My favorite Place to Visit

Levi Laungayan
Melinda Schroeder
English Composition 101
10 October 2016

  In the middle of the winter just before the holiday season my family and I boarded a plane to cross international waters.   I had never been on a plane before so I sat with white knuckles clenching the back of the seat that was too close for real comfort.  For the first part of the trip we were well taken care of.  We ate chicken drenched in gravy laid on top of wild rice just after take off.   The seat in front of us provided each passenger with movies to choose from as well as safety  instructions to prepare us for the flight.

   As I gazed out the window watching the city disappear along with the Space Needle that always marked our coming home my  excitement grew. I could hardly sleep waiting to veiw my father's homeland.  

    Hours drug on and excitement started wearing off as I tossed and turned rubbing my legs to try to regain circulation in the area that had now fallen asleep.  If only I could sleep the time away like I use to when we would drive in the car as a young boy.

    Ten hours after boarding the plane we arrived at our transfer point.   We had 40 minutes to get off one plane and on another.   Running through the airport just to stand in such a long line that seemed too long to pass through in time to make our plane woke me just long enough to  exchange a little of our currency into Yen and get a drink settling again on another plane.   

     We got on the  last plane and set in for another 6 hour journey.  This time all the information we recorded was rained iffy in the languages.   We were served ice cream and warned curve covered brownies.   Meals are in abundance but I could barely eat you tired and too excited to venture into a land where jungles are a Normandy part of the scenery and drivers have no rules.   

   When we got off the plane it was 12pm,  winter time, and it should have felt ice cold.   It would have if we were home, but the air was hot and dry.   In the middle of our Thanksgiving holiday we were standing in the midst of coconut,  and mango trees and the night air was as warm as our summer air.   

   Hours later we arrived at my father's childhood home. It was 3 am yet we were greeted by family anxious to meet us.  They prepared instant coffee for us and served us warm pandasol bread, with rice.  The welcome was as warm as the food they served us and it tent like home to all of us.

  Not long after we arrived we went out to the rice fields to see what they liked like in person.   We were unprepared for what happened next. My father,  who is always so serious at home demonstrated  how they use to play in rice fields after the rice harvest.  The ground was still slightly damp and dirt clumped in piles that were slightly hardened.  He picked up the first clump and flung it towards my brothers and I.  The fight began,  and continued until we ran laughing into the stone house holding the spots that had been hit and were stinging with pain.   The fun had been worth the momentary pain.

    Inside  this home there was no inside plumbing would eat together,  laugh together,  sing together for the next 10 days with no access to any technology or commitments that would interrupt us.   We made so many memories during that trip, that we found it hard to return home and we can’t wait to return in 2017.

Why We Lie

Laungayan 1 

Levi Laungayan

Melinda Schroeder

English Composition 101

28 September 2016


     In the article Why People lie, Dan Ariely explanes many different tests that were conducted on 

college students to see how and if they would cheat. They found out 1% of the people cheat or lie a 

lot, 1% of the people don't cheat or lie at all, and the rest of the people (the majority) cheat just a 

little (440). They only cheat a little because they want to find a way to gain something for 

themselves while still being able to feel as if they were a good and mostly honest person (442). 

Cheating is increased when someone else is cheating with them, when they feel like not cheating 

takes too much effort, when they feel like they are already being dishonest so it doesn't matter if they 

cheat a little more, and when they think that they are cheating for the greater good (443). The results 

of one experiment showed that people cheat just a little unless they reminded them ahead of time of 

what type of morals are expected from them. When they were reminded of the Ten Commandments 

and the school code of honor, and when they were asked to swear on the Bible even if they were 

atheist there was no cheating observed (444). This shows that if we want to reduce the cheating that 

costs thousands of dollars because so many people cheat just a little (445). We need to remind people 

of what is expected from them morally before they participate in areas that are loosing money to 

cheaters, such as taxes, car insurance claims and anything else that requires honesty if we want to 

develop more honesty (446).

      Paragraph 10 of Why People lie, shares an experiment that proved cheating increases when the 

benefit was not immediate. When the experiment conducted used tokens rather than actual cash 

people were found to cheat twice as much (443).

     It is important to remember that people are not just going to come into your house and rob you of 

everything you have even if the door is open, but they might come in and "borrow" a cup of sugar or 

something else that is small and seems as if it will not be missed all that much. Taking that cup of 

sugar one time can then lead to the idea of cheating more because, if you are already cheating it is 

easier to think why not cheat a little more? If every person down the hall stole just one cup of sugar 

soon their is nothing left in the house for the home owner. "Locking the doors against the dishonest 

monsters will not keep them out; they will always cheat their way in. It is the woman down the 

hallway, the seet one who could not even carry away your flat screen TV if she wanted to, who needs 

to be reminded constantly that, even if the door is open, she cannot just walk in and borrow a cup of 

sugar without asking" (Kennedy 440).

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Work Cited

Kennedy, X. J., and Dorothy M. Kennedy. The Bedford Reader. New York: St. Martin's, 

     1985. Print.