06 BZ Trip － on the way From TW to LA

那次飛行的路徑，是從台灣到 LA，然後到薩爾瓦多轉機到貝里斯。全程超過 24小時，是我經歷過的最久的飛行時間。這次搭新加坡航空，整體來說很不錯，椅子很好坐，食物也不錯，在飛機上沒有太痛苦。

As you can tell from the picture, the path that I went to Belize is : Taiwan -> LA -> El Salvador -> Belize. It took for more than 24 hours. It was the longest flight I ever took. I took Singapore Airlines from Taiwan to LA. The seat was comfortable and the meals were good. I did have a good time on the plane.



LA機場是一個很大的機場，有很多的航廈，分為國內線和國外線。因為要轉到薩爾瓦多的關係，我得先入境並領行李，然後再到另外一個航廈出境。LA機場實在太大了，加上時差，整個頭暈，花了一個小時才找到對的航廈進行 check in 作業。也因為飛了十個小時，實在累了，就直接 check in 進去，並等待四個小時。

(Welcome to LA)

LA airport is a busy airport. It has serveral terminals for different needs, such as national routes or American routes. Since I need to transfer from LA to Salvador , that I had to entry USA at one terminal and exit at the other terminal. It did take me a lot of time to find my Exit Terminal. After the flight for more than 10 hours from Taiwan to LA, I was tired at that time. I went to my gate to Salvador directly, through I had to wait for more than 4 hours for boarding.

在異鄉看到中文感覺很溫暖。
(The Chinese indicator warms me)

四處看了看，發現身邊有白人，黑人，黃種人。有一些人講英文，有一些人講西班牙文。在等待的時候，我才意識到我在這裡是外國人。



＂旅行能夠治癒種族歧視＂

在某一本書上看到這句話，此刻不能同意再多。

I looked at the people around me. The skin of them is quite different from the white people. Some of them speak in English while some of them speak in Spanish. In the waiting hours, I realized : I am the FOREIGNER here!

"Travelling can heal the racial discrimination."

I read this sentence from some book. I can't agree with it any more.

06 BZ Trip - how the trip begin?

Before beginning :

Although the story is about 2006, the reason why I still try to write the story is to memorize my memories and share my feeling with the kindly people I ever met in Belize.


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"Do you want to participate this project ?"

In the autumn of 2005, I was asked to join the project which is hold by TaiwanICDF.

The full name of ICDF is the International Cooperation and Development Fund. The background about TaiwanICDF can be referenced by http://www.icdf.org.tw/english/e_about_bg.asp.


TaiwanICDF had a technical assistance project to help BDF(Belize Defense Force) and MOE (Ministry of Education)to build their personnel information system. I was asked to write the systems. In considering the good for a while, I promised and wrote the following sentence:


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I sign my name.

I keep my promise.

There is no fear.

Just on the way!

(photo by my friend San, on the way to Mt.Himalayas)

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It was REALLY a tough challange to me. As more I know about the system needs, more I struggled with myself : English is not my mother tounge. It's really hard to figure out all the meaning of the terms and the relationship between the terms; Since the system will be transferred to the others, I have to be very logical to write the programming code... The loading was much more than that I could stand.


"Should I give up?" I thought about the idea for thousand times.


San reminded me to ask our friend , Fred , to help programming for me and then I could put my focus on all the documentation and the communications. Fred did share a greate part of coding and I finally had a good big breathe.


Some day, I am asked to have a oral exam to test if my English is good enough to be the speaker of the System Education. I went to my friend's home and had the exam with the project team members, such as Clara. After the exam, everyone was laughing. Not because my poor English, but because the parents of my friend raised some chickens and the call of the chickens was so loudly that they all heard the sound through skype. XD

There is another thing interesting. When I started to talk about Belize, I found saversal people who known or have been to Belize. It quite surprised me. Belize seems to be not so far in this way.


It's also quite amazing that some friend of mine (but not so familiar) went to Belize as a voluntee for the same project. I tried to reach her. Through her blog, I know much more about Belize, Belmopan...


2006/7/26. It's my 29th birthday.

2006/7/27. I took the plane to Belize.