This page is brand new, so bear with me as I continue and continue to write about my pretty eventful and crisis-filled life accompanied by all the crap in my head that went along with it...

One day on June 29, 1977 in Anaheim, CA at Martin Luther Hospital , Raymond Zafra Mandap was born to Resty and Elvira Mandap. Dang, that kinda makes it sound like some momentous event in history (hey, it was to me). I have an older sister by 7 years, Elizabeth, and a younger brother by 5 years, Christopher. So I'm pretty much smack dab in the middle. It's kind of hard being the middle kid...you go through phases where you don't really feel special cuz you're not the oldest and you're not the youngest...I dunno, maybe it's just me.

I started Pre-school at a Montessori school in Orange, CA. It was pretty cool...I remember nap time and playing on the jungle gym. They had one of those dome-shaped ones. Kindergarden and first grade I spent at Orange-Olive Elementary School. I was far from my house but my mom worked late, so she'd drop me off and after school I stayed at my Lolo & Lola's (Grandpa & Grandma) house nearby. By the way, I'm mentioning all this stuff to first of all just share and stuff, but also to see if you might know me from years ago...it's happened before. Anyway, after first grade, the school shut down and I moved to Woodsboro Elementary which was down the street. I guess I was old enough to walk one-and-a-half miles to school when I seven. I stayed there till 4th grade. 5th and 6th grade I spent at Glenknoll Elementary School to join a GATE (Gifted-And-Talented-Education) class. If you ask me, we we're a bunch of nerds but during recess and lunch we tried not to be. Then, the summer after I graduated from 6th grade, my dad had some BIG news for me and the family. He's a chemical engineer and works for a contracting company, so he has to go on projects and business trips around the world. So this summer he tells us, out of the blue, that we're moving to Holland! After planning to go to Jr. High with all my friends, I was going to move to the other side of the freakin world?