Amaris Woo

This first half of this covers the Modern Toilet Restaurant in Ximending and a cute food place. The second half covers Huashan Creative Park, Dazzling Cafe, and Yang Ming Shan!

On the sixth day, I went to the Miniatures Museum of Taiwan. I heard it about it online so I decided to visit ^^

[June 2015]

Many of the 2015 Taiwan photos were taken on my iPhone 5c and unedited.

I've been to SFO multiple times but never saw how awesome the architecture was until now!

tijuana

[July 2013 - 2015]

This covers my time with the Tijuana Ministry from St. Julie's! For one week in July three years in a row, I went with some volunteers to go to Tijuana. There were various programs. For instance, some people worked with the construction crew while others spent time with the local mothers, children, etc.

Each year we lived in a place known as "The Dome." It has two floors, housing anywhere from 70 to almost 100 volunteers each year.

In 2013, we visited Friendship Park. This place is practically at the border that divides the US and Mexico.

On the drive back, we passed by crosses like these. The photo doesn't do it justice; there were hundreds, if not thousands, of crosses. Someone on the trip told us that each one represented someone who died trying to cross the border in search of a better life.

We had different construction projects each year. This includes building many houses from scratch, extending a chapel, and building shells of houses.

House blessings happen after the houses are built. A priest (one of our volunteers) would bless the home and give the keys to the family. It was always very powerful to watch :)

I only spent half a day in construction. Most of my time these three weeks were spent in the Children's Program!

^ Taken by my friend Irene, who also went those three years.

There would be anywhere from 70 to over 200 kids attending these programs. We'd do arts and crafts with them and give them lunch. We stayed at the same site for the first year, but for the other two years, we went to a different site in the afternoon to spend time with even more kids :)

There were several rooms dedicated to the crafts, and each room had a different project each day.

Each year, these trips would open my eyes more and more to people around me. We went to do good for the people there, but they taught us a lot as well. The people there would always smile no matter what condition they were in. Some kids would give us the crafts that they made, and they would help their younger siblings with their projects.

Thanks for checking out this post :)

Do good!

Taken by one of the volunteers: