After about 10 minutes of getting raspberry iced tea and conversing with a couple classmates that were there as well, I walked up the stairs to the 2nd floor. I looked around before my eyes landed on an empty seat at a table where a boy sat. Hello again… Taking in a breath, I made my way to that table and the empty seat diagonally across from him. A while back, I had discovered this small cafe/book store near my Vietnamese school, Our Lady of Lavang. The cafe is called “Mimi” and is really hidden so not many people know of it but the students of my school do.
She ranges from age 15-19 and comes in wearing Adidas striped pants with a high school sport t-shirt on. She comes in after seven p.m and is never alone; there is always at least one other teenage girl with her. Sometimes she says hello when entering, but most of the time she glances awkwardly at whoever is working the register and looks away quickly. The girl and her companions dart right over to the cups and start pouring yogurt into them right away. The girls giggling, saying that their cup is “going to cost $20” and talking about how “fat” they are is all that’s heard in the store after they move over to the toppings bar.
But that was before I had an eye opening experience at the grocery store one day. A lady if front me handed the cashier her stack of coupons and waited for her total. Being behind her I could hear the cashier tell her that her savings for the day were seventy dollars. After picking my jaw up I asked her how she did it. She simply smiled and said “buy one get one free coupon.” Finally it was my turn at the register.
As I sat on the H91 bus with my mp3 music player on, questions kept coming across my head like, 'what will it be like?' And 'what will people think of me?' I wasn't really anxious but more excited. I reached at the pharmacy 20 minutes early. As I strolled through the automatic doors, it was deserted, so I walked past the half stocked shelves and noticed a comparatively old lady.
With having Students eat healthy can boost up their energy and ability to learn. With that being said when I was in high school it was nothing but junk food for three years. When Michele Obama changed the law on the school lunches my senior lunches have changed. It was nothing but healthy food like whole grain, no sweets, two scoops of fruits and vegetables. At Odessa they had a school store loaded with junk food that would be sold out by forth period.
Abigail pinched herself; it hurt so she wasn’t dreaming. Abigail jumped up and ate like there was no tomorrow. When she finished she put on her clothes and counted an extra $5.00 in her money. Abigail grabbed her basket and skipped out to the train station. The conductor wasn’t there yet; when he got there he bought 2 flowers and people with early morning meetings bought a few flowers too.
I slow my step and look over at my friends. "Andi, not Abercrombie again," I whine. "Do you remember what happened last time we came here? You bought a tank top for $20 and only wore it once!" Andrea shoots me a bemused look and continues walking into the store.
After a while, other employees began to contribute to the list, although I compiled about 75% of the complaints. By the time I left at the end of May 1996, the list had 567 items on it, and we were referring to some of the customers by number. In particular, I remember 337, an older lady who came in early every Saturday morning to buy a candy bar. Sadly, 337 never had the requisite fifty cents, and as she was rummaging through her purse looking for spare change (which sometimes took as long as ten minutes), impatient customers would line up behind her. Finally, she would storm off in a huff.
During the visit, my mother and I went grocery shopping together at the same store I had frequented as a young teenager. The excursion seemed mostly uneventful until I spied the loaves of D’Italiano bread piled atop the shelves in the bread aisle. For a moment, I was transported back to that empty apartment where I had endured the most unhappy times of my childhood. The irony of the situation was that I was reliving the past while standing with my mother. She picked up a loaf and tossed it into the cart unaware of the profound effect the bread had on me.
The young girl didn't even bother to hold the door open for the lady. Instead, she just opened the door while and looked at the older lady and just kept walking while letting the door shut. Knowing me and the kind of respect I have and was raised with, I ran over and opened it for her. She kindly said smiled from ear to ear and said “Thank You” and I smiled back and said “Of course.” Another example when I witnessed rudeness was when an individual gave a teen a gift for that contained money for her birthday. The individual was on a tight budget because they had just cut her hours at her job and thats all she had to give her which in my mind was more then enough.