TAF Real World – Week #6 of 51

Amy shares an LOL story for WEEK 6 (or 46 WEEKS ’til TAF):

This is my dad, CC Liao, and his best friend, CC Huang. They met in college in Taichung over 40 years ago.

They studied chemistry and graduated together.

They don’t know how to smile in photos together.

They immigrated to North America together. Their kids are almost the same ages, with almost exactly the same birthdays.

They toured Brazil together and were in the same bus accident. Once Uncle CC recovered from broken ribs, he helped my family take care of my dad recover from his more intense injuries.

They had a 60th birthday party together.

Yesterday, Uncle CC woke up at 5 a.m. to drive me to the airport. He and his wife are always there to support!

There are sooo many people, like Uncle CC, who LOVE my family OUT LOUD daily. I wish I could blog about AV8D. Instead, I will just say duhh-shiaaahh (thanks!) here to the extended family, and the rest of the daiwan community who take care of my parents, so that I can be released to LOL the world.

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We want to hear/see/read/experience your thoughts on LOVING OUT LOUD! Whether it’s how you showed love to someone, or how someone loved on you, or maybe even both!

We need a few more volunteers to post, so please LOL and sign up here!

Encourage your friends to sign up. Feel free to buddy up and post together.

Instructions are listed on the spreadsheet.
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TAF Real World – Week #5 of 51

Here are Tiffany’s reflections for WEEK 5 (or 47 WEEKS ’til TAF)!

Just Love

As I boarded the Detroit bus, I can definitely say that I was excited to pass the seemingly endless cornfields to arrive at TAF 2010.

But let’s cut to the chase. Though I was enthusiastic to return to one of the best places on earth, I walked into Helman uncertain of how I was going to approach the upcoming week. Sure, I was going to “grow as a person”, “grow as a leader,” and “pour love out to others and refill my cup of loving.” This all seems so cliche now; they’ve become standard goals for all TAFers, goals that are developed through years of attending TAF. With that said, what was I specifically going to do to make this year as special and unique as my past five?

It turns out that the question above became the question I asked myself every day. Even to this day, I believe that I didn’t put in the effort to make something out of this once-a-year week. Of course, I always hoped I would, but wishing for something doesn’t get anyone anywhere until they actually press the pedal and initiate it. Oddly enough, pre-TAF Coordinator reflections only confused me even more. I even had to ask Alex, the Coorindators’-Coordinator, to send me my sTAFf application to remind myself of what my goals were. Even though I had written legitimate goals, I found myself unable to fulfill them throughout the week.

It basically came down to this: My ultimate goal in everyday life is to “bind the brokenhearted, (Isaiah 61:1)” which is all about loving. Humbling and lowering myself to where I can let myself be vulnerable. And do you know how I epically failed at doing that this year at TAF? I got distracted. I was distracted by the most petty things, and I completely compromised myself and my intentions for these silly, unimportant things. Frustration came over me so much and so early on, I closed up and isolated myself. Literally. I separated myself from my friends, didn’t retain communication with new campers, skimped out on socializing during free time (aka hid in my room or in tafLabs, which, by the way, has absolutely remarkable food), hardly spoke to my tafCrush, and didn’t even get to see Youth limbo at the Luau. Boo. 🙁

So instead of loving, I closed myself off from being loved. I know there was a lot of love to be received, and just as much love to be given. Now, sitting here at my computer, I look back at July 25th to August 1st as a week when I missed the golden opportunities to carry out my goals. I missed out on so much, and it stinks. Big time.

This is me being blunt; almost too brutally genuine even for me to type this. But I’m going to keep it real here.

On the last Sunday at noon, I walked out of Wampler after Service feeling like a complete failure. I broke down in front of everyone there (including one of my advisors, my mother, several Old Fries, parents I did and didn’t know, and friends) as I stood and gave my testimonial: a shortened, general, and assuredly more emotional version of everything I said above. I felt neglected this year at TAF, but I know that is because I neglected my TAFers and even myself. Had I done the opposite, I wouldn’t be telling this story. Once I got outside, a Junior camper who I know from home ran up to hug me. By that point, the flow of tears were unstoppable. Amazing. All I had to do was open up, and voila, there was love.

I’m trying not to regret my actions from TAF 2010. All there is to do is not repeat this ever again.

This is what I know from my experience, and I hope you grasp the message I’m trying to share with you: Open up. Don’t isolate yourself — you’ll miss out on too much, and it’s certainly not worth the reason(s) you cut yourself off for in the first place. In fact, you may find that with allowing yourself to be vulnerable, healing and peace will come to you. Let yourself be loved. With that, you will be able to sincerely love out loud. 🙂

With much love,

Tiffany Su

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We want to hear/see/read/experience your thoughts on LOVING OUT LOUD! Whether it’s how you showed love to someone, or how someone loved on you, or maybe even both!

We need a few more volunteers to post, so please LOL and sign up here!

Encourage your friends to sign up. Feel free to buddy up and post together.

Instructions are listed on the spreadsheet.
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TAF Real World – Week #4 of 51

It’s story time with Liz for WEEK 4 (or 48 WEEKS ’til TAF!)

Put on your PJs and bring your teddy bear…

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We want to hear/see/read/experience your thoughts on LOVING OUT LOUD! Whether it’s how you showed love to someone, or how someone loved on you, or maybe even both!

We need a few more volunteers to post, so please LOL and sign up here!

Encourage your friends to sign up. Feel free to buddy up and post together.

Instructions are listed on the spreadsheet.
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TAF Real World – Week #3 of 51

Sherry dances with love during WEEK 3 (or 49 WEEKS ’til TAF):

Honk! I Will Dance.

Hey TAF!

This is Sherry Lin here (a JR counselor this past year at TAF for those that don’t know me). For this week’s Love Out Loud post, I wanted do something to put smiles on people’s faces after a long day of classes or work by dancing in the streets of Chicago! I got the idea from Jaeson Ma’s “365 Days of Love” Project. I thought this would be a great way to make people smile. So, I grabbed a bunch of my friends (some Tafers, some not) to do this with me. Hope you enjoy the video (edited by Andrew Lo, thanks!) and keep spreading the looooove!

Untitled from Andrew Lo on Vimeo.

Location: intersection of State and Wacker, Chicago.
Special thanks to Andrew Lo, Bettina Chang, Kevin Chen, Jireh Pua, Elaine Pua, Eshan Pua, David Chang, Peter Tan, Shirley Yang, Vivian Moy, Vanessa Moy
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We want to hear/see/read/experience your thoughts on LOVING OUT LOUD! Whether it’s how you showed love to someone, or how someone loved on you, or maybe even both! If you didn’t sign up for a week for the TAF Blog to post your entry during TAF2010, please sign up here!

Instructions are listed on the spreadsheet.
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TAF 2010 PHOTOS!!!!

As a whole, tafLabs collected over TEN THOUSAND PHOTOS during this year’s TAF – holy moly! So we’re very excited and happy like Melody to finally share many more photos captured during TAF2010 with all of you!

Thankfully, we’ve whittled that number down to a nice and tidy 480 photos for now. You’ve seen about half of them before. Some of these pics are edited, some are not, many are touching, too few are embarrassing, but all of them are meant to preserve the memories of Loving Out Loud at TAF2010. So if you saw a picture of you and your friends that you liked in the Yearbook or Slideshow, you can right-click and save the photo! And better yet, the images are sized to a resolution of 1600, perfect for new desktop wallpapers! Our suggestion is to view them using the “View with PicLens” just above the start of these thumbnails and using your arrow keys to flip through this epic gallery. WOOSHA!

[nggallery id=1]

Keep checking back as we hope to add more photos, including small groups!

Photo Credits: Anna Wu, Steve Wang, Andrew Kuo, Tiffany Su, Justin Ku, Dave Chiou, Spencer Chen, Dan Lu, Howard Chen, Andrew Lo, Kevin Yau, Jon Lee


TAF Real World – Week #2 of 51

We want to hear/see/read/experience your thoughts on LOVING OUT LOUD, how you showed love to someone, or how someone loved on you.
If you didn’t sign up for a week at TAF2010, please sign up here!
Instructions are listed on the spreadsheet.

Jeff blogs on WEEK 2 (or 50 WEEKS ’til TAF):

TAF 2010. Two weeks ago, I was still very much the awkward, shy, and skinny kid who entered Helman three years back. I still hated looking silly or vulnerable and I was still terribly scared of large groups of people. Two weeks ago, I was a JH counselor. Counselor. Facilitator. Initiator. Come on. None of these are appropriate descriptors for me, and that week, unfortunately, I let that same negative sentiment linger in my head.

I could not communicate at all at TAF. Sometimes during staff meetings I found it so hard to verbalize what I wanted to say that I ended up just keeping quiet. Sometimes as we sat down as a small group to discuss and share, I gazed around blankly at the attentive faces waiting for me to initiate dialogue, and I honestly had no idea what to say. Perhaps it was a result of the lack of sleep, mental unpreparedness, or some kind of psychological disease/phenomena, but I now know that for the most part, the reason I couldn’t adequately communicate that week was because I feared judgment. I was afraid of looking stupid and of somehow tarnishing the image I wanted to project of myself. I was scared to death of disapproval and rejection. Despite this, I knew- knew in my head- that regardless, there were people like the JH staff who would understand, support, and encourage— if only I told them. I faltered, even there, and looking back, I wish that I had shared my problem with someone. At the time, though, thoughts about the apparent silliness of the problem discouraged me from talking about it, so I kept silent.

On Monday, there was a girl who came to yoyos workshop looking bored. Knowing that there were no more yoyos left to use, I sat down. “What’s up? Are you here to learn yoyo? Have you
done yoyo before?” Her eyes looked up, made a quick mental calculation, and she shook her head. Inside my head, I kicked myself– Oh, God, here we go again. What a buffoon I am. I
look like I’m feeling sorry for her. Way to be a condescending counselor. Tactical fail. I tried again
—“Going to be in eighth grade next year? Are you ready?” What a generic question. What
if she’s not? What’ll I ask next?
She looked up again, shook her head, and spoke—“Can I go to the folk dance workshop?” I was flabbergasted. Open-mouthed, I consented in a voice that
sounded very far away, leaving me stupidly sitting and twiddling a pair of yoyo sticks I had been trying to fix.

All week long at TAF I let little things bother me. It irked me that I’d lost one of the campers so early on. It irked me that I couldn’t be as witty as I’d liked to be. It irked me that I couldn’t contribute meaningfully to staff meetings. It irked me also that I hadn’t brought enough shirts for the ~8 days at TAF. All around in my head, irksome thoughts bounced, slowly battering away at the confidence that remained. The less confident I was, the less able I was to communicate. Sometimes I couldn’t stand it. I would retreat away from everything and preoccupy myself with wild questions of why I couldn’t simply speak.

On Wednesday night I met up with one of the campers. It wasn’t even a conversation I’d headed
deliberately into. I was caught completely unprepared, initially swamped with thoughts about
how small group had gone and about how to do laundry at TAF. I didn’t expect the campers
in JH to have yet experienced life crises or anything like that; after all, this was JH– fun and
games JH. JH we feel good, oh we feel so good JH. That perspective was instantly shattered as
I listened to the camper talk about family problems, about moving, and about being new and
unaccepted. About only being able to disclose thoughts onto pad and paper and about depressive
thoughts of rejection and of not having anybody to confide in for support and encouragement.

Somehow, right then, my heart broke for this camper and for JH. The problems people as young as JH’ers experience are real, life-size, and life-changing. TAF is not just a weeklong fun and games camp– it’s also a sanctuary for healing and affirmation. To some degree, everyone has a need for both of those.

When the camper finished talking, I was dazed. I didn’t know what to say. I floundered for words and babbled something about life and unfairness, but the camper stopped me. “Jeff. I know you’re trying somehow to comfort or advise me, but let me tell you—it’s okay. As long as you’re here to even listen to me talk about my problems, it’s enough. ‘Cause no one else will.” The words slowly permeated into my head like the endless swirls in the table I was peering into.

I nodded slowly, not because I was excusing my own inadequacies as a friend, but because then I understood: it doesn’t matter how quick-witted, insightful, or articulate you are as a communicator— what really matters is the heart that fills the communicative vessel. Is it filled with love and genuine care? Does it care enough to set aside personal wants and standards to meet the needs of others? Does it care enough to stop loving itself so to love others?

Because when it does, wonderful, amazing things happen.
That week, I learned once again how to love.


TAF Real World – Week #1 of 51

Oh hey! Did you know that the TAF Vision is for TAFers to “to make a profound impact on mankind in unique and compassionate ways”?

We at TAFLabs want to know how YOU are making an impact this year in your life beyond Manchester. Our goal is for TAFers to post on the blog at least once per week. We want to hear/see/read/experience your thoughts on LOVING OUT LOUD, how you showed love to someone, or how someone loved on you.

If you didn’t sign up for a week at TAF, please sign up here: Sign up!
Instructions are listed on the spreadsheet.

Here is Andrew kickin’ it off with WEEK 1 (or 51 WEEKS ’til TAF):


Send TAF a Happy 30th Birthday video!

As you may know by now, this year is TAF’s 30th birthday! Even though you may not be at TAF right now, help us celebrate by sending us a short video telling us who you are, what years you went to TAF, and some quick birthday wishes and we’ll feature them on the blog!

You can upload them to your own account or ours on youtube:

user: tafshare
password: what the “t” in taf stands for!

Email us at tafhelp@tafworld.org.

UPDATE: A post-TAF happy birthday video from “the original” Alex Yang!


Oh Hey!