Friendship.

Describe a friendship that you've had or do have at this point in your life.

Darrel Phong
Pacs 1 Sect 27
Friendship

March 7th, 2009. It seemed insignificant at the time. College applications were done. Summer was still 4 months away. Senior year was boring. I was coasting through life with no direction. And I was thrown into the conference room at the Orange County Chapter of the Red Cross with a room full of virtual strangers. This was the group of people I would spend the next seven months with, having only one thing in common, our love for the Leadership Development Center. We all had applied for the position of “staff” in January. We were the only ones excited when the applications came out in December. We were the select few that made it back after going through the camp as “delegates”. I know for me personally, I was excited to come back just so that I could have an impact on a delegate’s life, like it did for me. What coming back turned out to be, though, was an experience of a life time. Little did I know, that for the next seven months, I would meet my best friends in a place we thought of as a home away from home that we would eventually spend more time at than our actual homes.
The beginning was a bit awkward. People could tell right off the bat who was new to staffing and who was a seasoned veteran, but it didn’t keep us from getting close. It started off with simple AIM conversations and Facebook posts. From there it flourished into something greater. As the days progressed, and camp began to materialize into something tangible, we had gone through over 200+ hours of service together, not including the time we spent outside of the Chapter. We laughed. We cried. We frustrated each other. And never could I imagine giving them up for something more. By the time camp came, we had become a family. Inside jokes galore and plenty of support for one another got us through nights where we would get about 1 hour of sleep.
Every time I see someone or something that reminds me of the staff from LDC 2009, it brings nothing but happiness to my face. Every time I pass the Sesame Street aisle, the unflushed toilet, the sleepless nights, everything just seems to tie back to camp. The bonds built during this past summer have embedded roots that run deeper than just the summer because there will never be another Staff of LDC 2009, we are it. Every single workday and training since March 7th our liaison would always tell us when something needed to be done or we freak out about something, “it’s a non issue”. Now that we’ve moved on and I don’t get to see everyone everyday, I feel like sometimes we begin to separate. But every now and then, “it’s a non-issue” would reverberate in my head, and I can’t help but smile and move on. March 7th didn’t seem significant back then. It seems like an eternity ago. Little did I know that those strange faces I saw as I took that first step into the conference room would be the faces that I missed the most when camp was over, and I moved on to Pacific.




Leadership Development Center 2009. Dare to Dream.

til next time guys.
take care.

It's been a while.

Hey guys, I know i haven't updated in a long time. I was busy with LDC all summer (Dare To Dream!) and a week after i had to head off to school and the transitions been keeping me occupied! Anywho, I haven't had much to talk about really. I miss everyone back home, but at the same time it's exciting to be putting that foot forward into the future. I don't have an actual update for you guys, but I stumbled across this assignment i did for hahn..the prompt was narrate a childhood experience in any form of writing that best fit. So until next time..I'll tty guys later. Take care!

Darrel Phong
AP English Period 4
05/19/09
Ms Hahn

There was once a story of a boy. He was young and shy, but full of joy. He attended Anaheim Hills Elementary school and was real, no decoy. He kept to himself and played with his toys. But one day, on the play ground. He dropped one of his toys, and it is yet to be found. He searched frantically. He searched everywhere. He began to panic. He even began to swear. He ran home to his mother. He ran to his room. He was told to shut up by his brother, but he still worried about his toy’s doom.

The next day, he arrived at school, in woe. He had his backpack on, but no toy to show. He felt naked. He felt sad. He was jaded. He was mad. At recess he walked around. Little did he know, his toy was found. The toy ended up in the hands of evil, the bully by the name of Joo. He heard his toy was found, and he wondered who? When he found out who had his toy, everything was lost, including his joy. He sat in a corner and moped for his loss. Joo came up to him, toy in hand and said, “I’m a boss”. But he mustered up courage, and his inner wrath began to widen. He gathered together the strength to move a boat, the strength of Poseidon.

The fisticuffs had been engaged. His eyes locked on Joo’s, and Joo on his. He had never been so enraged. His conscience said Death had called for Joo’s time. He was out of line. He knew he was out of line. But he needed to bring justice to Joo’s crime. The back of his head was just saying “I need to get back what is rightfully mine.” Take away the spotlights, it was his time to shine. He was filled with boiling blood, a look of disgust on his face. Joo was ready to smash his face in the mud, a look of excitement with a swagger in his pace.

He woke up the next day, wondering how he ended up at home. He woke up in his room, sun shining, but he wasn’t alone. His mother crouched over him, a hodgepodge of emotions on her beautiful face. She was angry. She didn’t expect her little boy to get into a fight at such an early age. She was sad. She couldn’t believe that her baby’s perfect face be torn like a book, page by page. She was disappointed. Her son getting into trouble made her feel like it was a testament to how her son was raised. All he could do was watch his mother as she cared for him, slowly weeping. He’d never seen his mother so vulnerable. At the time, he didn’t realize how much his mother was hurt, he just knew he was hurt, and he felt like sleeping. Upon his eyes closing, she got up and set down the bandages on the table. While he was drifting off to bed, in his own fantasy land, she was up wondering, where did she go wrong? Slowly, she wept as her eyelids began to take a toll on her. She would wake up the next morning, still full of sadness, still full of disappointment, still full of anger.

It’s just the natural phenomenon of life. The young are restless. The old have less rest. The young are endlessly carefree. The old give endless amounts of free care. What is it that makes the young such a polar opposite of the old? To this day, he still doesn’t know. 10 years later, all he knows is that not a single day goes by that he regrets his actions. He vowed to never make his mother express the same facial expression again. In the end, it is the age old adage that holds true. “You live and you learn.”


till next time.
take care guys.
- Darrel