Rock The Era Day 1

From July 23rd-25th I was in Philly for the weekend!
We had many obstacles we had to go through (My New York Zone Taiko Team)
But, in the end, we managed to pull through on the night of the 25th and it became a life-changing moment.

*What kind of obstacles?
Well on the 23rd, we gathered at 11AM sharp! and we were "supposed" to get on the bus at 12:30PM the latest. The bus didn't show until 1:30. I mean personally, that was fine with me! I got to talk to a lot of old and new friends. Met a lot of great people and started bonding and bonding because basically, I'm pretty much going to be with them the entire weekend. They were awesome people! This event was all for our religious organization, Nichiren Buddhism : SGI-USA. (No, It's not even close to being an all asian group buddhism) It's completely multi-cultural.
->RAIN!? It started raining and POURING HARD!! The bus still wasn't here yet! It was around 1. We were getting worried about our fearless driver! So we gathered and chanted(prayed) for the safety of the driver etc.etc. Amazingly, the rain suddenly stopped. It was POURING HARD. But we just wanted to chant for the bus to arrive and we could get on safely and get there safely with no accidents. In the end, It showed up safe. We got on and we hit the road! THE WHEELS ON THE BUS GO 'ROUND AND 'ROUND!
->TRAFFIC!? Yes, traffic. The best part of driving. Since this is a huge event, we gathered 11,000 Youth and rougly 3500 performers! Which meant A LOT OF BUSES! We had buses leaving from every umm, every borough. I was obvious in Queens. There was a manhattan bus with a bunch of people on it that arrived in Philly at 3-4 ish! We were still stuck in New York City! There was some CRAZY traffic which caused us to be stuck in the city for like 3hours. I decided to give up and I went to sleep. A sudden step on the brake woke me up because we were about to hit another bus! But, I was happy when I woke up besides my eyes blurred and the urge to pee really badly on top of this horrible thirst I had. I had a bottle of water with me, but I was at the point where I really needed to pee! and went "screw it, my bladder's about to explode! The water can wait, Must pee" Of course, It was a coach bus, which meant there was a bathroom on the bus! For those who've been on a coach bus, you KNOW how bad those bathrooms are. I didn't even want to bother. I really needed to go. People kept telling me how bad it was in there though, so I just tried sleeping it off again. I knocked out for a good hour or too, I woke up to ->BEAUTIFUL weather, yes, BEAUTIFUL! It was clear skies and SUNNY! I then went online to check the weather in Philly and it showed me 100. LOL at that point, I was like thank goodness we're indoors for 75% of the time. And it said it was going to be 110 high the next day! I went back to sleep after! LOL. I woke up from an announcement from our bus chief saying that we're almost there! HORRAY!
->JOKES!? Oh boy, while we were approaching the college university campus, there was still a while to go! So, they decided to start telling jokes on the bus! There were like 4 bus chiefs on the bus, and lucky me!? I knew all of them! So who'd they volunteer first? Yep, Moi. x-x. I really didn't know what to say, so I said. "All right! My joke is how I met you guys!" and everyone Boo'd me and I felt very much hated. LOL I realized how messed up that sounded afterwards but they started to pick on me all at once later, it was so rowdy. I wanted to just get there and PEE. I did mention I really needed to pee right? LOL. The neighborhood around it was pretty broken down. I was surprised. It reminded me of the ghetto. My eyes were twitching as we approached closer and closer because it WAS DEFINITELY not what I was expecting! So yadda yadda yadda, we finally arrived where we were supposed to get off and unload the bus. But, the driver ended up driving around and making u-turns because there were WAY TOO MANY buses there. About twenty minutes passed before we actually got to get off. Did I say I needed to pee? :/ LOL I've been holding it in the wholeeeeeee time oh boy.

->AT LAST! ARRIVAL! or not? We finally MADE IT! Six hours on the bus and we're finally in PHILLAYDEELFEEAH. The moment i stepped out of the bus, the INTENSITY OF THE HEAT WOOSHED PAST ME. It was BURNING! at 100degrees and sunny, I was melting in all seriousness. but anyway, we stood outside with our luggage because it was a huge HUGE mess. The staff workers aka Byakuren/Soka Group/Gajokai. That was what they were called, they were running around everywhere trying to direct us here and there. We walked a couple of blocks to our dorms after noticing we were walking the opposite direction for about 2-3 minutes. We got into our dorms and the lobby was PACKED. There was like HUNDREDS of people in there trying to get into their dorm room. Let's keep it short, there was a big mistake with everyone and basically, a lot of us weren't on the list of getting rooms. So it was a big WTF. About an hour into waiting, we finally got keys to our dorms! It was around 7PM. Almost 8. We finally got our keys, and went to the elevator and then suddenly got stopped and were told to go back because we didn't have these friggen WRISTBANDS -_-..Those wristbands were to indicate where you're living and where you eat for food. So it was very vital. So my friend at the moment flipped out and started screaming out a shit of load curses LOL We all had to tell him to relax. I still need to pee by the way. I've been really holding it in the whole time. We couldn't take it anymore, luckily, one of our friends had a room and they took all our luggage into their room so we didn't have to carry around 3days worth of crap with us everywhere we went. We had no chance at our dorms, so we all went to go eat dinner.

->FINALLY FOOD! WAIT! Finally, after the long ride to philly and the huge mess of the dorms, even though we still didn't have rooms yet, we got to eat. It was a huge event with thousands of performers so we had to travel in PACKS, which meant we would lose a lot of people in the process. BAD!? Yes, very. But regardless, we made huge circles back and forth looking for the right cafeteria to eat and everything. When we finally got there, it was PACKED as usual. I was totally expecting it, they told us we got there late so we had like fifteen minutes to eat and I was like...you're kidding me. So I grabbed as much as I could eat. We all sat down and ate together but managed to stay there for a solid 40minutes which made us very happy! The food there wasn't bad at all though! We were happy with what we got. Later after dinner, we traveled in our pack again and went to a Pavillion. the place was HUGEEEEEE. Like dead serious huge. It was like a massive dome with INTENSE AC. I've never felt such ac in...EVER in ever...that made no sense. ANYWAY. It was like below 0 in there but it felt good ebcause it was burning ass outside. There were already hundreds and hundreds of people inside already chanting in unison before we got to the actual meeting and kickoff.

->HOLYHELLMADPEOPLEMADLOUD! The kickoff meeting started! THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE SCREAMING AND YELLING AND CRYING HERE AND THERE! It felt GREAT. Everyone was so energized even from the rides here and everything. It felt SO GOOD. It was just an amazing feeling. So that went on for an hour or two, and it was like almost midnight. With all the people yelling and screaming though, I felt good about myself. We exitted around like midnight literally, and walked back to our dorm. I was basically running on adrenaline. We got up early and we had a long day and now this! The sad thing was that, we knew we didn't even have a place to sleep yet. I'm going to cut to the chase. WE got to our dorms, and we were assigned rooms FINALLY! and we got our wristbands FINALLY! It was around 1 after waiting for our keys because we weren't the only ones! I was partnered up for a 2-man room with my friend! We walked up together and we ended up walking into someone LIVING IN THE ROOM ALREADY. So we were like oh shit. LOL and we're like oh maybe it's an accident. So we walk back down to the lobby, wait AGAIN for the keys which took like another 20minutes and went back upstairs and guess what? MORE PEOPLE WERE IN OUR ROOM! So I was like, you've got to be KIDDING ME! so I went back downstairs with very negative attitude because it was REALLY getting late and I just wanted to shower and stuff.

->Strangers? Caught SHOWERING!? When we got back to the lobby, we found out there were no more 2-man rooms, but all the rooms were fit for two people! So that meant you would have a COMPLETE stranger in your room. so I was like uh! hell no! :D so I called up some friends to ask if I could sleep on their floor or something because I was at the point where I was like I just need to sleep. I don't give a fuck. LOL But then, one of my friends said her brother had a room to himself! So I'm like THANKS FOR TELLING ME NOW! :l so I rushed up there, a BEATIFUL SOOTHING ROOM ALL TO MYSELF! I was SO RELIEVED. I dropped everything when I finally got there and called my loving girlfriend that was with me all the way texting me for support. honestly couldn't have coped with all the situations this day without her. I love you honey! :D (If you're reading this) I told her I was going to take a shower and then call her back! So I stepped into the shower, I was midway done and I hear someone OPENING MY DOOR I was like, you're kidding me...I got dressed like instantly and walked out and they said oh, if you're in here that means the other rooms empty right? So I explained to them the situation and they let me stay, but before that, they told me I had to GO BACK DOWN. and I flipped out and said I'm sorry I can't and told them what I went through. SO I RAN BACK INTO MY SHOWER AND FINISHED IT QUICKLY and then finally got to lay down and relax.

**The night was over. It was a HECTIC DAY! Thank you so much Jocelyn! My loving and caring girlfriend (: Couldn't have gotten through without you. Honestly. I thank her so much for the late night call that finally got me to fall asleep after the long day. I love her! I finally got to sleep around 3ish. That was day 1! Day 2 is even more epic!