Some thoughts by Ally...

Ally Tomeh
April 21, 2008
Day Three.
Today we went to a Vietnamese village, and we cleared brush from this huge field. There was tons of broken trees and fallen limbs that we picked up. It was me, Michaela, Kevin, Kyle, Ian, Chris, Papa Crockett and Mrs. Criscone. It was really fun! We worked for about four hours, and I got a huge sunburn on my shoulders.. its kind of funny actually. I’m proud of it haha. Then we went to a community center and met this man who was amazing – so amazing I fell asleep. I was so tired haha. But he told a lot of stories and people told me about them.. apparently he was blind and then could see again, and then he also said how he had a limp and walked through a group of people who were praying for him and then he could walk fine afterwards. It really made me wish that I was more religious, because he seemed to radiate with love for god.

Yesterday I started to write in my journal but I didn’t get a chance to finish, and I’d much rather type than write haha. But anyway. Yesterday we listed to pastor gary and he talked about two different ponds, one was big, beautiful, and clean and the other was small, ugly, and very dirty. I didn’t really understand the next part but basically each of the ponds represent different things.. the big one is the what you make of life and the other one is reality. Then he also talked about how the Holy Spirit was everywhere: a smile you give to someone, a kind gesture, the fact that we came down to help. I don’t know if I believe in God and everything that Christians are supposed to believe in, but I do believe that there is some heavenly being that makes hope, love, and things like that.
This is going to sound horrible, but I can’t get myself to be very sad about everything that’s happened in the hurricane. I mean, I feel so sympathetic and obviously its horrible, but I feel like I should be a lot more sad than I am right now. All of these things that they lost are material items – things that can be brought back and remade. However, I do understand how they miss their memories in the places that were ruined. How specific items have memories that can’t be reproduced. But other than that, I just really don’t see whats SO horrible. I just can’t empathize, I guess.
There are a lot of things I’ve gotten out of this trip, and I want to remember them. The first is that I shouldn’t get so caught up in being better than other people and so uptight about grades and such. I mean, compared to other troubles in the world, mine are so petty. Also, there will ALWAYS be people that are better than me, ALWAYS a LOT more people than are better than me, why should I try and measure my success in comparisons? Plus, I also want to remember to relax and be happy. That’s something that will bring me far in life.. even if I loose everything else, as long as I can keep myself fine emotionally the rest will all be alright.
Honestly, just be happy, be carefree, have no regrets and no restrictions.

I want to type and type just like Hannah did with no periods or punctuation of any sort right now im watching little miss sunshine and I don’t get it people say its really good but I don’t see how I mean its kind of stupid actually and Katie just came by and I am going to give her her computer now but this is actually kind of fun so I don’t want to but I guess I will because I have nothing to say.