My sleep schedule is messed up; I’ve been sleeping too much and my head is pounding all the time from it. All I want is to lie in bed and read all day.

I don’t even really feel like blogging, and that’s saying a lot, because I always always love blogging. But here I am, typing away at Live Writer because I have tons of things to do and in comparison to research papers and catching up on academic readings, blogging seems to be the fun(ner) option. Heh.

I’m also blogging because I’ve been holding off on some pretty amazing life stories. I’d been waiting for some perfect moment to share them with you and just kind of forgot about it, because that’s the kind of self-absorbed person I am.

Okay, without counting, I already know the above four paragraphs have way too many “I”s so I want to just take a break from Me, Myself and I, and instead tell you about some inspiring people I’ve met lately.

Most of the time, we are enclosed in our own social bubble.

We have a limited connections of relationships; as humans we tend to seclude ourselves into a social group that is most similar and appealing to our tastes and backgrounds.

For example, the people I hang out with most often tends to be Christian young women or foodies or fellow student journalists. Sometimes all of them together. I might know of someone entirely different from me; I might even say “hello” and sit next to them on the bus or in class, but I rarely hang out with them, or even know anything about their lives.

That’s fine, of course. We all want to feel comfortable and natural with our social groups. But as I’ve started to be forced to talk to different people, I’ve also started to realize that I don’t know enough about the world and the people who live in it.

I’d known about this place. After all, Homeboy bakery comes to my school every Tuesday to sell their breads and pastries. Homegirl Cafe has an awesome menu and I had always been meaning to visit it. But actually being there, and having a few of the people working at Homeboy Industries talk to us…it was utterly mind-blowing. 
It was a small group of about 11 people. We were all USC students, and most of them were business majors interested in philanthropy. We each got a free lunch box and a can of diet coke:
I got half a Yuyu’s sandwich:
I love it when lunches come in a box. I don’t know why, but it makes it so much more exciting.  
Turkey with dulce de mango & chipotle salsa, lettuce, tomatoes, onions & mayonnaise.
 It came with a big fat chocolate chip cookie:
Not a fan of chocolate chip cookies, but at least it had a nice texture. Crispy and chewy at the same time, if I remember correctly.
To be honest, I don’t remember how the food tastes like. Because while we were eating, two guys came in and gave their speech, and the content of their speech was all I could focus on.

This guy here is Vance:
He ran away from home when he was 12. His mother was constantly abused by her boyfriend (not Vance’s father) and one day, Vance decided he couldn’t take it anymore. He beat the shit out of the abusive boyfriend..but his mother sided with her boyfriend…and Vance was kicked out of home.

It’s a sad fact…but what is a kid, all alone with nowhere to go, to do? Vance naturally got involved with the wrong kind of friends. He and his friends started selling drugs, and one day during a robbery of some kind, things got bad and one of his friends killed a guy. His friends got away, but Vance got caught. He spent 20 years in prison because he refused to give the names of his friends.
He kept appealing and appealing, but his case got ignored. Just as Vance was about to lose hope, by some stroke of miracle, his case got reviewed and a judge released him, saying he should have been released a long time ago.

When Vance started talking about his exuberance from feeling the waves and the sand at the beach for the first time in decades, I couldn’t help tearing up.

But then he faced problems trying to get a job and return back to a stable life. Who is going to hire an ex-con who’s never graduated from high school?

If you think Vance’s story is dramatic, here’s another life story:
I deserve to be slapped because I totally forgot the guy’s name. I could have sworn I had written it down, but I must have forgotten to do that. So…let’s just call him Alex. He looks like an Alex to me.

Alex is a former gang-banger and a drug addict. He started abusing substances when he was 7. At an age when I was playing hopscotch during recess, Alex had already learned how to get high.

At 10, at an age when I had just gleefully learned that the “f” word is vulgar, Alex committed his first car theft. At 12, he saw his brother get shot. At 14, he found his father dead. He didn’t go into details, but I don’t think his death was natural.

Alex soon lived half his life in prison, fleeting in and out. Each time he left prison with the resolution to fix his life, he fell back into crime again as he struggled to make ends meet and gain social acceptance.

Because let’s face it. Our society isn’t very forgiving. You made a mistake? You pay for it.

But Homeboy Industries has a different outlook. They see these people as good souls who have been unfortunate with their life circumstances and upbringing. They empathize the fact that these people are trapped in a cycle of addiction and crime, in part because they’ve been stamped with a permanent negative stigma and not given chances to change their life.

I was absolutely cut by their stories, and what Homeboy Industries have done for them. What Homeboy Industries have done is simple: Give them a job. Provide a community that accepts them. Show a little kindness, and give a little hope.
But from what the people here told me, these simple actions have completely changed their lives.

This here is Alfonso:
He was our guide for the tour around Homeboy Industries. Alfonso has a few scars on his face. I didn’t ask him how he got them. Alfonso didn’t tell us, either, but he did talk a lot about his 4-year-old son, Angelo. I guess all parents are the same way, no matter who they are—they love talking about their kids.
We first walked into the dining room of Homegirl Cafe:
We got a chance to wave and say hi to the chef and some of the workers there:
And then we slipped into the kitchen, where Homeboy Bakery makes all their baked goods.
That’s Leo and Fidel, two of the bakers at Homeboy Bakery.
Honestly, they just look like two really nice guys to me. I never got the chance to ask, but I wonder what their stories are.

And then here’s the big-ass table where the bakers roll and knead the dough:
I need a table like that in my future kitchen.

We then moved to the tattoo removal room:
For those of you who didn’t know this, gang members get a tattoo that symbolizes the gang they belong to. It’s sort of the mark that the gang owns them, which is why tattoo removals are so important to ex-gang members.
Unfortunately, it’s also incredibly expensive…and from what I’ve heard, really painful, too. That machine above is the tattoo removing machine. Ouch. It doesn’t look friendly at all.

Homeboy Industries even has a computer room, for members to come do research for school or print out essays.
Looks like some of them have got amazing artistic skills as well.

I know this post doesn’t seem to have anything to do with food…but I think it does.

Homeboy Industries is a food service company—an extraordinary one. The food is prepared by people who are given a second chance to be a citizen of the community. And the customers, by buying their food and enjoying it, are providing funds for services that will help them achieve that. It’s a beautiful, inter-connected, win-win situation.

This tour also really reinforced in me the fact that I am a privileged individual. I am no aristocrat (as a matter of fact we do have financial troubles right now), but I was privileged enough to have a wonderful, wholesome family and grown up protected from the grimier lifestyle that many people are forced to live.

If you haven’t already done so, I really recommend stepping out of your social field and talking to someone from a vastly different background. I’ll bet it’ll be just as eye-opening as it was for me.