My sister called the ambulance at 7:40PM on July 7th, 2009 for my dad. After ten hellish days, my dad officially checked out of the hospital on July 17th, 2009 at approximately 5:30PM. To celebrate, I took a few pictures at the hospital seeing how I haven’t used it since free cheesecake day at the Cheesecake Factory. (Because unlike the rest of my family, I don’t enjoy taking pictures of people hooked up to IVs, or taking pictures of the fluid drained from their lungs.)

Trang & I saw this super mad interesting contraption.

zOMGAH, directions to the cafeteria so we won’t get lost (again!)

Cafeteria food, yummy!

Trang & her overpriced (but yummy) dessert D:

Trang ruining my shot.

Yeah, I fail at jumping…

Checking out!

I was standing in front of the sushi holding a tray like a nerd while Trang was behind me debating whether she should get her silly dessert or not. Up comes two guys and one of them do the “hitting on” move, AKA putting their elbow on something to face you. In this case, he uncomfortably put his arm on the cooler thing while his other friend cornered me in and I was like ‘=____=;;~ crap, what do these buggers want?’

Then the guy with his elbow up asked,“Oh, can you tell us where you got that tray from?”

HAR HAR. Funniest ice breaker ever. So I showed them, and I quickly retreated to Trang’s side. They then later asked us to sit with them to eat our lunch, to which we awkwardly declined. Anyways. . .

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THIS EXPERIENCE
01 Coworkers at not only people you work with, but people who care & love you. Goes for my coworkers as well as my dad’s coworkers.
02 Parents DO know whats best for you.
03 Sometimes something traumatic will make a person change, or they will stay the same.
04 BOTH of my parents are super heroes.
05 Never take anything for granted & please tell your parents that you love them.
06 I love my dad for deciding to quit smoking because he loves his family.
07 I love my mom for being strong when the rest of us couldn’t.
08 I can’t believe it took something like this to bring most of my family together.
09 I know that if my dad didn’t make it, then I wouldn’t have been able to have the heart to heart conversation that we did.
10 Sometimes I’m glad doctors are wrong. All three of them that said, “He might not make it.”
11 My dad is stubborn & will always be stubborn, like when he wants to walk without us to help support him.
12 Even when you feel like the world is ending, sometimes other people think their problems are more important.
13 Those who love you the most will always understand & wait for you.
14 And then there are those who are just curious and want to know everything.
15 People cope differently.
16 Yes, somethings people need to have dealt with before to be able to understand & relate.