A Week in Review: SF Adventures

30DDC: Day 4 - Favorite Place

Today's prompt of drawing your favorite place was actually rather challenging.  Part of my problem was that I've never actually thought of where my favorite place was.  So I simply picked my favorite place at the moment, Golden Gate Park here in San Francisco.  There's so much to do, but what I love about it is that you don't necessarily have to have an aim to do anything in particular when you go there.  It's like our own little sliver of wilderness in the middle of the city.

Please excuse the roughness of the drawing.  I did it while watching the second half of the Superbowl (congrats Giants!).  I actually rather like it.

Let's get ready for another week!

A Sunny Day for a Birthday

Yesterday was an amazing day. Not only did I turn a whopping 20 years old, but it was probably the nicest day we've had so far. This made it the perfect day for my friend Justine to complete what was possibly the greatest assignment ever: walk through Golden Gate Park to the beach. I tagged along while she took beautiful pictures in sunny weather. We looked at the trees...

petted adorable dogs...

played with balloons...

and got lunch at the cute little cafe called the Java Beach Cafe. Even though they were recommended to us based on their coffee, we were happy to discover that their sandwiches are just as tasty. Their menu is seriously impressive, with tons of sandwiches, pastries, and both hot and cold drinks. I personally enjoyed the ice tea, though it was a little bitter. Over all, it's good food in a cute, beachy atmosphere!

Have a great week, everyone!

Positivity

Happy weekend, everyone! The past couple of days or so have been a blur of fun, sun, and relaxing. San Francisco experienced a slightly heat wave (or maybe it was just a rise in temperatures) last week, and as such my friends and I spent every possible second outside. We even donned our bathing suits and trekked to Golden Gate Park (which is much closer than the beach) for a little bit of tanning. While there,  Justine and I decided to romp around in the vegetation, and it left me feeling invigorated and alive! Nature tends to do that for me. 

Last night, the campus hosted a small concert of mostly "indie bands" in one of our gyms. I decided to actually do something on a Friday night and go with a small group of my friends. It turns out that the concert had started at four o'clock that afternoon, and we had missed the majority of it. Luckily, we made it just in time for the headlining group Augustana to perform. After experiencing their attractiveness and great music for myself, I would definitely recommend checking out their new album. I know I plan to download it!

So, I'm sure some of you are wondering about the title of this post. Being out in the sun has not only made me tanner, but it has altered my mentality on life slightly. I couldn't believe how much happier I was getting off campus and being in the park for just a few hours. Combining this with my thoughts about Lent (the liturgical season that the Catholic Church is currently in), I decided that I needed to make some positive changes in my living habits. This means wasting as little time as possible and actually being productive when I do work. I also plan on getting up a bit earlier to go on a walk at least a couple times a week. I did it today, and I've been much more energetic and happy. See, positive change!

Is there anything you can do/change to make your life more positive?

Adventures on Haight

After weeks and weeks of hard work, my friend Christine and I decided we needed to get off of campus for a while and reconnect with the amazing city around us. So we took a little gander down Haight Street, equipped with jackets, umbrellas, and our cameras. We saw stopped in a few little stores, including an art shop where I purchased a cheap sketchbook and various markers. And after seeing so much amazing graffiti and street art on Haight, I cannot wait to get down my own ideas.

Because we were feeling adventurous, and because the rain had finally stopped, we decided to keep going down Haight until we got bored.

We ended coming upon Buena Vista Park, which is essentially a large hill covered in trees. Being curious about how good the view of the city would be from the top of the hill, we decided to go on a little hike.

We climbed up and up... but in the end, it wasn't the multiple staircases or trails that made our ascent to the top rather slow. The park was so beautiful, we just couldn't stop taking pictures!

And at the top, as we were getting blown side to side by the wind and the sky was threatening rain, we decided that it was well worth the walk. San Francisco truly is a beautiful city.

We got back to campus just before the rain hit. We then sat together in Christine's room, cozy under a couple of blankets, comparing photos and watching lightening light up the sky. By the time I finally went to bed, the wind was howling through the buildings on campus, the rain was going vertically at my window, and the trees were swaying violently in the wind. It would have been scary if I hadn't been feeling so thankful for being alive and where I am at.

At the end of the week, it will be Thanksgiving. What are you thankful for?

Thank God for the Little Things

Hello again. Sorry that I haven't posted in a while, but to be completely honest I've been a little down this lately. To be more precise, I still find the weekends hard. That's when I miss home and the only time I ever let myself cry.

But this weekend, I got reminded by the little things that life isn't really so bad.

I couldn't focus on my homework yesterday, being both sad and in a highly distracting environment, and so I went for a walk. A short bus ride and four blocks later, I settled down at Mountain Lake Park by my grandparents. I sat in the sun, watching parents teach their little kids how to throw baseballs or kick a soccer ball. There was one family having a birthday party, complete with a bounce house! At first I thought it might make me sad, sitting there by myself with all these families, but then a funny thing happened.

I got recruited to play by this cute little thing.

The man sitting next to me had brought along his dog and baby. He was trying to get the baby to go to sleep and the dog kept whining and nudging his ball; he wanted to play. Unfortunately for the man, he already had his hands full. Eventually, the dog got the hint, and went to chew on the ball right behind where I was sitting. He was so adorably bouncy that when the ball rolled to a stop next to me, I couldn't resist throwing it for him.

And that turned into a whole two and a half hours of playing with this random dog in the park, while reading Plato.

That may sound like it was distracting. Didn't I go there to work, after all? But to be completely honest, playing with that dog was exactly what I needed. I didn't want to just go out on the weekends to distract myself, and frankly I wasn't in a very playful mood. But this little afternoon delight reminded me that sometimes, you just need a break. When you get to far inside your head, and you feel like you'll never get out, that's when you need to go for a walk, get outside, go smell the flowers.

Although I will still miss home and will still get sad sometimes, I know that it's okay. But it's not okay to sit and wallow in my tears. It's best to get out, and play a game of ball.

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone is having a good Friday. Partying still seems to be the popular thing to do and, quite frankly, I don't think it will go out of style any time soon (hello, this is college). I actually witnessed my first in dorm drinking today, and I have to admit, I wasn't that impressed. I have been, however, branching out to try and find out what there is to do besides partying.

Today after classes, some friends and I met at Golden Gate Park in the AIDS Memorial Garden. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and there were two guys with guitars who played for a while. I admit it; we studied on a Friday afternoon! But it was so quiet and peaceful that we relaxed and read for a little while before packing up and going off to explore Haight Street. Of course, not before I got to take some pictures of the absolutely gorgeous park!

On the way out of the park, we came across some chalk art on the side walk, and I couldn't resist! This was only the beginning of what Haight had to offer.

This man's pants were the first thing to catch our attention. Well, that and the fact that he was suspending himself upside down over this fire hydrant. He was very nice when we asked him if we could take a picture with him, and introduced himself as the hip Dali Lama.

This cute little dog was sitting just inside the doorway of a salon we passed by. He was also very friendly and relaxed, and was just as eager as the man in the neon pants to pose for some pictures.

We stopped for pizza and took a look in the discount army store. On the way back to campus, we saw this band playing on someone's front steps and stopped for half of a song. If you like bluesy-folk music, they weren't half bad and had attracted a decent sized crowd.

Once we got back to campus, we threw in a few loads of laundry and played video games with some of the guys on our floor. Most everyone has left for parties by now, but my friends Scott, Justine, and I are planning on watching a movie in a little bit. So, I would call this a major victory over stay-in-friday-syndrome, which typically manifests itself in melancholy feelings and random bursts of loneliness. I had a great time today, no alcohol needed!