Back in the Americas

Shots of San Francisco

Arrived in SF last Thursday around midday, and Tony came to pick me up with his mom (so nice!), and so began our adventures exploring the city. That day, we went out for lunch and had Pho close to his house, then we walked to his old middle school and were gonna walk a bit further but then a screw popped out of his glasses so the lens fell out, so we went home. Hahahaha pretty much. Then we went out to dinner with some of his family friends. I felt kind of bad like a random add-on but everyone was really nice.

The next day, I almost overslept because the room I'm staying in has no windows and I rely on the sun to wake up. I met a few of Tony's high school friends, we walked around a bit in the Sunset District, had lunch at a Thai place and went to Golden Gate Park where we just chilled in the sun for 2 hours, since the weather was so nice. Then, we went out to the coast and I saw the Pacific Ocean from the other side! And we went on a hike around the coast for the next 3 hours or so. There were far too many stars for my liking, but the view of the ocean was really impressive. We had Japanese for dinner, though the Japanese restaurant was actually run by Chinese people haha. There are a lot of Cantonese people in SF. After dinner, we went up Twin Peaks and got a really, really beautiful view of the city at night. So many pretty lights. I need a tripod. Still got 1 or 2 decent shots thought.

Saturday, it was sunny again so we planned to go for a hike up San Bruno after having Yumcha, which is the tallest hill in the area so it's where all the radio spires are. The road was less vertical than I imagined it, which actually made for a nice walk, other than being pricked in the leg every so often by overgrown blackberry thorns. You could see the whole city from up there, it was kind of breathtaking. We had dinner at a Hawaiian place which was really just a Chinese-American place. I had the most epic food coma I've had since post-lunch Year 13 Physics. Almost dozed off in the restaurant right there. We then had frozen yoghurt to counterbalance it (good logic I know). I really needed to go to the bathroom but some kids were causing trouble in the bathroom (clogging up the sink and overflowing it because they thought it was funny, til their Dad came in and yelled at them. Derp kids...).

Then, on Sunday, we'd planned to go to a concert in Golden Gate Park (Alice's Summerthing! Actually so many people were there) after having burritos in Mission, but then we heard that it was raining and decided to go downtown to watch a movie instead. We initially planned on watching Monsters' University, but it wasn't showing when we got there so we watched Fast & Furious 6 instead. I'm glad I got to watch it after all, and I'm kinda sad Justin Lin isn't going to be returning for 7. It'll be interesting to see what Mr Wan does to it though, hopefully not turn it into a shitty horror franchise plz. Anyway while waiting for the movie we walked around to Union Square and got our live band performance anyway, by a band singing swing dancing songs, got free samples from Ghirardelli's chocolates, and helped an injured bee back into the hedges after seeing it struggling for 20 minutes and almost getting stepped on countless times. After the movie, we met up with Dimiter for dinner, walked down to the pier where there was a pretty sight of the Bay Bridge over the water, stayed for a while and then went home.

Which leads us to today, I guess. I was pretty tired from the last few days of epic walking and the forecast said it would rain, so we decided to take it a bit easier. Tony and I went to the Academy of Sciences and just explored the whole thing for pretty much the whole day. I really enjoyed the rainforest exhibit actually, so many cool animals :) A plethora of frogs, for sure. And the penguins were super cute. I actually learned quite a bit (European settlers had a ~32000 year head start on the Native Americans in terms of settlement, it's kind of no wonder they were so much more technologically advanced), and also I wasn't aware that there used to be so many land bridges that people could just... walk over lol. And, idk why but my mind is always blown whenever I go to observatories or do astronomy-related stuff. It just seems that we are so small on the grand scale of things, but the only thing we can do to preoccupy ourselves is create problems for ourselves on our little planet and then spend our lives solving them. This was kind of amplified by the thought that we all came from one place anyway, so it's like we're just picking fights with ourselves when we should really just all get along. It's kind of interesting from a sociological perspective? Oh also I learned that starfish don't have a brain, heart or nervous system, but they eat by wrapping their stomach around things after they amble around and find something to eat, and excrete from a hole in their center and it looks gas-like. They're pretty cute I guess. O and jellyfish are kind of adorable. There are also such things as upside-down jellyfish, which I thought was a troll at first but I guess they actually exist???? Anyway after that we went to Crepevine and I consumed diabetes on a plate, and had a sugar hangover for the rest of the day (I swear I'm not the only one to get headaches after eating a lot of sugar).

Kiwi @ Science Museum! :D 

Tomorrow, we've planned to go see Monsters' University in the morning and haven't planned the rest of the day. It's supposed to be raining tomorrow as well. I still have to go down to Fisherman's Wharf, have some clam chowder and have some Ghirardelli's ice cream, and meet up with Zelin hopefully, before I go down to Palo Alto on Friday. I also wanted to go visit Alcatraz, but nobody told us that you had to book tickets in advance since they sell out so quickly =.= so too late.

Oh also! Exciting news, I applied for this thing a while ago, forgot about it, but I was accepted! So I'll be spending 4 days in Chicago in the beginning of August :) I'm actually pretty excited haha.