Journals--Day 4 Girls

Day 4: Saturday June 24, 2006

Hmmmmm…What did I do today???? Well today was more of a relaxing day. I woke up at about 8:15 AM and took a shower. Then I was awake and ready to go.

When we all were finished, we went to Portland, Oregon to the Chinese Garden. But the thing was is that we had to find our way to the Chinese Garden, and the staff wasn’t going to help us, and we had to do it on our own. Most of the time we were just walking around like we had no idea what we were doing even though we had a map in front of us. First we were going the wrong way to find NW Everret St. Then we found NW Fourth and took it until we weren’t even in Chinatown anymore. Then we had to go back the other way. Some people thought we had to go to Third Street but realized that was wrong and went back to Fourth Street and took it all the way down then headed east to Third Street. We finally got there at 12 so we took our noon photo there in front of the entrance. When we went in we were just in time for the tour of the garden.

There were so many different plants and it was so beautiful there. They had a pond in the middle of the garden and they had lily pads that had flowers that were open, which was really good because I never saw the flowers open before and they were really pretty.

The man, who was giving the tour, gave us interesting details about the Chinese culture and how they take excellent care of their gardens. One thing is that they don’t go around bragging about how better their garden is. They are always humble. I thought that was really awesome how they don’t go around bragging to everyone that they a better than everyone. I hate it when people act like they are better than other people when they are just like everyone else.

After we were done with the garden, we went to the Portland Saturday market. OHH MY GOODNESS what a sight. It was so…wow. It was full of all different kind of hand made things, and some of them looked so awesome, but all so expensive. The food wasn’t all the same, they had so many different choices to choose from it was so hard to pick. But I got curly fries with a Pepsi. Lymarie and Jessica shared curly fries and an elephant ear.

An elephant ear is really what we call fried dough but twice as big. The funny thing is that when Jessica said, “Is it really an elephant ear??” Lymarie is like I don’t think so; no one was sure exactly what it was because we never heard anything like it before. Then we saw this other man order the elephant ear and saw that it was dough that was fried and dipped in cinnamon. Then we all started laughing because we all thought it was really an elephant ear. It was just so hilarious!

Then when Lymarie, Jessica, and I were done eating we went to see what kind of things they had. We walked around for like half an hour looking at things and Jessica bought a picture for her father. Then I saw a booth with Chinese writing and saw that you can get your name written in Chinese so I asked the man if he could write my name and how long it would take. He said yes he can and he could do it right there. So I got my name done then Lymarie wanted hers done so she did her name. Then Jessica wanted “I Love You”. Then when she was done I got the rest of my family’s names done because they were only $1 for each name so I thought it would be nice to have the family’s name in Chinese.

Then when we were done, Lymarie came up with the idea of getting Zurek, Nutt, and French’s names done because they been with us the whole time and if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t be here in the first place. So all three of the names were from us girls to the staff members and they were so thrilled and happy about it. They thought it was cool.

Then we went to meet everyone at three pm but the staff wanted to stay half an hour longer so they can get something. So the boys went off to do something but us girls stayed and were watching the people to see what was different about their clothes, hair, and etc. Forty minutes later the staff finally came and we left.
We went back to the cottages to relax and start on the journals for day four. Then Nancy asked if wanted to tour the campus of Washington School for the Deaf and we said yes, so we took a tour. Then I came back to and continued to work on my journal.
After like 30 minutes dinner was ready, we had tacos tonight. I tend to make a taco salad when I eat tacos. I love to eat taco salads! What I do is crush the taco shells, after I crush up the shells I put the meat on, then the lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and the sour cream. Boy how I love sour cream, I could eat it all day lolz.

Anyway during dinner Jessica, Mike, Jonathan, and Lymarie were talking about the memories that they had in Cogswell. They had me wishing that I had moved to ASD when I was a small child. They had me laughing so hard. Then the staff wanted us to be really descriptive in our journals and they told us that after we had a nice dinner. I told them that they had to ruin it with the talk about journals. They laughed.

Then when I was coming back to the room, I started to run and then I stopped myself by running into Jessica, and she ran into Jon, and he ran into Mike, and he had to exaggerate by falling on the rug and doing a whole summersault. That had me doubled over with laughter! Oh what good times we have here in Washington!!!!

After that scene, I came back to work on my journal. Not long after I started working, the parents, that we said that we would talk to, came and started asking us questions about what they should do about their son. The story about their son is that he is 15 months and he is profound deaf and they have no idea what to do about it. Should they give him a cochlear implant?? Keep him in the hearing school going mainstream?? Put him in a deaf school?? They have no idea so they wanted to ask us our opinion so they have an idea from deaf students from another school. It was good.

So now here I am finishing up my journal for day four. Well I’m exhausted from walking most of the day, so I’m going to try and get some really good sleep because we are going to Fort Clatsop to learn more about Lewis and Clark after the reached the Pacific Ocean and how they survived the winter. Well until then CIAO!!!

Journal day 4: June 24, 2006

What another amazing day and, at the same time, it was very frustrating day for some of us and including me.

Today I woke up at 8:30am and I felt much better instead of waking up at 7am. For breakfast, I ate pancakes and orange juice drink then we all walked to the van and get ready to go to Portland. We parked the van to stay and let us go walk to the Chinese Garden and Portland market. When we arrived in Portland we got ready to go to the Chinese Garden and today the weather was so perfect, so sunny, hot with a breeze as well

Some places in Portland disgusted me because we passed where some homeless people lived. It wasn’t tidy at all. When I saw them, I couldn’t even imagine if I were like them through the difficult life with no foods, no safe place to live and everything!

So when we passed them, at that time we were struggling, disagreeing, blaming, and sometimes yelling to each other about where we should go, in what direction to get to the Chinese Garden from the parking place. It’s only around 15 minutes to get there. But we also helped each other of how to figure out using the maps to help us go in the right directions. That part wasn’t easy for me because I got so confused and most of the time, I don’t even understand the maps at all!

But finally, when we arrived to Chinese Garden, now it is our time to chill out and relax, seeing the gorgeous view of flowers, trees, arts works by the Chinese people and the pond. That flower, gardenia, smell so extremely good, when I touched it, it is a small flower but it felt so soft and smooth as well. I really enjoyed there and walking around to see many different kinds all the flowers, plants and including the way of how the building was set up there that exactly looked like we were in China.

When we were done looking around in that wonderful place, we walked to the Portland Markets, which is a very big place, to go and see so many of the mini “stores,” so full of people. This part is really making me so moody because I don’t like people walking too close to me and bumping to me often. But anyway, while I walk and I noticed I have seen so many different kind of styles that people wear and different foods too. The smell in there is completely different; I have never smell like that before in markets somewhere in Connecticut. It had so much different kinds of smells that I smelled there, mixing with the variety of foods. Oh, I had to say including the smelly garbage too.

The funny part that I will not forget is Angelina, Jessica and I were looking for the fried dough because Jessica wanted to eat that instead of those other foods. Suddenly, I saw there’s a man who put the pizza dough in the oil and I looked at the menu list to make sure if it is fried dough and it said, Elephants Ear Cinnamon Sugar. Jessica was perplexed and automatically said, “WHAT??? real elephant’s ear? When she says that, I was like, umm, I really have no idea but I kept looking around to see if there are any real elephant’s ears or what? But it wasn’t. It is really fried dough but they just call it differently - Elephant’s Ear instead of fried dough. We really laughed and felt glad that we have found fried dough for Jessica and me to eat it.

We stayed there for about 2 hours and after that, Anne said to us is that we have to remember which way to go back to the parking place and go on the way to WSD. But we hardly remember where to go and we were very exhausted because of walking around too much and so when we get back to home, we just relaxed and started to work on our journal. But later on, Nancy asked us if we are interested to walk around to see every building on the WSD campus. We did that for a short time and came back to the dorm then again focus to work on our homework. Again, we stopped it for dinner time and we ate the homemade tacos which were really delicious! When we were done with our marvelous dinner, we had a short discussion about what to do when we write the journal that we need to improve. Finally, we all came back to our room and started to stay focus on our homework and still continue to day five…

Day 4: June 24, 2006
We woke up at around 8:30am and yes, we woke up a little late.  Last night I was so happy and so thrilled because I can sleep more. We ate our breakfast and we ate pancakes and it was okay.  We didn’t make our own lunch because we can eat our lunch at the Portland Market. 
We went to on the van.  My group started to do the log stuff and it was our turn to do.  It was so hot outside, I felt like it was around 92 degrees. I also felt like it was humid.   Anyway, the boys’ group turns to research about the Chinese Garden.  It was about 10 minutes to get there.
We arrived to the Portland.  First thing we had to do is we had to plan where we are going. The teachers weren’t going to help us find where the Chinese Garden is.  So it was our responsibility to find the Chinese Garden and it was a veryyy frustrating time! We argued to find a way to get there.  The boys and girls teams were confused at each other.  Just like one kid said,  “No that’s the way!” The other kid said, “No that way is better!”  The Teachers were waiting for the sure way to go.  But I think it was fun to do that because we had a good discussion.  On our walk we saw a lot of homeless people.  It was a dirty place.  So we had to avoid that place.  We tried to tell each other a better way to get there.  But it didn’t work.  Some things we saw and smelled were not so nice. Each city has good parts and bad parts.  We walked to another place and it was nice and smelled better (finally).  That was a long long walk!
Somehow we found the Chinese Garden.  When we got there, the teachers bought tickets for us to enter that place.  It was not really fun but it was nice to see everything the Chinese Garden had.  The man who was presenting for us talked about everything about Chinese.  We went inside and saw it was like a home.  It was very natural.  They planted a lot of beautiful plants and flowers.  We smelled all of them.  It smelled very good.  We saw some cool things like carved wood.  It was very pretty.  We didn’t really stay there that long. 
We went to for a walk and we went to Portland Market.  A lot of people went there.  We also saw some of deaf people there.  It was cool!  Anyways, Lymarie, Angelina, and I went to out to get lunch and bought something.  Lymarie and I shared an  elephant ear with cinnamon sugar (it was very delicious) and French Fries curls.  Angelina ate French fries curls. 
We went to look for something.  We saw some nice Chinese things.  Angelina bought the piece of paper with her Chinese name on it.  I bought it with the words “I love you” written into Chinese words.  Lymarie bought it with her Chinese name.  It was cool.  I also bought a nice picture with beach on it.  We walked back to the place where we can meet the teachers.  We had our good idea to get something for our perfect teachers.  We walked to that place where we can get the papers with names on it.  Lymarie gave it to Annie.  I gave it to Nancy.  Angelina gave it to Barbara.  They said, “OH THANK YOU!” and also gave us a hug.  We talked about the stuff around Portland Market because it was a huge and there were people wearing all sorts of different clothes. 
            We walked to back to that place again and waited for the boys (Mike, Jon, and Richie..).  They wanted to go somewhere again so Lymarie, Angelina, and I sat on the sidewalk and waited.  We watched what the people did. 
I’ll tell you what I did see today in the Portland Market…. most of people were wearing a variety of clothes. There was one boy who wore gothic clothes but they were freaky!  I was just surprised there were so many  different people.  I mean it was cool to see them.  But in Connecticut, there are mostly traditional clothing of what people wearing.  When I was sitting with Lymarie and Angelina, one man came to me and saying something to me. I have no idea what he said.  So I asked Lymarie and Angelina.  He walked away.  I think it is just because I was signed to them.  I also saw a woman standing on a man’s back while she held onto a pole at the top of a tent! It was so weird. Actually she was giving him a massage. 
We went to back to the van.  Finally, we found a right way instead of walking the wrong way looking to find our van. 
We drove to back to WSD and relaxed.  It was a really early.  We have plenty time to do our journals.  Nancy told us we can go to see inside of WSD and compared it to ASD.  It was a big different. WSD have small number than ASD.  WSD have a big campus.  A young, deaf, and nice girl named Katsha led us all around WSD.  It was nice.  We arrived back to the cottage and do our …..JOURNALS!  Nancy told us if we have time and done with our journals we can go to see a play here at WSD.  But we were not going because we still had to do our journals.  We also had a long dinner but it was pretty fun.  We ate tacos with meat, tomatoes, sour cream, and lettuce.  Barbara made all of them. THANK YOU BARBARA!  We chatted about our old memories and we had a good laugh.  We laughed a lot and so loud.
 Well that’s our day.  It doesn’t seem like it was a long day.  But we took a loooong walk.  I’ll tell you more about tomorrow.  I am sure you’ll love to hear more about it.  Good night!!!!!!!!