I haven't been able to blog at all because my computer is being used to make our videos. Plus we never have any free time, and if we do it's usually used to sleep or read.

I'll do what I can though.

Peace and Love,

Lance

iPhone Pics

Charlotte North Carolina:

Downtown Charlotte

Matt was giving us a little dancing show at his house. I'm pretty sure he was dancing to the Nelly song "Hot in hurr!

Paul is combing his beard. hmmm...

Washington DC

We took the train into DC

Abe! 

This was so amazing. Just standing there brought on a wave of emotion. This is truly what our country is about. 

Matt from our host home had a little hermit crab named Ford

My first time at a  sushi restaurant (it actually didn't have any fish in it). It's Chicken Maki

$3.76! Can you believe it?!

You probably can't read it but it says "Speed Limit enforced by Aircraft"

These guys reminded me of the movie August Rush. 

I just thought these colors looked nicely together. A nice treat for Paul and I.

Monday, June 16th

Today we planned to hook-up with a girl who was going to show us around to all the different shelters and stuff, but that fell through... So, we sat around the and finally jus decided to go to a shelter and walk in and talk to somebody. I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't a hundred percent on the idea... but 2-1, I lost.

We showed up to the "Uptown Shelter" and met an amazing woman named Linda Miller. Was the volunteer coordinator for the Uptown Shelter, and she fell in love with our project. She told us to come in the next day and she would find something -anything- for us to do to help. We were really excited that this worked out and I swallowed my pride. 

After visiting the Uptown Shelter we decided to take a train into Charlotte and walk around the city and do some sight seeing.

My breath was taken away by the massive that reminded me of Jack's beanstalk... Just by how they stretched towards the sky and never seemed to end... They rose all the way to the clouds... And I swear if you were to go to the tops of these buildings and look out, you'd see a land full of giants living in the clouds.

We walked around, taking pictures and window-shopping, when we came across a little park with a waterfall. The park was dotted with metal tables and chairs, and there were homeless men playing chess. I walked to the other side of the waterfall and found some homeless men playing Texas Hold 'em. I walked right them; a little bit of fear and shame began to flow like a stream through my veins.  I walked into a building trying to make it look like I knew what I was doing, only to find out that everything in the building was already closed.

I turned around, a little embarrassed, and walked over to the men playing poker. There was a little pale man, with red hair covered by a cheap NY hat, that seemed to a bit big for him, but you could tell he was proud just to be able to own it. It was easy for me to see that this man ran things by the way he spoke and how he moved. There were about 5 others sitting there laughing and enjoying themselves gambling with quarters and dollars.

The little pale man saw me standing watching and yelled over to me and asked "You wanna' play?! Come on! sit down! We'll deal you in!" So I pulled out two 1 dollar bills and placed them on the table, they changed me out with quarters and we started to play. They were so fast. By the time it would usually take me to shuffle and deal, we had already played three hands. I was having trouble keeping up, but the loud little red-headed man helped me to keep track of everything.

I ended up losing fifty cents on the first hand, and then a dollar. I only had fifty cents left and threw that in. I was all in. I ended up winning that hand with a queen high. So, it was totally all luck; no skill involved whatsoever. I had two dollars and fifty cents and was ready to take my fifty cent winning and leave, but how could I do that? I felt bad taking from the guys haha. So, I sat down and played a few more hands.

During one hand, between a little man from Thailand and the little guy with the NY hat and red hair, things got pretty intense. During the river card (which, if you don't know anything about this poker game, is the last card drawn) the little man from Thailand threw down his cards declaring that he had won and took all the money without letting anybody see his cards. The rest of the table, excluding myself, went insane. Expletives were being hurled everywhere and I seriously feared for my life. But for some strange reason I knew that the other guys had my back if anything had come my way. I didn't have any physical evidence that they would atnd up for me, but as soon as I as walked over to that table, some 30 to 45 minutes ago, and opened up to them and talked to them I knew that there was a connection.

The first day was amazing... and very intense. All-in-all a good first day.

Peace and Love,

Lance

Wifi finally...

We now finally have wifi here in Maryland and the Steen's house.

I've been trying to keep blogging. Writing my posts out in Microsoft Word planning to just coppy paste everything onto my blog, but it turns out that-that isn't possible, or at least I don't know how to do it.

So here are some pictures -that were supposed to go on my first blog- to tide you over until I write everything out:

Paul sleeping like a little baby

Little Matty takin' a snooze

Some random kids playing a bubble gum baseball game in Zaxby's

Matt's Dad and his hobbies

Peace and Love,

Lance

First Day on the Road!

Hello all!

We left Florida yesterday to embark on a journey of a lifetime. To Laugh. To Cry. To Breath. To Learn. And most of all to Love. (If you don't know about my trip, check out Behindthesignproject.com)

Matt and Paul left at 4:45am from Lakeland, Florida and picked me from Ocala at 8:00am. My stepdad, Dave, made us an amazing frenchtoast and cheese breakfast (don't knock it 'til you try it). We left my house around 8:45. We had a little trouble packing all of our junk. Paul didn't pack very much, but I think me and Matt have over packed. Or as I like to put it: Paul under-packed! and me and Matt are just right.

The trip was pretty easy, especially becausce we have three people to drive. But we did end up taking a detour through Savannah, Georgia.... We got a bunch of coupons for free stuff from Chik-fil-a, so we're doing everything we can to eat there so we don't have to buy food. So we found a "Chik-fil-a locater" on the internet and found one. The map wasn't drawn to scale so we were going way out of our way, but we figured it would be worth to save the money in the long run, BUT.... We realized that today is SUNDAY! and Chik-fil-a isn't open on Sunday! Oh well, good laughs and a good detour through Savannah, Georgia.

We're staying with Matt's parents in a lovely country log-cabin house that Matt's dad built himself. It's very beautiful and makes for a very nice beginning. Matt's dad is just like Matt, except very-very country! His mom is the sweetest country woman I've ever met. She's this stout blonde woman with a personality that doesn't seem like it could be contained in that body of hers. 

I took some pictures from iPhone, from the trip and our host home that I was going to upload on the blog, bug I'm having some trouble with the internet here, but there will be pictures soon. I plan on uploading iPhone pictures ever day that I can! So check back soon!

I love you,

-Lance

Alby the racist dragon!

(I couldn't think of an actual title for this one)

I have way too many friends... Actually I have way to many acquaintances... I love my friends, but I don't feel like I know them all that well, or like I feel I should... I have so many close-friends that I'm not really close to... I have so many friends that have so much to offer, but I just haven't given them the opportunity to give...

I'm gonna start (it's stinks because I'm about to leave for a month and a half, but I'll just pick up where I'll leave off) hanging out with my friends one-on-one more often... People are more open about life and about how they feel when they don't have the constant pressure of a group needing them to be happy, funny, and fine all the time... People are more willing to tell you how they actually feel when you actually want to know... I'm tired of this "Hey, how are you doing?" followed by a habitual "I'm great! How are you?" Followed by a "Great!.... See ya!" Why ask someone how they are doing if you really don't care to hear the answer... It's become a bad habit of our generation to greet someone with a "How are ya?" or a "How's life?"... If someone asks me how I am doing, I'm going to tell them... If I ask someone how they are doing it's because I really want to know... I do understand that some situations call for some restraint on how much you tell some body, but for the most part, it's time to actually care... Anyway, before I took the rabbit trail... I want to be more open to my friends and have them be more open with me... I want to start taking my friends to lunch, or going out to coffee with them or grabbing some breakfast with them, and really pore into to them and more importantly let them pore into me... 

I really just have a new love for "people"... I just want to love people, and spend (real) time with people, but before I can do that with people I don't know, I want to love and get to know my own friends... My own brothers and sisters... My own family!

To all of my friends that read this... I Love you