20 Random Facts

Another long overdue post. I was tagged last year with posting 20 very random facts about myself. Here it goes:

1. I'm a HUGE procrastinator. But apparently not as bad as someone whose name *cough* starts with a R *cough* and ends with *cough* a L *cough* who still has not gotten her list up *cough*. Need more hints? Think: like, coffee, dude, old people over 25. :P
2. By nature, I'm an introvert and I hesitate to take leadership roles unless there's really no one else who can do it. I feel more comfortable working in the background, with small groups of people, and feel drained when surrounded by large crowds for people. I need a lot of quiet time alone.
3. I get cranky if I don't drink coffee... or if I have to write.
4. I guess I'm pretty secretive. I can take a secret to my grave and my deepest thoughts will never be shared in this blog :P I write them on my own personal journal :)
5. There are three of us kids in my family, and I am the oldest. My two brothers are Tomas and Andres, and we were all born in different decades.
6. Growing up in Guatemala, I went to an all girls school that was founded with the specific purpose of training bilingual (Spanish/English) secretaries. I was the only Asian in the entire school!
7. My family left Guatemala because we got assaulted at gunpoint twice and had our car window broken once within a period of 2 months. In one of the assaults, the guy actually fired at my mom and I but thankfully, he missed.
8. I have the most non-traditional Chinese dad ever! While other fathers were strict and instructed their kids to study hard, etc. mine used to tell us stories about how he would walk to school with his brothers and sneak out when they weren't looking. He would skip school and hide in movie theaters until classes were over!
9. When I was 16, people thought that my youngest brother Andres, who was 5 at the time, was my son. Ten years later, people thought I was his girlfriend! Everybody also thinks that Tomas is older than me.
10. I help promote the "female stereotype" by being horrible at parallel parking but also help break such stereotypes by hating to shop. And when I HAVE to go to shopping, I'm more drawn to the power tools section than to the clothing section. I want to learn woodworking.
11. I've had two surgeries, both on the left side of my body, both involving joints and due to sport injuries. When I was 12, my left elbow was dislocated in gymnastics as I hit the ground in a handstand position after letting go of the high bar. I was supposed to grab the lower one but missed it. They had to put in two 10 cm long nails to hold my elbow together. Two years ago, I tore my ACL while skiing, probably made it worse by going skydiving, but didn't get it checked out until my knee completely gave away while I tried to do back tucks on a trampoline. I had to get my ACL reconstructed.
12. I didn't have a sense of humor until I started working in Michael and Sandra's lab. The twisted conversations, the pranks, and just the comradeship that we shared there is something that I will forever carry in a very special part of my heart. I miss you guys like you can't imagine!
13. Along with Ron, Roger, Kurtis, and Stacey, I helped break the Guinness World Record for... oh... kids reading this... ehem... yeah, just ask me if you're not a kid :) Nothing bad or illegal, but... yeah. Suffice to say that it was also a fundraiser for Kingston charities.
14. One of my most treasured gifts is the card that the lab made for my Msc graduation. They each drew part of the card with inside jokes and shared memories. There were several drawings of me kidnapping babies (ehemm). A photograph of me staring at the birds that we had in the lab, with a bubble saying "would you write my thesis for me pleeeeeease?" courtesy of Michael (my supervisor). There was Ron's depiction of the process of my "corruption" by the lab, starting with "Agueda the Angel" through several "incidents" that happened over the years, ending with a picture of me with horns, smoking and drinking (IMPORTANT NOTE: for the kids reading this, he's just exaggerating ok? I'm not a smoker or an alcoholic!). I love that card!
15. The 5 months that I spent in Honduras in 2004 were the most life altering, eye opening, humbling experience in my life. I went there thinking that I wanted to help others, but instead was saved myself. Words fail me to describe the impact that those 5 months had on my life. The people that I met there and the circumnstances that we faced together taught me so much about life in its rawest form. It gave me a better understanding of myself, and for the first time in my life, God was real to me.
16. I always thought of myself as a low maintenance person until I went to Honduras. There, I realized what a spoiled little princess I was. I was taking so much for granted, from water and electricity to my education and all the opportunities that I have been granted in life. What I saw and experienced there gave me a new appreciation for life that I wish I knew how to share with others.
17. I was baptized in a river in Honduras on March 2004 by Joe and Charles, two northamerican missionaries there that, along with many others, guided me to the right path and served as my spiritual counselors as I started my walk with Christ.
18. I truly, honestly believe that the most precious things in life are invisible and cannot be bought.
19. I've since been back to Honduras once for a short term missions in 2005 and also got to serve for a week in Mexico with the most amazing group of people (yes, that's you kids!) that continue to be an inspiration to me to this day.
20. I'm planning on going back to school to study Global Health.