Thank you LEAP

San Francisco was amazing. The students had a great time and I learned so much more than I expected to. Our schedule was jam-packed with great educational and community experiences but overall we just had a great time bonding.

With that said, a big THANK YOU!! to all the generous, kind-hearted, funny, intelligent, beautiful (hehe) people over at LEAP, the board members and LIA interns who contributed to the success of the trip. The students and Summer Youthe Empowerment Program (SYEP) staff all signed a card and left it at LEAP's office so that anyone visiting can see it. Thank you truly.

After our successful fundraising efforts, the Korea Times visited our fundraiser and our picture appeared on the (Korean) news!! Hurray!! ^___^ We raised about $500 from the fundraiser itself, so it turned out to be a huge success.

Equipped with new tea-making skills and plenty of snacks, we began our road trip and ended up at our first stop: the National Chavez Center in Keene, California. Here, we learned about Chavez's passion for farm laborer's rights using nonviolent methods and inspiring the world with the Great Grape Strike. When we got there, we accidentally took a picture standing on top of his grave! without knowing but the tour guide didn't get too mad.

We arrived in Oakland, CA around 5:20 pm. Our first stop was the Korean Community Center of the East Bay (KCCEB). We met up with the Korean youth group there and learned about their projects, educating the youth community on domestic violence and date rape.

After that, we went to Su Ra restaurant and enjoyed a delicious, traditional Korean style meal. In our reflections, Jae wrote an entire entry on just the food we had during our trip. yummm.

We ended the night at the Golden Gate Bridge. Unfortunately, the man who took our picture could not find the flash button ^^;;

Saturday morning was a lot of fun. We had a great breakfast with orange juice that cost $3.50 (go inflation!) and started on our tour of San Francisco's Chinatown. We were led by Chinatown Allyway Tours which is a youth program from the Chinatown Community Development Center. We learned about how these youths used adopt-an-alley project to clean up the streets and make a better Chinatown for everyone who lived there.

The famous I-Hotel! which was, of course renovated. Our guide told us 8000 people applied for a space in this 150 unit low-incoming housing development. We also walked by Gordon J. Lau Elementary school, the historic "oriental" school created for Asian students in 1859.

Craziness ensued as we hurried to finish our delicious Dim Sum lunch at the famous Gold Mountain Restaurant and scrambled to make it to the ferry on time. Unfortunately, only one group made it on and Christable teacher was the one supervising!!

After our ferry trip to Alameda, we met with the other group who drove over there and spent some time at Alameda beach.

Mathew ended up getting a little too comfortable in the sand...

Afterwards, we ended up at the Korean Church in Alameda (sorry I will get their name soon) where we watched the Bay Area's first Oral History of Korean American Immigraton. We watched this documentary that showed the perspectives of Korean senior citizens in America and their experiences in this country. Afterwards, we talked about the generation gap between old and younger Korean American generations, and what steps we might take towards closing this hole.

We ended Saturday night at Caroline's apartment in Oakland with the movie Enchanted, that our charming, tough Kenny brought to watch.

The guys pretended like they were unhappy, but we know they were singing along in their heads.

Sunday morning, we made a final trip to the infamous Fisherman's Wharf in downtown SF. We shopped, looked around, played arcade games (Dance Dance Revolution!) and made our way back home.

(Kenny towering over everyone in the middle)

As they say, the drive is half the fun. In this case, the drive back...?

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this trip's success. All of us, the students, staff, and parents at the Korean Resource Center are very grateful for everyone's help.

SYE~P!!!