2 weeks in the past...

Hm. Well, as many of you know, I got back from the USA this morning (ie. the past, 20 hours behind us). Kinda sucks though, we missed the mid-autumn festival and went straight from friday --> sunday. no mooncake ):

All in all it was a pretty fun trip. We moved around every 2 days or so cuz my parents were resolute that we would visit as many of their friends and famous universities as possible. Thus, this is a very broad overview of what happened:
Saturday: flew to Los Angeles. Arrived Saturday (US) around midday.
Saturday (in US): flew to Chicago. Arrived at night
Sunday: Went to see university of chicago, went around the city, had sushi for dinner. :D
Monday: Northwestern university, flew to Boston in the afternoon.
Tuesday: Harvard in the morning, MIT in the afternoon (I'm in love with this place, will expand later. xP)
Wednesday: My crazy father decided that he could rent a car and drive to New York (traffic laws in USA are VERY different). Stopped off at Brown and Yale on the way.
Thursday: Walked around NYC like the whole day without a purpose
Friday: Ditto.
Saturday: flew to San Francisco. Visited Stanford. Didn't get much out of it because it's closed on weekends and it was 103 degrees (38-39 celcius) so I didn't really care for walking around campus as much as finding a room with air con.
Sunday: Took one of those double decker open top tour buses around SF, went across golden gate bridge woooooooo it's so windy it feels like a theme park ride.
Monday: Flew to Las Vegas. Even hotter than San Francisco was that day. Stayed in hotel for remainder of the afternoon and went out on the strip at night.
Tuesday: Tour trip to grand canyon. Was carsick and disappointed after 5 hours drive.
Wednesday: Dad drove down to Los Angeles. Hotel had free internet :D
Thursday: Universal studios! It was very hot that day as well. not sure on actual numbers but I recall it was 90s-100 (30 degrees upwards) I have a very prominent sock tan to prove it.
Friday: Caltech and UCLA during the day, and then flew back to NZ~ and now I'm here.

Hm, in terms of schools, as mentioned above, I really liked MIT. it's mainly encased in a huge mazelike building but ehhh, the nerd culture that seems to radiate off the walls of that place is like a magnet to me ): It will be a sad day when I get rejected because it's too elite for me. 3500 international students applying ---> 100 accepted. gahhhh no chance at all.

Apart from that, Caltech also has a similar nerd culture (dipping pumpkins in liquid nitrogen at halloween and throwing them off their 10 storey high library to try to reenact the oil drip experiment, etc etc..), and I liked UCLA/Northwestern as well. The ivy leagues didn't really make much of an impression on me. Maybe it was because I joined the wrong tour on Yale and ended up following a college art history class around the campus =__= I kept wondering why he kept going on about the 'neo-gothic architecture in contrast to the neo-classical and modernist styles of other buildings' but ehhhh it was educational I suppose. Til he kicked me out hahaha :D well he could've told me earlier.

now most of these universities have an average of 700-800 in each part of the SAT. (the max is 800) I tried to do a practice exam on the plane (I know, very cool) and I got 710 in writing, 670 in math and 580 in critical reading DDD: THERE ARE SUCH LONG WORDS! I don't know what most of them mean. my vocabulary is so bad =__= I must utilise roxy's word of the day from now on.

I have gotten used to the american accent! in fact, when I got on the plane last night (er, or 2 nights ago, however you want to look at it) and the pilot had such a strong NZ accent it actually sounded strange to me D: blehh I don't like the NZ accent.

My parents. We come out to a different country and you know what we have for dinner every night? chinese. Yuppp... =__= and when there were no good chinese restaurants around, no worries! instead of going to have nice food at an italian or japanese etc restaurant (both of which they do eat), we'll just go to a bad chinese takeaway with white people rice! D:

One night in a restaurant the swan lake theme (composed by tchaikovsky) started playing. I could hear the 20-somethings on the table next to us...
"omg what's this song? I've heard it somewhere"
"it sounds like harry potter"
"I think it's star wars."
"WHAT? hahahaha that's not star wars."
....
I think they should make a star wars musical. It would be cool. Luuuu-u-u-u-ke~ I am your faaaaaaa... aaaaaaaaaa.. THEEERRRRRRR!! (doo doo)

Let's talk about fancy hotels!! I guess the one that takes the cake here is the Trump that we stayed in in Las Vegas. It's so posh and 5-star that it doesn't have rooms with 2 beds. So, my brother dibbed the bed that was several 10 times bigger than him and instead I got to slept on the sofa bed. Even that was quite comfortable. If that's not enough, the bathroom there was about the size of my garage, and it had a TV SCREEN IN THE MIRROR. Heck, yes. there was also a hot tub that I never had time to take full advantage of but gahhhh so posh!! I wouldn't mind living there =P I wonder what their penthouse suite looks like...

hmmm we also did a lot of shopping because stuff is a lot cheaper and nicer in USA. At one stage my mum bought so many pairs of shoes and made me carry them that a lady came up to me and asked me a question assuming that I worked at the shop @___@


sigh, tbh it's kinda boring to be back. The weather here is so cloudy. It didn't rain any of the days I was there. NOT ONCE. Then I come back here and hear about some tsunami and earthquake and how it's been hailing and raining for the last 2 weeks. ):

OH YEAH. I managed to get my craft knife on internation flight from auckland to LA, from LA to Chicago, Chicago to Boston, New York to San Francisco just fine, and have it confiscated when we were flying LA back to Auckland. WHAT? Lapse in continuity of austerity of procedures much?

ugh. I guess that's it. 6 plane rides, 6 cities, 8 universities, a broken camera, many hours lost and gained overcoming jetlag later, I'm back home and I guess that's what matters =P
happy studying for exams everyone~

might somehow get some photos up after I get the memory card of that broken camera @_@