I love San Francisco, this is Coit Tower. I went on a trip to the city about two weeks ago. The tower was definitely one of the best parts.

School is going… Only 2 more weeks so that’s always a good thing. Finals are coming and that is almost never a good thing. I think I’ll finish this quarter okay. I’ve really missed my friends this year and being so close to the beginning of summer just makes me really impatient to see them again. All my friends from Berkeley are already gone since they ended school, like, last week. Ugh. I swear, in college, facebook and AIM accounts are NECESSARY. I don’t know where I would be if I couldn’t keep in contact with people.

I ran into Blake (one of the other bloggers) the other day. He makes me laugh.

Alright, nothing interesting happening in my life. Surprise, surprise.

See ya

Lex

So, I have about 3 weeks left at this school. 3 more weeks until I go back home to all of my friends (whom I have missed sooo much) and my family. I can’t believe that my freshman year is almost over. In retrospect the year went by really quickly, but as it was happening it just seemed to drag. I don’t mean that I don’t want the school year to end, but I just end up thinking, what did I do with my time?
I went to a presentation on U.S. foreign policy on Monday and it was supposed to be a debate between the liberal side (an appeals lawyer from San Jose) and the conservative side (a guy from the league of Jewish Republicans). The conservative representative didn’t show for some reason and the liberal guy said that he wouldn’t mind giving a speech and even debating with a student if they wanted. It was cool, but I was expecting something different. First off, he started talking about U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East which I already know about and second, the guy was liberal and I already agreed with most of what he said. I didn’t really get to expand my views or listen to some other side of the argument. The guy was a pretty talented speaker, he kept the audiences attention (for as long as I was there) I was just hoping for something more on policy with Europe or Asia or some other part of the world that isn’t so overdone as Middle East. I don’t know, I’m probably being weird about it. I guess not everyone is a CNN or “New York Times” junkie like I am, but whatever.
Work and school have been fine. At work I am starting to help with as much of the new magazine as I can before I have to leave in June. I’m helping my boss look for someone to be the “New Lex” we’ve decided not to call it Student Editorial Assistant anymore, haha. Should be fun.
Well, I’ll be by next week.

Lex

TODAY IS MOTHER’S DAY. It’s the holiday of all holidays! Hi, Mom. hehe. Well, sorry it’s been so long since my last posting … wow, I’ve been saying that a lot lately. Nah, but really, I have been doing a lot of work and been stressing about school. Not that I am doing badly in school, I just really need to keep my grades up if I am going to be transferring. My problem was going to be in math, but now that I am taking the class on a Credit/No Credit basis (it doesn’t count towards my GPA and I’ll just get credit for it), so now that I don’t have math worrying me, I can concentrate on other classes. Other than that there isn’t too much going on. The magazine is about to be published and… yeah. Most of my free time has been getting other stuff that I need to get done done. I missed Greek Week at school, but I heard that it was a lot of fun. There was a toga party the night that Greek Week ended and my roommates didn’t come back until the next morning, so I am pretty sure that they had a good time. I’ve been riding my bicycle a lot around the school and down into Hayward which is pretty fun until I have to ride my bike UP Harder Road which feels slightly like Sisyphus rolling the stone. I rode my bike yesterday and when I got to the top of the hill, I was drenched in sweat. It was so gross, I couldn’t wait till I got into a shower.

Well, sorry this is short, but there really isn’t all that much to say. Things have been pretty calm and just meh.

Lex

The race

Tony under the water

The pool

Fun under the bay area sun

Lex

Hey, All!
Wow, it’s been, like, forever since I blogged. I’m really sorry about that. But I’ve had a productive couple of weeks, so I have a lot to tell. I went back home for Spring Break the day that I last blogged and I spent some time with my very large extended family at a park that has become the unofficial staging area for all of our little shindigs. That day happened to be Easter Sunday and I have a lot of little kids in my family… A LOT! So there was a lot of chocolate around but for some reason none of the kids in this last generation in my family like chocolate (which to me is the weirdest thing on Earth; at least 15 kids that don’t like chocolate!) so I was able to get a lot of the candy that they got. I’m a dark chocolate hound and I did pretty well this year in terms of candy. Unfortunately there was no easter basket for me this year. Apparently once one passes the age of 18, the childish charm used to exist is gone. But that’s fine.

My family and I left for New York that night but that might have been the worst part of my entire break (the trip to New York, the city itself was amazing). I won’t tell you all that happened, but I will say that a flight that should have taken a few hours at most, took a little under 24 hours of travel time. Hopefully next time we (or I) go, it won’t be as bad. Unfortunately because of the nightmare of the flight we lost an entire day in New York.

The morning after we arrived, we went to the school that I am looking to transfer to. The school is located in The Bronx and it is absolutely gorgeous. I loved everything about the school and am really hoping that I get in. After we visited the school, we went to Yankee Stadium to see it before it is torn down. The new stadium is being built right next to it and it was interesting to see the two stadiums next to each other, and at a certain point it was actually pretty depressing. The Bronx isn’t nearly as bad as people think it is. My family was walking around and we didn’t see anything too bad. A few homeless people but not nearly as many as what I was expecting to see in the infamous Bronx. THE PIZZA WAS AMAZING!! There was this place where a slice of pizza was 75¢ and it was actually good pizza.

Eventually we made out way back into Manhattan and we saw the stuff that could be reached by subway (we got lost and spent at least an hour trying to figure out the subway) and walking. We walked into Central Park which was really cool. We saw a huge argument between this guy on a bicycle and a taxi that nearly ran over him. The bicyclist caught up to the taxi at a red light and cornered him and started to yell at him right in the middle of the street. The traffic was so bad on the streets that the taxi couldn’t move around and had to sit there as the guy yelled obscenities at him and spit at his window. I guess the bicyclist got so mad that he decided to sit on the hood of the taxi to keep him from going anywhere. He just sat there for, like, ten minutes before the doorman of the apartment building that he was blocking had to tell the guy to move on. Yes, we were touristy enough to sit there and look at the fight go on. It was amazing, haha.

We walked through Central Park and found the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) which I wanted to visit, but my parents refused to pay $60 to get into a museum that would take up most of our limited time in the city, so we just took a picture outside of the building and got a pamphlet from the museum and moved on.

That city is amazing. We passed The Guggenheim, The Met, MoMa and a few other museums that I had never heard of all within a few blocks of each other. My brother and my dad are both really big John Lennon fans and they wanted to see Strawberry Fields (where his memorial is located) so we saw that. I wish I had a picture of that too.

Anyway, what made it truly memorable was seeing my second fight of the day. There were these two men (I think they were homeless) and they were yelling at each other and they would move towards each other as if they were going to fight and then at a certain point, they would move back and they did that for a while as they shouted how much one hated the other and who hate who more. Funny!! My mom wanted to keep moving even though (or probably because) my brother and I were totally taken in by what was happening and laughing really hard.

After that we mostly got lost and it got really cold, REALLY cold and we went to look for scarves and thicker coats because all we were wearing were light jackets and my dad had a beanie. We finally got to be comfortably dressed and we searched for some place to eat. After getting lost again, we found a Irish pub. We walked to the door to look at the menu they had posted, and there was this guy who was a bit drunk I think. He started telling us about how great the restaurant was and then he asked where we were from (I guess we looked that much like tourists) and my dad said “California” and the guy got this huge smile across his face and stumbled over to my dad and was, like, “Come hear, Man” and he shook my dad’s hand and gave him a hug and he was said, “Drinks are on me tonight, guys. Just go in and tell the bartender, Shamus, to put your drinks on Jeremy’s tab,” he then proceeded to usher us into the restaurant and yelled out as loud as he could to Shamus that, “their drinks are on me tonight, Buddy” Who says New Yorkers aren’t nice? hah. Well, my parents don’t drink so it wasn’t that useful of an offer, but I could tell my dad that was the funniest thing he had seen in a while. We left the restaurant and went back to the hotel. We left the next day.

I’m back here now and it’s okay. Madame Myintoo is gone and we have Madame Belloni now. She’s nice. I have yet to get to know her very well, but that should change pretty soon. My roommate mom is coming tomorrow with food! I’m so excited about that. It’ll be nice to have some good food to eat around here.

Oh, on a side note, my wallet got stolen I think. Ugh, I don’t think that this is a good thing. I reported it stolen, but my wallet had basically my entire life in it. Nope, definitely not a good thing. Okay, well, I’ll be back soon. Hopefully with a new wallet.

That’s all I have to say.

So I just put out a post, but stuff has happened since then. I went to lunch today with my speaking partner, Min Jae, and we went to a Korean restaurant. I have never had Korean food before and I was really excited to try it. He ordered Kimchi Soup and Kalbi as the main courses and then there were all these great side dishes that I can in no way pronounce or even begin to spell. There was spicy and sweet and crunchy and it was all awesome. Apparently his Korean friends have heard that I am on the website and that Min Jae is friends with me and they all want to meet me. So I am going to try to meet with his friends soon. I think it’s hilarious that this website leads people to recognize me. I thought it was going to be one of those things where people would see me and be like, “He’s on the school homepage… who cares?” but people actually come up to me and mention it and try to have full conversations. I admit, most of the time it’s cool, but there are times when I have to get to class or I need to talk to a teacher and people are asking me how I got the blog and some random questions. My favorite is: “Did you, you know, have to do anything with anyone to get it? You know what I mean.” Yeah, I prostituted myself to get my photo on the school website and to be able to write about my experiences here. Oh well, I just laugh and explain that there was a request for volunteers to write a blog about their freshman year experience.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention that I registered for classes for next quarter. I have a French class (no more Madame Myintoo :-[ ), an English class (sophomore level), a sociology class, and a math class (I am going to kill myself over that. I know it’s just algebra, but I’m a HORRIBLE math student.)

Okay, if I remember anymore I’ll post again.

Lex

Wow, I can’t believe it’s already March! Sorry about not posting last week, I was not well at all. I got this really bad cold and I was down and out for most of the week. It has been going around here a lot actually. First my roommate got sick and then from there it just went around our room. It’s actually kind of funny to see so many people just lying around groaning and doing nothing. Of course, it wasn’t funny when I was one of the people who was sick. So far I’m having a decent quarter I guess. I joined the school newspaper and that is going well, I’m working on an article right now about the Faculty convocation. I’m also still loving my job and I got my first major project out of the way and am now working on other small little projects. The quarter, as you know, is almost over and the stress level goes up. People who used to have infinite patience don’t have it anymore, sleep gets lost in the name of studying for a midterm or working on a Powerpoint Presentation for your communications class. It’s not good. But then there’s that point after the quarter is done and finals are over that you just sit back and think, “I’m awesome. There aren’t too many other people who could handle all this the way I am handling it right now.”.. no? Just me? Oh, well.

Not too much to report here. So, I guess I’ll end it on that.

See ya next week!

Lex

Did you know that we don’t get President’s Day off? I didn’t know that. I don’t think I mind since I never really considered those kinds of holidays as anything more than just a day for the banks to be closed, but I do wish that we had a three day weekend. Whatever.

Okay, the first thing I am going to talk about is about food here, and for once it is not a complaint! So this morning my roommate, Antonio, and I walked to the Union for breakfast and we needed to stop by the student store for some random supplies. We were walking around the store and noticed a fairly significant area of the store is now devoted to organic and natural foods. Granted, a lot of it was snack foods like Trail Mix and Wasabi Balls, but it is most definitely a step in the right direction. There was also a few nice frozen dinner choices. Antonio and I picked up a couple of trays of Frozen Organic Enchiladas and Frozen Organic Spinach and Feta wraps. I tried the enchiladas a little while ago and they were actually not bad at all. Believe me, I was more surprised than you probably are right now. I stress they don’t taste homemade, but they are certainly one of the better tasting frozen food products out there. I can’t even tell you how excited I am right now. Finally the school is 1) listening and taking to heart the student cry for healthier options or 2) they’re just tired of people crying. I figure either way it’s getting stuff done. Yay! In a small way it makes up for not having a kitchen by not being forced to kill myself on fast food and sushi (I love them… the sushi people).

I love the job that I just got. My boss is awesome; I don’t feel nervous around her and she is pretty funny. We were talking and just finding new things about each other. It was fun. With this job I am doing things that I have an interest in and I even have a sort of office-ish thingy. How cool is that?!? It also has a nice view of The Bay and great sights of the Oakland and San Francisco skylines on most days. I did love the people that I worked with at the library, but I in no way regret this job. I actually want to take time to thank the guy who told me about the job opening. Thanks Dan!!

I’m thinking that I should go visit my aunt in the city soon. She lives really close by and I haven’t seen her in a while. I guess there really isn’t that much of an excuse for that. Besides, I LOVE the city. I usually spend the night with her when I go over. It would be “most excellent”.

Ugh! I think I’m getting sick. My other roommate, Leo, has been sick and I think I’m coming down with what he had. The thing is that I don’t have what he had nearly as bad as it got him. I have a bit of a scratchy throat and a runny nose. Leo looked horribly when he got sick. Poor kid. Well, if I do have what he has, then I hope it stays like this. Mild. I guess if I do get sick, I can go to the Student Health Center… it’s free. I don’t like seeing doctors though. Meh.

I have this crazy desire to go to the beach. But as you know, and I think I’ve mentioned it, NorCal beaches are abysmal. I think Stinson Beach in the North Bay is the nicest beach near me. But I’ve hear of Ocean Beach in San Francisco. I don’t know. I need to ask some native Bay Area-ers or San Franciscans. I’m sure the Ocean Beach in SF is not nearly as nice as the OB in San Diego.

Alright, I’m tired. See ya!

Lex

Ugh! I had mid-terms this week.. eww. I had 4 essay questions to answer in California Politics and I studied, but I’m still really nervous about the test. Last quarter I didn’t have any mid-terms so I’m not used to it. I’m sure that I did okay. So, remember that job interview I told you about? Well I got the job. So I am now working for the lady in charge of PR at this school and I am now gaining experience in writing for a magazine and writing for a website. This is really exciting! After I leave the university I’ll be able to say, “Yeah, maybe you should take me because nobody else knows how to do this as well as I do. I have experience.” Okay, it probably won’t be that easy, but I’ll definitely have an easier time with stuff in the future.

Last night was the Homecoming dance for the school and apparently a lot of people went. I say apparently because I only heard about it. I didn’t attend the dance and only have the stories that my roommates told me to tell you. Yeah, this was the culmination of a week of spirit activities like basketball games and contests etc. According to students who have been here longer, this was the first year that the school really emphasized the Homecoming dance and game. I think it’s because this year the school is deciding whether or not to move up to Division II athletics or stay a Division III school. A lot of people are hoping to make the move to D-II because it would give the school the opportunity to recruit people for their sports teams and, therefore, attract more students to live (or at least attend) the school.

Spring Break is from 24 March to 31 March this year. It’s only 9 February. This might be the longest wait until a break ever. Still, even as I say that, this quarter seems a lot shorter than the first one. School started in late September (26) and ended in mid December (17) so that was about 2 1/2 months. This quarter started in early January (7) and ends in late March (21). So that means it’s actually a longer quarter. Well it still feels shorter. Meh.

Pulp Fiction was on television last night. I have never seen it and I kept falling asleep in crucial parts (I was watching it at like 2 am). I really need to actually watch it all the way through. I also need to watch “Marie Antoinette” for my French class. I mean, I’ve seen it before, but that was on the flight back from Europe and there are definite gaps in my memory… I suppose a 12 hour flight will do that to anyone.

Lex