Tell us a story. APRIL 27 - NATIONAL TELL A STORY DAY & Affiliates Determine which of the employee written creative stories are true or false. Submit your answers – via email only – to [email protected]. You can send your answers in from your personal or work email account. To help during this time, please do not print this and submit paper copies with your answers. All entries must be submitted via email by 4:30pm on Friday, May 1. So there we were, thirty-six of us on the bus on the way to the railroad station in a foreign country with a driver that spoke no English. We had lost our tour guide back at the hotel as she had to greet another tour group. Things could not get any worse could they? Our bus pulls into the railroad station parking lot and a man with a loud two way radio approaches us. "Leningrad 1correct?" he asks in broken English. "Yes" I reply and before I can get another word in he says "Platform 4" and hurries off, his radio still shouting in Russian. I get the thirty-five other members of our tour group off the bus and make sure I have the thirty-six passports and visas that our tour guide gave us. I realize that I have been declared de-facto leader due to my ability to be able to read the strange Cyrillic script that is everywhere. Looking at the tickets I discover a problem. A sleeper carriage seats thirty-six people and we are a group of thirty-six but one ticket looked different. Typical Soviet efficiency puts thirty-six of us in one carriage and 1 in another. As we find platform 4 (not too difficult, it is between 3 and 5) I decide that possession is nine tenths of the law and pile everybody into our carriage. After a few minutes one guy shows up who was not on our tour group, this must be the lucky Russian who is going to be with thirty-five foreigners overnight unless I can figure this out. I try to explain the situation using what little Russian I have but knowing how to say "I have a blue pencil" and other beginner phrases appears to muddy the waters. He calls the guard over, who looks quite spectacular in his Soviet era uniform. Between my broken Russian and his broken English a deal is brokered and we swap tickets. Now we can have thirty-six of us in one carriage for the overnight train journey to Leningrad. I hope we have a tour guide to meet us in the morning otherwise this could be a very interesting vacation for an eighteen year old. It all started the Christmas of 2017. I had been enjoying conversation with a new Facebook friend who lived in England. We became friends when I posted my story about how I had overcome some of life's struggles under a post by Tyrese Gibson (from the Fast and Furious series). This person (we will call him Mark) read my 700 word story and messaged me. He had a similar 2hurdle in life and asked for my advice. Now I usually don't talk to strangers but he was polite and I never miss a change to teach, so we chatted every week. Then every week became every day as we found more that we had in common and were interested in each other's lives. He had no family in England to spend Christmas with and had never been to the States before so he asked if he could visit me for 3 weeks during Christmas and New years. Now we had been planning to meet in the summer but I also was pretty free for the Holiday so why not? My friends and family were concerned thought that he was a bad guy. So to appease their nerves I brought a friend with me to the airport to pick Mark up. When I saw him my whole world changed. Throughout that next week as we hung out together and did "American" things I fell in love. I had been dating someone else during the time before Mark arrived so romance was the farthest thing from my mind but he was everything that I wanted in a man. We dated for 1 week before we got engaged. When you know you know! He had to go back to England after the three weeks and that goodbye at the airport was the hardest. Little did I know that I would have to say goodbye to him 2 more times at airports before the green card application finally was approved and we were able to get married almost 2 years later. During those 2 years we went through a lot. His ex broke into his house and stole a few things. I almost moved to England but we decided to have him move to the USA because we both preferred the American culture and living options. He had to dissolve his agency in London. I visited him twice and we toured the UK visiting all different kinds of places. We spent hours and hours on the phone every day and exchanged over 40,000 messages(I'm glad messenger is free!) When we finally were able to be together and have the wedding everything went smoothly and we are now living happily ever after. Irregular heartbeat. Dizziness. Passing out. The doctors agreed it was time to get my VSD fixed. Who knew that a 20-year-old would need open heart surgery? Completely terrified of having my chest cut open and relying on doctors and a cardiopulmonary bypass machine to ensure my safety during the procedure was not something I would ever look forward to. What 3if I didn’t wake up? It was scheduled for January 11th, 2017 at SSM. The morning started early, around 5:00 am. I sat patiently and waited until 7:15 am when they would take me to the procedure room. I was taken back and my parents waited nervously in the waiting room for 6 hours. I started to wake up, but I couldn’t wake up enough for them to take my breathing tube out. It took me three hours to finally wake up enough for them to take it out. I was hungry, but they wouldn’t let me eat anything besides ice chips until the next morning. They made me roll from one side to the other every 30 minutes to keep the blood flowing. The pain of turning from side to side hours after your sternum bone was cut in half was excruciating. I never realized how much I used my chest muscles to simply move my body. I remained in the ICU for the next two days. I was able to drink water and eat small amounts of crackers. On day 3, I was able to start eating more normal food, but I was on a very strict Mediterranean diet. It was also on the third day that I was able to move from my hospital bed to the chair right next to it, with help of course. Day 4, 5, and 6 consisted of short walks down the hallway, watching tv, trying to sleep the pain away, and several rounds of pain medications throughout the day. The worst part of my day was in the afternoons, when I received blood thinner shots into my stomach. Day 7 consisted of a shower and being released to go home. It all seems like a blur to me now, but I remember how grateful I was for the amazing care I received, my friends and family’s support, and how strong I was able to be for myself to heal and return to a normal life. When you went to school, were you taught PHONICS? I was. None of this memorization stuff used for reading now. As a result of this, I not only learned to read but also found myself in a challenging situation. My family went out to eat at a restaurant which was a special treat. As we were ordering my dad said we could choose a drink which was a huge thing as we always had 4water. Now let your imagination take you. Here I am staring at the back of the pop machine sitting on the counter in front of me. It says Mountain Dew, Hi-C, Sprite etc. I know what I want! I want orange. It is the best flavor. I hate to have to say what I want as I am very shy but I couldn’t give up the chance for a cup of orange soda. I stared at that word Hi-C. I sounded it out in my head. H..I..C.. Hmm. It doesn’t sound right. I do it again. The only way I could sound it out was Hick. I never remembered my dad calling it that in the past but I couldn’t come up with anything else. The lady asked me what type of drink would I like. I said Hick(said phonetically mind you) she looked at me and said ”What”. My dad stepped in” She would like Hi-C(hi-see). As you can tell, I did not have a lot of experience ordering anything and since that day I have never again forgotten how to pronounce un-phonetically the work Hi-C. Tell us a story. APRIL 27 - NATIONAL TELL A STORY DAY & Affiliates Determine which of the employee written creative stories are true (T) or false (F).