San Francisco

It's so fun when we know people that live other places because that means all we need is a plane ticket and money for food b/c house-crashing is free :). One of Michael's friends from engineering school is working on his PhD at University of California at Berkeley, so since memorial day gave us a long weekend, we decided to visit. The rest of the group of guys from the college friend group came with us. As you will see from the pictures, they are all Asian, and in that group, we are the only white people (no I'm not racist, its just a fact).

Berkeley is about 15 min outside of San Francisco (in case you didn't know- I didn't until I went there). An interesting fact about Berkeley is that its very hippy and people there are very against chain restaurants and stores. We did find one or 2 chain restaurants, but no chain stores at all; everything is mom and pop type places. Also, the architecture of the buildings and houses was very old and nothing looked the same. I forgot to take pictures, but I really liked the feel of the place. It kinda reminded me of the hyde park area of Austin.

Hanging out with that group is fun and interesting since they all went to college together and since they all have the same engineering brain. They are a fun group of guys to be around and are constantly joking. I'm pretty sure there were at least 5 experiments about random things we encountered planned and discussed throughout the weekend. Not kidding. One of them was centered around the fact that I didn't want to drink water out of a bottle they had from the car b/c it tasted like plastic to me. This prompted a tasting from everyone at the table as well as a glass bottle being obtained to compare the water. Also, during the ride back to Berkeley from surfing, I fell asleep from listening to Michael and Rehan have what they deem as an interesting conversation about math. Good. Times.

We got there very late on Friday night, so after everyone slept in, we went to a really popular pizza place there in Berkeley where they  make and serve only one type of pizza everyday. Its always vegetarian, and Rehan (the one who lives there) says its a communist business (I'm only kinda joking?) b/c there are no employees; everyone who works there is an equal partner. Also they make so much money from tuesday-saturday that they are closed every sunday and monday. It was very good pizza.

After pizza, we went on a hike b/c the weather was gorgeous and Berkeley has some great hills with hiking trails.

the group minus Liang

After hiking, the guys wanted to play football (they seem to think this is a fun thing to do every time they get together), so I sat and read while eating the fresh fruit we bought from a local produce stand on the side of the road :). 

We spent the rest of the day walking and eating seafood from pier 39 in San Francisco and eating a lot of ice cream from Ghirardelli square.  

the clam chowder was amazing

the closest we got to alcatraz b/c we forgot to buy tickets before we left and they were sold out :(

sea lions sun bathing

  

L-R: Lina, me, Michael, Michael Wan, Liang, Alex, Rehan, and Rehan's  friend from school Anthony joined us for the day

fountain in Ghirardelli Square

SO YUMMY

Sunday was of course the coldest day we were there since it was the day of surfing lessons. Thankfully we had wetsuits, but my fingers were literally blue when we were done. It was so fun and probably my favorite part of the trip. I felt like it was a successful adventure b/c I was able to get up on the board and actually surf a few times!

the surfers, Michael didn't want to go so he got to be the camera man

I think Liang is the one who is standing

Liang is on the left, I'm in the middle, Alex is in the back on the right, and the person standing on the right is some other random person from the class

So its kinda hard to see since its from so far away, but if you watch the middle of the screen, you see someone get up, surf for a little bit, then fall. That's me!! 

After surfing, we were cold and worn out, so we went to a fun seafood restaurant in half moon bay. After that, we drove back to Berkeley (the surfing place was about 45 min away), showered, and just kinda hung out around Rehan's place for the rest of the evening. We did go watch fireworks for a little bit that were going on in celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge's 75th anniversary. Pretty cool. 

On Monday we slept late (something that we did everyday), then went and saw the Golden Gate Bridge. Then to kill time until we had to go to the airport, we ate dim sum (chinese food) and got ice cream. We actually ate ice cream several times during the trip and there was much debate over which place had the best ice cream. I was just happy that I got to eat chocolate ice cream so many times :). 

We got back late on Monday night and were worn out from a busy weekend and a time change, but I'm so glad we got to go! Hopefully we will make it up there again before he finishes school :)