children were going into third grade...most of them could not even read a whole sentence. They threw chairs at each other, scratched each other, fought by the minute, tattled on each other, and beat each other up. And yet, I fell in love with them. For underneath their tough exteriors, attention is what they truly craved... what they were starving for...
Though he tried to act tough and hard, I could see his vulnerable heart underneath. I developed a great fondness for him during the program's progression. I caught myself smiling and laughing at his antics in the classroom, when I should have been scolding him instead.
"What does her name tag say?"... "Ms. Rotini~~ " "Ms. Rotini...," they chimed in unison. Then they'd smile devilishly at me with their big, brown eyes. I tried to keep a straight face, because I knew this was a serious mistake that they needed to fix, but once in a while, I couldn't help smiling at their joke and their endearing faces.
A few summers ago, I spent my days volunteering at the animal shelter. Animals bring out a level of energy and warmth in children that I have never seen in their interactions with adults.
I want to counsel kids, someday, using homeless animals from the animal shelter,
I want to write a book about growing up during the L.A. riots. How my mother cried for three whole days during those times, and the only proof I ever had of her tears was the blood-shot eyes she showed the next morning. How every time we turned on the T.V. after we ran home from school, every channel showed the same things: the skies of L.A. a brilliant orange lit up with the fires of burning buildings.
I want to write about the han (suffering) that my parents experienced in this country as immigrants ... the "land of the free...".