A Week in Review: SF Adventures

College Confidence: Doing Things By Yourself

I am spending my first ever summer in San Francisco and while I am working, I also am lucky enough to have lots of downtime as well.  One reason I am so excited to be in the city is that the majority of my friends are also still around, working and living out leases and such.  However, we are all adults, which means our works schedules conflict and we have different family and relationship obligations.  Basically, this means that we don't get to do as many things together as we would like, and I end up doing more things on my own.

Now, at first this might sound a bit depressing.  Who wants to do things on their own, right?  Well, I actually really enjoy doing things on my own, and think it's an important skill to develop as you go through your college years.  Effectively, these are your last years of childhood and, in the ideal situation, you start taking more and more responsibility for your own life.  So I guess what I'm trying to say is that you should start getting used to doing things on your own.

Nothing about high school prepares you for this.  It's quite the contrary: everything in high school seems to be measured by how many friends you have, how many Facebook photos you end up tagged in.  But the reality is that, unless your best friend happens to be going to the same university as you, you will have to start doing a whole lot by yourself, from walking into your classes on the first day to traveling back and forth on your academic breaks.

I know that this can be quite frightening for lots of people and even I have yet to become comfortable doing some things like eating at a restaurant by myself.  But I've actually come to really enjoy and value my time alone and now have lots of fun going shopping on my own, going to the cafe, or the bookshop, or for a walk in the park.  Remember that it's important to be able to enjoy spending time with yourself.

Hope you all had a lovely week.

Wontons, Your Consolation Prize

I was originally planning out a College Confidence post for today, but never actually got around to writing it.  The last few days have actually been fairly busy and as I am writing this I am sitting at San Francisco International Airport, waiting to catch my flight home for the weekend.  My little brother Trevor is graduating from high school, and I could not be more excited for him.  I'm sure there will be a post of pictures from this weekend coming soon!

Long story short, I didn't write the post I planned.  I did, however, take some pretty fun pictures of my grandmother making pork and shrimp wontons, and thought I'd share those instead.  Warning: they will make you hungry.

Walk the Hills

On Saturday, I was invited to Larkspur for a spur of the moment hike with a few friends.  One of my good friends had been staying in this super rustic and beautiful mountain-side house all week dog-sitting, and he'd discovered a few trails he wanted to take us on.  My friends brought food, water, sweatshirts and baseball caps.  I brought my camera.

It's absolutely beautiful up there.  I must admit that I'm not entirely sure where we were (I believe it was Mount Tamalpais?) but it was a different hike than I've ever experienced.  It was difficult, yet at the end I just felt so incredibly light and inspired that I wasn't entirely ready to leave when we decided it was time to turn back.  I'd really like to invest in some good hiking boots and go back some day.