When You Get Kidnapped

...it usually doesn't make your day in a positive way...

But when you get kidnapped by Tracy, Cherry, Jim, Kathy and Lily - - it's different!

The directors-in-transition planned a social for Saturday night. Brandon and I walked to the Bruin Bear together and met with Jim, Cherry and Tracy at 6. Everyone else seemed to be running late or not being able to come. Oh well, WILD times would be had nonetheless, right? So, we start walking down to Westwood besides Ackerman with the precept that Lily and Kathy were going to meet us there when all of a sudden, Tracy, Jim and Cherry led us down into the turnaround. Cherry reached into her handbag and pulled out two brown paper bags - - - THEY HAD FACES DRAWN ON THEM!

This is when I knew we were getting kidnapped! HO YEAH. My mind raced back to Winter Quarter when Jenn and I led Tracy, Jim and Annie around Ackerman and Kerckhoff with similar cartoon-face-bags on their heads. We transported them to my apartment for an intern-appreciation get together. Tonight, we would get a taste of our own medicine.

So I'm laughing and dancing around with my bagged head. Jim, Tracy and Cherry each take turns leading Brandon and me by the hand. We climb into a vehicle and are whisked away. By this time, I am fully disorientated so I had no idea if we were going outside of Westwood or heading up to the apartments. We stopped.

Stairs! We climbed some stairs with much assistance then found ourselves in an elevator. Out of the elevator we were led into a room and were seated. They left us sitting there for what seemed like 5 minutes! I saw flashes of a camera. Brandon and I danced to the music playing in the background. I had no idea who was in the room.

All of a sudden, the bags were pulled off of our heads revealing the three kidnappers plus Kathy our driver and Lily! My eyes saw a table covered in home-cooked food, with a sign hanging above that read "Thanks to AWESOME directors of Project WILD". My eyes traveled around the room. I saw balloons, lights, and one more sign behind me that almost made me cry - "Project WILD is SNAZZTASTIC!" I love to say that!

All the while, Tracy was videoing our responses. Brandon and I just looked at each other and we knew - dude, it was going to get EMO. EVERYONE hugged EVERYONE and we did a GROUP HUG at my request!!!!!!

The food was gorgeous - toasted fish and cheese foccacia sandwiches, Vietnamese-style shrimp handrolls, dumplings, Kathy + Lily signature fried rice, and seriously the most gorgeous tofu, mushroom, vegetable, Chinese sausage soup I had EVER had with hand-rolled flour balls! Another thing that almost tipped me over the edge was the fact that they had made an egg-less fried rice just for me "because they knew". AHH!!!

Lily wrote our names on the cups and put big smiley faces next to them. Now Brandon and I knew why no one wanted to join us for lunch after WILD in the morning - they had to rush back and prepare dinner for us!

Their whole day was spent taking the time and effort to make other people happy - in the morning they had WILD, afternoon cooking, and evening (all the way to 12:30 am playing Texas Hold'em, Mafia and MAHJONG!) we were hanging out. I can not even begin to articulate what they made me feel tonight. I can't even begin.

Just so so so thankful. Just so so so touched.

It is obvious from this story and all my other WILD-related posts, that Project WILD is so much more than a project - like Lily said in her interview, "we are a family." So much new life has been breathed intoWILD this year, so much love, so much time, attention to details, executing grand schemes, exploring themes and dreams... All of this love has been poured into Project WILD!

There's just no getting around the mushiness -

I JUST LOVE YOU WILD!