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After a long wait I get the chance to actually write something in livejournal. I don't really have time to babble about stuff so right down to the point. I'm almost at the 2month mark in Hyles-Anderson College. And surprisingly, I already had the chance to play in an orchestra. 2 weeks ago was the annual Youth Conference. It was the first time ever that an orchestra was set-up to perform during the conference. I was given the heads-up about this the first few day when I got here and I had to practice immediately. The music was not easy at all. 4 hours a day 5 days a week I had to practice. We only had 2 reahearsals. I missed one of them but the conductor said I can still play. When I finally got the chance to attend the final rehearsal, I was really glad I'm not the only one who was having a hard time with the music. ROTFL!!! Some of my practice payed off but I couldn't play 2 out of the 9 songs. During the actual orchestra performance, the two people beside me had no idea what they were doing. At this point in time, I realized what my guitar teacher was to say when he told me "You have to learn to count." The funny thing is, we were playing carnival songs! LOL I never thought of the combined sound of the entire orchestra but the sound's rythm and everything cracked me up. Luckily, we didn't had time to play 3 songs. 2 of those songs were the songs that I couldn't play and one was a special arrangement of "Star Spangled Banner." Technically this isn't the first thing on my list but its still and orchestra. I give myself half a point for that hehehe More progress on my number two. I am now the only student working on the route. I have someone helping me and someone to drive the bus on Sunday's but bottom line is, I'm the only student. Since the route's bus captain just moved to another route, I am the only guy as of the moment, who can be called the bus captain. I still don't know how things usually works out but nevertheless, I'm almost there. :p I miss writing here. It makes me feel like someone is listening to me hehehhe oh well TTFN livejournal Tags: progress
Current Location: HAC Library
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: NVBC - About the Cross
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Eight hours from now, a friend of ours is going to pick me up and bring me to the dorms. Finally after a long early summer full of travels, I'm moving yet again, but this time, its going to take a while until I move again. Tomorrow is gona be a weird day. I think I'll have mixed emotions. Probably doubts masked by excitement, i don't know. Thanks to the strict enforcement of dorm rules, the information that I have now is saying that I'll have very very limited internet access. Meaning this might be my last post in a couple of months. Nothing I can do with that so moving on.
In my one year stay in UP, some of my decisions were made hastily because of the lack of goals. I learned that, the hard way. Now I have the chance to learn from my mistake, I'm listing a set of goals for college. HylesAnderson is not any ordinary college. Its a bible college that means bussiness with regard to its rules and code of conduct. Check it out yourself HylesAnderson.com. It will, in no doubt, be tougher than anything I've tried my whole life. I need a list of goals to keep my head focused. I'm still working on the list but, here are some that I am sure I have to accomplish:
Ashton's To-Accomplish List in HylesAnderson College
1.) Be able to play in the orchestra. There are 3 orchestras in the college that I know of, the College orchestra, the Spanish Orchestra and the Main Orchestra. Playing in either of the 3 will do but I sure would like to play in the main orchestra. That also means more practice time for me.
2.) Be a Bus captain. The church that owns HylesAnderson runs about 25,000 last time I checked. Imagin how many buses and bus workers work to be able to cater to that much people. This is probably the most demanding ministry, but its rewards are clear and obvious. Plus I can meet all sorts of people and hopefully bring them to church.
3.) Join the Summer Tour Groups. I haven't been taking care of my voice for more than a year now. This again, means more practice time for me. The Summer Tour Groups travel the country during the summer to perform. All expense paid plus free tuituion for a year. And they publish albums so its really cool.
4.) Write a Song. Not just a song. A song that the tour group or the main choir could sing. The music directors and screeners aren't very supportive about new songs. So it will be another biggie in my list.
5.) Get a Job offer and a Job. I will work hard. I have to. And hopefully the admin guys would like the way that I work and offer me a job. This helps me alot so I won't have to look for one. And I can change my immigration status from F1 (Student) to R1(Religious Worker). R1 will be very advantageous since churches don't pay income taxes. Same for its workers. I think your net gain here after the Federal and State taxes will be lessened to 79% minus house bills. And people from thie Philippines think you'll get rich in the US.
6.) Excel Academically. They give an incentive that they call, "The Letterman Jacket" to academic achievers. I don't know how the school is academically but this is a field where I'm confident I can be something.
7.) Find a way to visit the Philippines. I don't really want to schedule a trip to the Philippines. Firstly, its expensive. Secondly, I don't make plans if I don't have a job. And thirdly, people expect too much out of you when you come back from the US. I want to find a way to visit so I could cash in my long awaited date. Never give up hope. If I carefully plan my moves, opportunities should open up. Though it might take me 2-3 years, the earliest successful flight back will be the summer of 2010. I could go back earlier but that means I got screwed somewhere lol.
I'm gona hold on to this 7 and add some more when I figure out which thing I can do and which things I can't.
I'm preparing for the worst but hoping fo the best. So, I guess good bye for now LiveJournal. Tags: goals, goodbye?, hyles-anderson
Current Mood: indescribable
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Last thursday was probably the most useless disorganized disorienting and not to mention weird day of my sightseeing here in the east coast. Yes I got to walk along Hollywood boulevard and walk the walk of fame, see the universal studios, beverly hills and rodeo drive but things started to mess up.
Since about 9 or 10am, we started to go sight seeing. We used a SAAB convertible. It was freakin hot in everywhere we went to. All we did was look at land scapes and I dared not even try to shop for anything cause everything is like 10x the price in hollywood and the areas we went to. A smoothie would be really great at that time but things were just too expensive. Too expensive that it's almost a waste to buy an ice cold smoothie on a 85 degree farenheit day. We went to a filipino restaurant and food was useless too. I was hoping for a good ice cold soda or iced tea but guess what, all they had was like canned soda and it that was just not good enough at that time.
I went home with a headache and fell asleep almost instantly just not to feel the pain. Then I woke up, people were all on the phone and there's arguements on the air that I had no idea what the hell happened!? My head still hurts the uncle that I was staying with seems that he doesn't like the new company at his house. So we had to arrange to go back to the previous house that I stayed with. I was trying to think fast the whole time but my head just wont give me ease.
the best thing was probably getting out of that house all thanks to bro. ed from Valley Baptist. Plus he even bought us dinner on a weird fast food. It was a mexican inclined fast food so everything had chili on it. Chili is a mexican dish where ground beef and beans are mixed along with some other spices. The catch here is that the chili, litteraly, looked like crap. It's like there's crap on my double cheese burger, and crap all over my fries. Remember I still had a headache until this time, so I didn't even care about what the food looked like nor how was it going to taste. My head won't even let me laugh about it! I tried to laugh it off but to no use. It kinda even made the situation worse. Too much for laughter is the best medicine...
But nevertheless, the food was good. Not the best meal I've ever had but it made me thing of things other than the problem that I was working on. It might sound big that I'm independent, but it never changed the fact that I'm homeless LOL. Thankfully that night I was able to sleep sound and relax the whole day the next day. Till we met our family friend who took us to vegas.
Haven't seen much of Vegas yet but, I'm not here for sightseeing I'm here to help some people. Its like 95 degrees outside and its not fun specially when you have to wear a suit. Tomorrow is our relax time with yet another family friend who's a police man. I have never met him before but hey, he offered free breakfast and a small tour of what's to see in Vegas.
ps: I had to postpone my move to the dorms since airfare spiked prices. They were 3x compared to the price that I saw 2weeks ago. By the time I go back to Indiana, I'll be paying 2x as much as I did to get to LA. So gotta enjoy my time before I go to bootcamp nayahahaha Tags: miscommunication, vegas
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Just today, I moved to yet another house that I'm staying at. I'm now at my pastor's place here in LA.
I am now officially staying with people that I know and not just the people that I have just met. And not just people that my mom helped me arrange a place to stay with. I'm with familiar faces that I call my friends.
We played bowling with their family and me. They had a 3 year old, who was barely able to lift the lightest bowling bowl, play bowling. She tried to roll the ball and drop it at the same time and after about 2 or 3 minutes, the ball with hit some pins lol. We all had fun. I won by the way. I was down like 20pts on the last 2 sets and I made 3 consecutive strikes for the win.
I get to take care of their less than 1 year old baby who is just adorable and we all agree that the NBA conference finals is a must see. So all got together for the game and after that... ICE CREAM!!!
I'm kinda tired and sore from the bowling, but hey, there's tons more to do tomorrow and the whole next week. And after that, another week in our relatives here. Keyword, Relatives, meaning time to relax and go see this place called Los Angeles hehehe Tags: friends, la
Current Location: Canoga park neigborhood, LA, CA
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Today wasn't really the coolest day of my life. But right now, I've reached Mission Hills, CA and just an hour ago I was in LAX. hehehe Never thought ever in my life that I'd be able to be in a place like this. I say it's not the coolest day or several reasons. Firstly, our plane tickets arrived at 1am thankfully I'm still awake cause if not I would have missed my flight. Doing the math, I wake up at 8 or so, eat and prepare for an hour, pack up some stuff, drive to the bus terminal, ride the bus to the airport and go through the Department and Homeland Security(DHS) screening process all before 2:45. I don't know about you but if you ask me, that's alot of stuff to do in so little time. Secondly, I have no idea how can I get to the bus terminal nor did I had any idea of any bus trips at all. Thirdly, DHS had to throw some of my stuff away since they are prohibited in airplanes. I forgot I had a multipurpose credit card sized thinggy inside my wallet and it had a knife on it. And a knife is not a good thing to have in airports so I'll leave out the details. Fourth is that, after our stop to Minneapolis, MN, our flight was delayed by an hour. And lastly, I forgot which bus route to take and I people aren't answering their phones. Now the stuff that helped me survive the day. One is a handful of assorted bitesize chocolate in my pocket. Simply because surgar is good lol. Two is my PSP. I watched Advent Children again. I figured since I finished playing Crisis Core I'd see things differently and I did. Three is my iPod shuffle. No playlist needed just skip the songs you don't like lol. Four is McDonalds. Good food at an almost good price. I say almost good because I was in an airport. "Don't expect anything will be cheap" was written all over the main entrance when I walked in. So finally I arrived here at a friend's place. I turned my laptop on first thing before organizing my luggage and the moment I look back, it already connected me to a weak but good and running WiFi. I just love technology hehehe Now all I'm left thinking about it, will I see movie stars here? hahaha ROTFL Tags: california
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After almost a week of no internet here in the new place that I'm staying at, I have internet. Yes, in America, there are still places where people are apparently out-dated when it comes to technology. It wasn't easy living without internet and good cable hehehe but thanks to my psp and final fantasy crisis core, I'm able to make it through the day. Although our routine here is very simple, cultural diversity still makes it way to make things surprisingly uncomfortable for me. I'm staying with a couple, 1 American and 1 Filipina. First thing cultural diversity hit, language. She speaks english enough to be able to barely express what she's trying to say. Secondly, she's a filipina who wants to stay filipina. Reality check, the so-called Amercian way of life will kill you if you lived like the average filipino did. Not to degrade my countrymen but, if you'd put a filipino and an american under a microscope, there are far more things in favor to the americans. But this is looking at both specimens only at a positive perspective. And I'd like to voice out this are just my personal opinions. Moving on, third, cultural diversity struck me on food and diet. Sadly, the couple has cancer. The american has excellent control on diet. I can't believe someone like him actually exists. On the other hand, Filipina still has her Filipina taste of food. There's alot more to point out but that's what hits me the most. But then there are other things like a drive to Chicago tomorrow. A friend invited us to go with them along with some students from Hyles-Anderson College to the greater Chicago Area tomorrow after church. I don't know why they call it greater chicago but I'll try to find out tomorrow. I have a batchmate from Boy's High east ward from Chicago at Roselle, IL. He left to go in the US about a year earlier than I did but I guess this is where we might meet again hehehe. But for now I'll get some sleep and get ready for church tomorrow. One more thing, I found out that there is a town called Ashton about 2 hours drive from where I am. Now that place I have to see hehehe Tags: chicago, diversity, internet
Current Mood:  sleepy
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After 5 houses and 8 days of moving around, I finally had a place where I could settle for some days. I've been here since last saturday and this is by far the longest duration that I have stayed since I moved out.
I like the place that I'm staying right now but sad to say, I am here to help the couple who lives here to move out. So after a couple of days, I'll have to move again somewhere. And after I move, I will wait for the go signal from two persons - Pastor Froi and Mike Sarver. Mike Sarver because he's processing my immigration papers for me and Pastor Froi to coordinate the next place that I will move to. I'm looking forward to Pastor Froi's confirmation since I'll possibly move to two places, Florida or California hehhee. I like to see california cause I have a couple of relatives who live there and I also like to see Florida, I think its self explanatory why I'd like to see that place hehehe. (no not because of the beaches and young ladies being florida the photoshoot capital of the whole world, its because dwayne wade lives there hahaha green minded)
But if I'm going to move, I'd have to leave some stuff behind because I have a bunch of stuff. I bought alot of books, music equipments, I have a violin with me and possibly a guitar soon, a bulky bag of thick jacket for my winter clothes, my daily clothes, my suits and some miscellaneous stuff. All those stuff will fit in a plane but that will cost me a whole lot of money for excess baggage.
Going back to where I am right now, I basically stay on my computer then my psp when there's nothing to do. And if we do something, we finish it in an hour or so. So I'm all gunbound and final fantasy crisis core hehehe
So good luck to me waiting for confirmations and to more moving around the US hehehe Tags: ashton, moving
Current Location: Schererville, IN
Current Mood: awake
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