ThucLam is Better than Nam

Every year, DECA officers in Arizona are invited to attend CAMP DECA in Williams. It’s super up north and we all stay at a cabin resort called Lost Canyon. It was a very fun time.

I have never been to any sort of overnight summer camp before. This was the closest I have gotten. We were all split up and sorted into different color groups filled with total strangers. And then we spent the next 2 days with them. It’s a lot team building and social exercises with the people you just met the night before. I spent a lot of time just introducing myself to different people and exchanging socials.

It’s a really pretty area. There’s basically 6 giant cabins, each with 6 separate room containing another 6 bunk beds, surrounding a giant grassy field where a lot of activities are set up. There’s also this hugeeeeeeeee dining hall where we all gather for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There’s a pool, pickleball courts, basketball courts, and sand volleyball courts.

It was a lot of fun. We did a lot of games, running around, scavenger hunts, lip sync battles, pep rallies, and basically every single party game you can think of. I was also very physically drained. We woke up at 6am and would sleep around midnight, meaning we were awake for 75% of the day. Lots of cheering as well. My voice was gone way before the second day even started. By the last day, my entire body felt like a bruise and was constantly hurting.

The people; however, were the best part about it. I met sooooooooooo many new people. And they were al super lovely. I enjoy DECA people a lot. They are usually really nice and are very social people. Specifically DECA officers, since its basically our whole job to be nice to people and make friends.

So basically it was awesome.

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a month ago, i started my junior year of high school.

yeah i’d say it’s kind of awesome. i think the start of junior year has been the best one so far. except, i’m a generally optimistic person and i’ve also said that about freshman AND sophomore year. but whatever.

to start it off, this is my first year being an officer for a club. 2 clubs, actually. i am currently the DECA treasurer and the Drama Club’s social chair. i’d say that both are pretty big clubs, but so far, they haven’t been interrupting with my actual schoolwork too much.

this fall, the Drama Club is putting on Legally Blonde, The Musical, and i am stage managing it(cue standing ovation). if you don’t know what a stage manager is, here’s the definition that i just looked up; “the person responsible for the lighting and other technical arrangements for a stage play.” i have to be at EVERY rehearsal, which is every single day after school until 6. and i oversee everyone who shows up to rehearsals, i take notes of all the lighting cues and sound cues, and then i’ll be at every show night overseeing the entire production. it’s an insane job when you’re putting on a musical and i have definitely cried multiple times over this job but i did it to myself so whatever. anyways, i’m also a part of designing the set, costumes, lights, and sound elements of this musical during my production design class so that’s something i guess. it’s great. i’m also in charge of running the Drama Club meetings(social chair). basically, i spend the majority of my school days in the performing arts building.

currently, DECA has a lot going on. as treasurer, i keep track of all the deposits and receipts of our purchases from costco and stuff. it’s not that crazy of a job since we have a huge officer team and we’re kinda good at getting things done. we’re doing a lot of promotional stuff lately, so canva has been my favorite website the past month.

anyways, my classes are pretty chill this semester, which is why all my extracurricular stuff doesn’t get in the way too much. i’m taking earth space science, very easy, asl 2, also easy, and then i’m a TA for a college math class, so i just grade papers and nap, and then i have my production design class, where i do most of my drama club business. it’s all pretty balanced and not that demanding, so i think i’m good for the next few months.

overall, my junior year has become very very busy but i’m awesome and stuff so it’s no big deal. i’m gonna win a nobel peace prize for amazing or something.

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the second that summer started i wish it hadn’t.

we went camping, about two weeks into the summer. it was ehhhh. it was also probably the last time we’d go camping with my grandparents because i had told my nana that thucquyen absolutely hated being forced to go with them and she said that we don’t have to come with them anymore and that we could find something else to do together.

when we got back, thucquyen and i were at home for a good two days before we left again. my dad and thucquyen went to florida and i went to ohio. i wanted to go to florida because i’ve had the great urge to jump in a pool but all the adults told me i’d be lonely and bored. but i would never be lonely with a pool and a speaker, and plus, at least i’d have a pool.

we also went to cedar point in ohio. it was fun. 10/10 would go again.

and then during like the secondish week of ohio, i got so bored. i was unbelievably bored out of my mind because it was just a cycle of the same thing over and over. wake up two seconds before lunch, play music, roy away, shower, maybe watch a movie, rot away, sleep, wake up. it wasn’t very fun.

another thing. it’s not fun when the adults turn something enjoyable into a chore. i sang with nam and bien ONCE, because they wanted me to and it seemed like fun. all of a sudden i’m being forced to sing until 3pm everyday. don’t tell me i look unhappy and emotionless. it’s because IM UNHAPPY AND EMOTIONLESS. the fun thing about hobbies is that you do them whenever you want to, whenever you feel like it. it gets ruined when someone expects you to do it because they want you to, rather than doing it because YOU want to.

im back home in arizona. i have had the most fun in the past four days than i have in the last two months away from home. and yes, that is solely because of the fact that i get to see my friends. i went to freshman orientation on friday and it was great. my friends and i went out to eat afterwards and get dutch bros.

it was perfect. i was having a blast. i could’ve been having a blast this entire summer. if i had stayed. yes, it’s hot as balls and it makes me wanna rip my hair out. but i wouldn’t mind the blistering heat one tiny bit, as long as i was in it with my friends. this is actually proven because i say outside that dutch bros in the heat with my best friend for like 2 hours just talking and it was a great conversation that i would do again over and over.

so yeah, when people ask me how my summer was, i tell them; yeah it definitely happened.

on sunday, bác trường took me, khang, nam and bien to cedar point. the following ensued;

im a big fan of rollercoasters, but i’ve only ever been to disney and universal. so this was very different and on a whole different level.

the first ride we went on was this green one where the track was above you rather than below. it was the easiest since it didn’t go crazy fast and the loops were fun. bien doesn’t like rollercoasters though so we had to keep convincing it would be fine while we were in line for every ride.

the second ride we went on was the millennium force. i’m pretty sure it’s the second tallest rollercoaster in the US. something like that. i was very excited. but whenever we’re in lines for rides, i will literally poop my pants. it’s literally so scary while you’re in line cause anticipation is one of the worse feelings of all time in my opinion. but once we got up to the peak of the coaster it was quite enjoyable. i really like screaming and that gross feeling you get in your stomach and when you’re screaming the air blasts through your face and makes your mouth all dry. best part.

then we went on this orange ride that took forever. the line was so long and the ride was stopped for a while. even though it’s ohio, it was literally melting cause it was really humid and i was just dead. the ride was fun though. nam and i sat in the back and we got thrown around a bunch.

and then we went on the biggest boy of all time. the steel vengeance. it’s not as tall as the millennium force but it’s huge and it’s got all this wood rigging underneath it and it looks pretty scary. but it’s so fun. it was actually probably the greatest roller coaster i have ever been on. bien almost didn’t go on it but we’re the manipulators of all time so he ended up coming with us. i also love putting my arms up on roller coasters but on this one i was so worried my arms would get cut off.

after that we went on this super tame and, pretty slow in comparison to the other rides, ride because it seemed like a good idea to go on one chill ride rather than a crazy mind boggling one.

and then, our last ride, was this swingy thing. i really wanted to go on it cause it looked cool. and it was. it went really high and it was literally just a giant swing. but it gave me and nam such bad headaches i worried that we would throw up on each other if we went on another ride.

so yeah, cedar point; 10/10 would go again, there’s like 20 other rides we didn’t go on.

 

 

bear with me as i try to recall the last few days of my stay with my grandparents.

my nana bought this diamond painting thing for tq and i to do. it’s one of those tedious and detailed crafts with very explicit and easy-to-follow instructions. i thought it was very enjoyable. plus, tq and i like to talk aimlessly while we do our little white woman crafts so it’s entertaining to say the least.

one night, can’t remember which, we had hotdogs. very yummy. i love mustard. tq doesn’t. nana also forced us to eat beans. neither tq nor i like beans but oh well. that night, we also watched despicable me 3. wonderful movie, never misses.

have i talked about how much tq hates the campground’s public showers? obviously, we both appreciate that there are public showers at all(one more than the other). i think they’re great, especially for being outside in the middle of the woods. it is a murky and the floor is always wet and suspicious but what more could you need, really? tq hated it. she hated that you have to avoid touching the floor, she hated the musky smell, and she hated the gross atmosphere of the whole thing. i quite liked it. it was funny to have a refreshing shower and then step out and there’s just millions of trees surrounding you.

my nana also bought this dream catcher kit, that was like the second day but i just realized i never wrote about it so here. it was awful. do not buy a dream catcher kit. the instructions were horribly written and not definitive in any way, it left too much to interpretation. and the kit itself, was very inconvenient to use. we finished it, of course. but nobody really wanted to look at it.

oh, there was this one night tq exposed all her secrets she had been keeping from me since like february. it was whiplashing. my jaw was literally on the floor and i was clawing at the ground asking for more details and more of her secrets. tq lore goes crazy, you should ask her if she prefers right or left, trust me.

nana also bought an embroidery kit. very fun. i love embroidery. that was, until i snapped the needle in half and had to pause the project. no worries, i’m currently in ohio and i brought the kit with me, along with new needles and i’m slowly but surely working on the kit again.

for our last night with my grandparents, we had this microwave fettuccine chicken alfredo. it was good. yknow what else was good. LEMON SELTZER. I LOVE THAT STUFF. i actually hate sparkling water but whenever it’s from my grandparents’ fridge it tastes like heaven and has the effect that drugs would. please get me a case of lemon seltzer and i’ll have 10/10 burps for life.

on the second day of being out in the wilderness, we took a hike.

it was the rim trail, whatever that means(nana and pappy kept saying “rim trail” so i’m assuming that’s the actual name of the trail although i have no evidence of this other than the fact that the trail was, in fact, on the rim of the mountain), so it overlooked all the other mountains. it was pretty cool to look at although it made me head kinda hurt just cause it’s such a large amount of elevating mountains and trees and i had been walking so much that everything constantly looked like it was running away from me.

when we got back we had the most bunk burgers you could ever imagine. you see, on our way back to the campsite we stopped by the local town’s grocery store. but my nana bought hot dog buns instead of burger buns so we had burgers with hot dog buns. in reality, it wasn’t as funny as i thought it was. but in my head, i hadn’t had serotonin nourishment from something other than tq for a while so this hotdog burger was really great. best burger i ever had.

nana and pappy’s friend came over again that night and brought over all the stuff to make s’mores. yeah i’m kind of a god at roasting marshmallows. don’t fact check that.

and then we went to bed.

my sleep schedule was crazy while we were camping. cause my grandparents wake up at like 7am and that basically means i also wake up at 7am. that’s roughly 4 hours before i normally wake up.

anyways, the next day, tq and i when on another morning hike with pappy. it was light, i barely remember it cause i was definitely not conscious. i remember it was a wednesday? tq and i laid on the hammock a lot. we also played a lot of jenga and poker. i think we had pork chops for dinner that night too. oh and we watched minions. that might’ve been the night before but whatever.

last sunday thucdan took connor tq and i out to have seafood boil as a reward for my outstanding grades this semester. it was delicious.

tq and i also had to bring our overnight bags because afterwards, thucdan took us to tastea which was where we were going to meet my nana and pappy to go stay with them for a week. it was smooth transaction as we made our way to our nana’s. that evening, we had something for dinner…i don’t remember what it was. i don’t think it was anything crazy because on monday we were going to be leaving to go camping so there wasn’t much food in the house. tq and i always sleep in the office when we’re at our nana’s. there’s one makeshift bed/chair/thingy and an air mattress. tq took the air mattress, which was arguably more comfortable because that chair/bed/thing kinda hurts my back and it’s real skinny and not as close to the ground as the air mattress so i nearly fall off of it a lot.

the next morning my grandparents woke up super early to finalize everything and get all the stuff into the trailer/truck. nana woke me and tq up a little bit before we left. i packed up our things quickly and we piled into the backseat of the truck with zoe, that dumb old deaf dog that tq hates/loves. it’s especially funny when tq will tell zoe she smells and that she’s dumb and old, but then kiss her and cuddle her and shower her in affection. it’s also our first camping trip without trip so that was a little somber.

it was pretty early in the morning for tq and i so we just slept the whole way up the mountain. well, i slept. tq was awake when we hit payson and actually starting advancing up the mountain. apparently we hit some huge traffic going up, and we got delayed by 30 minutes, but i wouldn’t know because i was asleep!

every time we go camping, we stay at canyon point, it’s this pretty nice campground with electricity and water and publice bathrooms and restrooms so pretty luxurious and glorious. it doesn’t take long for us to set up the trailer and get settled in at our spot. nana makes us sandwiches EVERY lunch. they’re pretty scrumptious. tq and i also got to choose chips from walmart from our stop in payson we also have those to ration out throughout the week along with 30 caprisuns. first day was a lot of chilling and setting up the hammock and our decorative ribbon. we also met some of our grandparents’ friends who were also up camping near our spot.

tq and i sleep on this second makeshift bed in the trailer. it’s the tiny dining table with cushions and a comforter on top. it’s pretty okay except for the fact that thucquyen has the biggest butt a 13 year old could ever harness and it’s always up in my space, even more so in the trailer.

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for spring break my mother sent me off to stay with my nana and pappy for 5 days. i don’t mind it as much as tq does so it’s more than safe to say i thoroughly enjoyed myself more than she did. they took me out to caddy for my nana while they golfed with friends. i kinda liked it, surprisingly enough. the grass is nice and the weather was perfect. throughout the stay i played with zoe for a few minutes and i painted a LOT. this is a pretty normal thing; for my nana to buy tq and i paint by number sets and we finish them during our stay. i like the paint by numbers a lot and i hang them up in my room when i finish them. we also went to the butterfly museum one day, which was really cool. when nana had asked tq if she wanted to go, she said no cause tq HATES bugs so nana took me instead. very fun i like bugs very much. there was also this st patricks day parade which was very very thrilling(as thrilling as it gets around millions of old people).

For winter break, my family dedicated a lot of money towards a 10 day Vietnam trip. Everyone was pretty excited for it, considering that most of my family hadn’t been back to Vietnam in years.

TD, TQ and my dad went a few days before my mom and I left since I had a few finals I needed to take before being able to go on break. It was a quick and seamless flight to LA, and then to Taiwan, and then to Saigon. I mostly slept on the way there. Because of time zones, we got there at 10am and my body wasn’t very accustomed to all the different time zones we had recently been in. The day we arrived my mom and I immediately met up with her cousins and went out for food. Very good food. I love Vietnam. After that we walked around the streets of our hotel for a while just so my mom and I could watch around. I’m not too sure what else we did that day, let me think. I do not remember.

That night, we met up with my dad and my sisters at the hotel and we settled in. There was a MiniStop(that corner store you see in the kdramas omg)underneath our building so we frequently bought snacks from there throughout the trip. The hotel itself was very nice, spacious and pretty clean, also a really great view from all the rooms.

Yknow this trip was about 3 months ago and I probably should’ve written this blog sooner so that my memories would be somewhat fresh, but that’s nearly impossible now because I’m #drawingablank on what we did in chronological order, so I’m just gonna go off the rails from here.

We met up with Di Mi and Di Ti quite a few times, and their kids. Very cute. Di Mi has her 2 daughters; Kiwi and Miki, and Di Ti has her 3 kids; Ken, Tiger, and Ruby. I actually have no idea what their real names are because Vietnamese names are a little confusing to me because why does one person have so many different names they go by? Anyways, we also met up with Angel’s sisters, Nghi and Diep, a lot too. One day, they took my sisters and I out for the day around the city. We went to the mall and a few shopping centers, bingsu, and this cute little DIY activity shop. One night they also took us and Kiwi and Miki to a dog/cat cafe which was the greatest thing ever. I am severely allergic to dogs and I was, in fact, a sneezing mess and by the we got home and I had to take 2 very aggressive showers one after the other to make it stop. But it was so worth it. The cats were very cute and there were just so many dogs. It was also pretty cool to hang out with family members that I barely ever saw. I got along with Nghi pretty well, as usual, it was a little awkward at first but when we had to sit next to each other in a car it all came back naturally.

It’s also pretty cool to see my mom back in her home country. She seems very comfortable and at peace there. It kinda dawned on me that these people were her cousins, in the same way that Nhi or Khang and Nam are my cousins. Except the difference is that my mom lives across the ocean from them, and I see my family relatively pretty often. My mom’s family is pretty lively and funny, I can tell how close she is with them despite being so physically far.

At the start of this semester, my English teacher had us write a short essay on an impactful moment in our lives that made us think differently about our lives. I wrote it about this trip. It’s not my first time in Vietnam but I think I will always remember it more because of how much older I am. In that short essay, I wrote about how I realized how much my mom had left behind when she moved to America. Driving through streets and seeing my mom point out where she had gone to school, the swimming pool she went to, her old house, I remembered how my mom had a life before I was born. In fact, it was kind of an epiphany. My mom has also been 15 years old, just like me, and she went to high school, and she went out with her friends too. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I understood how much of a role she had in my life, despite only knowing me for less than half her life. Here I was, in a foreign country where I had distant roots in, and my mom had just melted into the scenery. All the family members I met seemed like a tiny part of my mom’s personality, and I cannot imagine how she has to live so far from them. In the 10 days we were in Vietnam, I saw my mom come to life around her family, her childhood.

Yeah it was a pretty cool trip.

Around the end of January, leading into February, I went to Orlando with DECA for a Sports Entertainment and Marketing Conference. It was interesting and very informative. Of course, we also got to go to Universal and Magic Kingdom.

It was amazing. We got there at like 6pm and settled into the hotel rooms pretty quickly. We didn’t have anything we had to do that night so the advisors let us do whatever we wanted until curfew. The rooms were separated by gender and there were 4 people to a room. My room had a connecting door to the other hotel room so it basically just the 8 of us moving through the 2 rooms constantly. I went on a night walk around the hotel with my roommate Joyce and we also walked past the bajillion pools, where we saw a bunch of the boys swimming.  And then we had to be in our designated rooms at 11pm, so all 8 of us just watched a movie until we all fell asleep.

My first official day of the trip started very tardily. We had to be at the conference at 8am so the call time was 7:30am. Nobody was able to wake me up. I’m a pretty deep sleeper. I woke up at 7:20am, which is totally fine because I can get ready in under 5 minutes. I packed these Doc Marten-ish shoes, a short sleeved black turtleneck, and plaid dress pants. I was gonna bring a blazer but I forgot. The conference itself took like 3 hours and a lot of us fell asleep during it. It was just a bunch of different people from the marketing/PR/etc. teams of Universal talking about their job and how they got there/what their job basically is. But after the conference, we went back to the hotels to change in like 15 minutes, and then we were off to the park!

I’ve never been to Universal but a lot of my friends had been(from the  previous DECA trips) so we were just getting through all the good rides pretty fast. I love rollercoasters. Although I do tend to freak out a bit when we’re in line, I will never skip a ride. We went on The Hulk rollercoaster first which was a great start to the day. We also did the Spiderman 3D ride, and then we went to Hogsmeade. OMG I loved Hogsmeade, I’m not the biggest Harry Potter fan, but I would say I’m pretty into it. Hogsmeade was so visually pleasing and the butter beer tasted amazing. We went on Hagrid’s ride, which was probably my favorite, and we also went on another 3D Hogwarts ride.

If you don’t know what the Velocicoaster is, it’s basically the newest Universal ride, Jurassic Park themed, and very very very scary. It goes like 155 feet high and  goes 70 mph. It also loops a bunch and there’s corkscrews and the launching thingy. Basically we all wanted to go on this ride really bad. So we’re waiting in line, there’s like 9 of us, and our friend Kathrine is also with us, but she has told us over and over again that she will NOT be riding the Velocicoaster. Huge bummer, Kathrine is a party pooper. But anyways, we’re waiting in this line and I am, as usual, freaking out. I was freaking out a lot more than usual tbh, but that was probably because in the line there was a section where the rollercoaster actually zooms past and I was just staring at that the whole time. Eventually, we get near the checkpoint, where we drop off our stuff, and Kathrine has been watching me freak out this whole time so she goes “Okay guys, I’ll go on it.” And we all freaked out and started celebrating and we asked her why she changed her mind so suddenly and she says, “Well Thuc seems more scared than I am, and if she can do it, so can I.” I dunno how to feel about that statement but I’m still very glad she came along. On the coaster itself, Kathrine and I sat together(lol) and our friend Ally, who has been telling us that the coaster isn’t actually that bad and she loves it, sits in the row in front of us, the very front row. Right before the coaster does the super scary launch thingy with the countdown, Ally turns around to look at Kathrine and I, and she goes, “This is actually the scariest ride I’ve ever been on, and I hate it.” RIGHT AFTER SHE SAYS THAT THE COASTER TAKES OFF. At this point there is so much wind in my face and adrenaline rushing through my body I cannot make out coherent thoughts, except for the fact that the view from the top of tracks is beautiful, and absolutely gut-wrenching when we drop so fast and twist and turn, and I made sure to scream out many curses towards Ally and her entire bloodline for the next 5 generations. After we got off my hands were literally shaking I kid you not. This strengthened Kathrine and I’s relationship. Also, after you go on a rollercoaster and scream a bunch, your mouth turns out very dry, I realized.

After that crazy experience, we went on our last ride of the day, a water one. While we were walking up through the empty lines, we asked a worker if you got absolutely drenched on this ride, and he just nodded at us. So, I sat at the very back(it was sort of a log ride), to ensure I didn’t get too wet. WRONG! I got soaked, from head to toe. Mind you, it’s the end of January, and about 8pm, so you can imagine I was freezing my butt off. But then I decided to run back to the rendezvous point and boom, I was basically completely dry.

Despite that being our last ride, the night was far from over. DECA would be paying for our dinner at Universal’s Chocolate Factory. OMG it was the best dinner I have ever had. We all got our entrees and sundaes and tons of cheesy fries. There were about 24 of us, so I can imagine what the check looked like. And then afterwards, while we were leaving, I noticed Ally had stayed back with Kharlo and he looked like he was whispering something at her so I watched the whole scene go down. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but Ally was shaking her head and giggling and Kharlo looked like he was about to deal drugs. To my surprise, Ally gives in to whatever Kharlo was saying and she SWIPES THE GIANT BOTTLE OF TOBASCO OFF THE TABLE AND SHOVES IT IN HER BAG. Then, she turned to see me standing there, trying not to pee my pants from laughing. Walking back to the buses was the funniest thing ever because we were all just trying to not look suspicious in front of the advisors while Ally walked around looking like a narc.

When we got back to the hotel everyone was exhausted. We all showered and got changed and shared our silly little stories of the day. Around 12:30am everyone was knocked the freak out.

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