Catch-up

Wish I started this at the beginning of the year...almost every month has something great to mention. let's catch us up to June and hope I didn't forget anything...

May: Fremont/San Jose/San Francisco, Bay to Breakers, San Diego
NorCal was my escape for almost a week. I had many firsts up-north: first time riding a train (go BART!), first time riding a bus (and all within a foreign city), first time tasting alcohol (Sangria's to be exact...kinda boring actually and not all it's cracked up to be). I loved my NorCal trip all the more because I WASN'T doing regular tourist-y things. I went to a local vietnamese restaurant for lunch, in Fremont, not in SF. I hung out at the Westfield mall with Katie, my resident tour guide (ok i guess Market street is a little tourist-y). We met up with Katie's sister and sister's boyfriend at Colibri's mexican restaurant (delicious!) and across the street? The Curan theater where our seats to "In the Heights" were waiting for us after dinner. And thus concludes day one.

Day two began with an early morning pick-up from Katie's house by my cousin. She, her husband, and brother treated me to another first: breakfast at a dimsum restaurant (again delicious! I'm actually beginning to think that any food outside my local choices will easily fall into my "delicious" category). This filling meal was followed by a tour of none other than my dream school, Stanford University. I still fall into trances just thinking about writing about it. Thankfully, my cousin is quite the budding photographer so this trip was duly documented (AND followed by a round of "Stanford Marketplace" yogurtland. The order is a little fuzzy, but we dropped off Vincent at work, went home for a bit, edited and uploaded a few Stanford pics, and headed over to the Nordstrom Rack to kill time (and money) until it was time to pick up Vincent from work (IKEA). We cut this night short because Bay to Breakers would be dragging us out of bed at 5am the next morning.

Day three. Bay to Breakers: A marathon I will never forget. This was it's 99th year. A marathon first dedicated to cheering up the citizens of San Francisco now turned into a gala of costumes and outrageous characters. On the train we ran into a group of friends dressed as different crayons and one as the box. Another notorious piece of info. This marathon is popularly run naked (by lots of people). It's something I loved to be a part of, marathon's just grow on me. Unfortunately, I had to cut this one short in order to jump in a cab, get on the train, and get on that bus to the airport in time to meet Katie, get my ticket and fly. That kind of happiness/rush/freedom (even under an itinerary) rekindled the ever popular desire to travel I try to suppress because the economy says I can't. We got back to Irvine at a reasonable hour I felt accomplished and like I made some sort of existential step forward. Which I have to say was crushed when I courtesy-called my parents to let them know I was back, only to be greeted with a snub resulting from the fact that I wasn't going home that weekend. It hurt, but looking back, I still don't know where that came from.

The San Diego trip happened in late May and was the TLT trip that we take every two years (i think). The trip was chill. Plain and simple. Drama did surround the trip before and after it happened, but during the thing...nothing but peace (except for maybe the suburban death trap we were driving lol). Everyone was safe coming and going. Few highlights: "Smokey", "I like your mohawk", "Is she hawt?", and late night campfire talks. Something about campfires really draws out the talkative side, no matter who you are.

April: Turned 20!, Carpinteria camp out
Our campsite was 20 feet from the beach and beautiful. That afternoon the suburban overheated and long story shortened, the drive to Carpinteria turned into a 6-7 hour drive. Props to Peter for hanging in there when the car overheated and the power steering failed. Good news was camp was pretty much set up by the time we reached camp. I loved our Saturday hike/scavenger hunt. We saw baby seals and really hung out with the kids on the teams we were in charge of. Oh my! I almost forgot about the table that flipped onto Perry. Let's just say that from now on, any picnic table we come across, Perry sits in the exact middle of the bench. Late night car talks with Myrna were a welcome break from strict curfews at 10pm. The bonus was the 7-11 coffee (for me, tea) run. I don't play softball, but Sunday's game with the club was very entertaining to watch. Every face was lit by a smile. Every one had a softball memory too. It was strange. Almost as if everyone, at one point in their life, had softball as "their thing". I can't really play any sport that requires an extra instrument to handle the ball, i.e. tennis, golf, or softball. Volleyball, I can do. Basketball I like, but can't play very well. I'm a great shooter though hahaha

Turning twenty was pretty low key. Though I had the campout to celebrate it, P.Kev, Marcus, and Perry drove all the way down to Irvine to take me out to dinner the day before my actual birthday. El Torito's restaurant was by the airport and across the way from Ihop, eventually I'll be going there with the roomies. The waiter looked like the stapler guy from Office Space and he insisted on spoon feeding me my birthday ice cream while singing. It was very awkward. In fact, I remember saying that multiple times while he was waiting for me to open my mouth. Nobody tried to stop him and explain to him that I wasn't smiling excessively because this was fun. I couldn't, however, NOT laugh at it all as we headed back to my apartment. Hilarity at it's best.

My actual birthday was spent with Vanessa Chris and Gus(Goose). Cookie Mill. Ice Cream/cookie sandwiches. Delicious.

March: Week of Prayer: Adventist Pioneers
I had John Harvey Kellogg. SDA health reformer. I didn't do very well. I went too fast and a 10-15 minute presentation turned into a 5 minute speed talk. What I hate the most is that before hand I talked about things I liked about my speech class. I wasn't nervous going in and stage fright comes and goes. Well that night it came and stayed. I wasn't very proud of myself, but I just kept telling myself that everyone's entitled to an off day and that was one of mine.

February:Patrick turned 17!, Camp Cedar Falls seeing snow fall for the first time
Snow falling is beautiful. Snowball fights are hilarious. The one road to leave the camp was completely covered in snow by the time we had to leave. The camp's only snow plow broke twice so all the clubs banded together with several shovels and dug the path out. I'll always remember Marlene in her lodge room (the rest of us were down in cabins) warming/drying shoes and socks, and sometimes pants with her room heater. I don't think I'll ever forget how soft natural snow feels on your eyelashes. Best feeling too is stepping in snow and having your boot go way way down. We left just as I got home for the weekend from Irvine. I only brought one pair of jeans for the entire weekend, which were promptly soaked by all the snow on the ground. Needless to say, I wasn't the best at preparing for anything that weekend. Ingrid came to the rescue and lent me some jeans, which of course called for some "i got in your pants" jokes for the remainder of the trip.

January: Snowboarding (but not really haha)
This was my first snowboarding trip, but I was nervous for other reasons. Gus and I had just made up from our summer (yes LAST summer) hiatus, if that's what you call it. He admitted to being wrong, which I appreciated and although I'm not complaining about our fixed relationship, THAT particular make-up was way too fast, almost forced. We got it out of the way, not entirely solving it. The day after was snowboarding day. Since I don't do the whole moving fast thing (no rollercoasters no wheels, no faster than running speeds) I spent the day with Emily and Gus just sliding down little bunny hills with what I'm going to call a trash can lid. Eventually, I believe a level of comfort was reached between me and Gus. Though I know and feel that many things have been left unresolved and are left in the back of our minds now (like air bubbles stuck at the bottom) with too much having piled on top to make them go away. What else happened that day? RIGHT AFTER snowboarding, I went home, changed, and headed to dland with Chris, Jay-Jay, and Alicia. I was crazy tired and for someone who didn't quite know these people yet, I was more than happy to trek over to dland for hours with them.