I have fallen in love with this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfBlUQguvyw&feature=player_embedded
Single-Breasted Tweed
Coat, $269, by United Colors of Benetton
http://www.gq.com/style/wear-it-now/200911/best-topcoats-winter-under-500-dollars#slide=4
Coogi Military Coat
Multi-pocket Woolen Bomber with Vents, $99.99
http://www.burlingtoncoatfactory.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Section_Id=12231&pcount=&pn=1&Product_Id=1425496&sku1=o_s1_68064198#
Boots
REI, $60
http://www.rei.com/product/792447
The Time Teller P
Watch, Mismatch Color, $59.95
http://www.nixonnow.com/watches/mens/the-time-teller-p-A119_377.html
Printed Sweater Bomber
UO Hat, $38
http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.jsp?id=16914053&itemdescription=true&navAction=jump
Down Filled Jacket
Zeri Xposur, $79.99
http://www.burlingtoncoatfactory.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Section_Id=12232&pcount=&pn=1&Product_Id=1422648&sku1=o_s1_68067166#
Plaid Duffel
Coat, $130, by Uniqlo. Suit jacket, $129.50, and pants, $49.50, by Uniqlo +J. Shirt, $50, by Topman. Hat, $44, by Stüssy.
http://www.gq.com/style/wear-it-now/200911/best-topcoats-winter-under-500-dollars#slide=5
August 24-27th
The Cultural Connections program ended awesomely. I made some pretty cool friends! We had sooo many activities. On one day, we went to this place called the Fieldhouse, which is, in my opinion, a Malibu-wannabe. But it was fun nonetheless.
Also, the squirrels here are FEROCIOUS. One day we were eating breakfast outside on Old Campus, and I put down my bagged breakfast (we were having intense Yale-discussions on politics and ethics and the economy and all those things, not childhood shows... :D). I had cut my bagel into sections and there were several pieces just looking delicious and all in the bag on the floor. Then, one of the squirrels had the audacity to steal my food. It scampered over to my bag, created...nay, FEROCIOUSLY TORE, a hole near the bottom of the bag (the bag's top was open, by the way), took a section of my bagel and decided to eat it near the location where my friends and I were sitting. The following pictures depict the evil squirrel. Be warned: it is an evil, evil short squirrel.
I was so pissed. I was in need of a good fur lining to my coat to get me through the East coast winters, so I suggested killing the evil animal, but these hippie college students convinced me otherwise. I still wanted to get that squirrel before it got me again. And get me it would, I knew it.
No lol. A week later, it would come to stalk me again. While I was sitting in my college's courtyard, I had SEVEN berries or whatnot thrown down at me from the trees above. I moved around, I promise. It was not coincidence. I yelled and threw a berry back at where I knew that squirrel was hiding, and before you know it, it scampers down from the tree, sits on a bench and stares at me. We have a staring contest for about three minutes, much to the amusement of onlookers. It then scampered away in its haughty, tail-waving demeanor.
During that pre-orientation week we also had a party, by the freshmen, for the freshmen. It was a pretty makeshift-like party in one of the unused suites on the 5th floor. Here is how the room looked like before:
After pushing the beds and desks to the side, the party started!There were only two people dancing, five others meandering.
They had awesome Pitbull songs! They tried! The International students were also having a preorientation program on campus, and somehow they got wind of it, and decided they wanted to have a party with equally "cultured" people. So they walked across Old Campus to L-dub (the name of our residential hall) and brought their exotic flava with them. Soon, the party looked like this:
It was actually pretty packed. The photo above was taken at the very beginning when the exotic international freshmen were shuffling in. Unfortunately, after TWO MINUTES, they noticed the lack of inebriating drinks and declared the party "lame." They were gone in two minutes, leaving the room like this:
Lawl.
The pre-orientation program ended with a talent show showcasing, get this, Yale frosh talent. Needless to say, it made me want to hang up my brand new Taylor 214-CE acoustic-electric guitar for good. The show ended with a big hurrah by the camp counselors, who sang "Lean on me." In a cheesy finale, we joined in and hugged and swayed to the music.
Present
I'm doing great! Just yesterday I got a sore throat, and it's starting to worsen and I'm beginning to get headaches and chills. It might be that I didn't get enough sleep on Monday night (to remedy that, though, I slept for ALMOST 12 hours on Tuesday night!!!). But I'm trying to get back in a schedule where I seriously get at least 7+ hours of sleep. That way I won't be completely burned out by my 3:00 class.
Freshmen are advised to take no more than four classes/credits. The classes that I am taking are Japanese L1, Introductory Graphic Design, Basic Drawing, and Spatial Language in Architecture. They are all so amazing!! I meet for Japanese once a day at 9:20 (which is COMPLETELY managable; it's an incentive to go to sleep earlier!). Graphic Design and Basic Drawing meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Architecture meets just on Wednesdays with a section on Friday.
I balance these with designing for the Saybrook Daybook (my residential college's lit and photo essay magazine) and La Fuerza (the latin american lit magazine on campus). I am also "technically" part of Design At Yale, but I haven't been going because I would be too time-constrained in the evenings. I also tutor kids in a bilingual second grade class in a New Haven elementary school! Putting the social responsibility aside, teaching them is just fun!!! I am also in MEChA, and am organizing the Dia De Los Muertos event now! OH! And this also is AMAZING: I work at Saybrook's buttery, called "The Squiche," which is a late night eatery run by STUDENTS. It is so amazing getting to know so many different people between 10 PM and 1 AM while making their super greasy grilled cheese with mozzarella sticks on the side.
I didn't have midterms. :D Instead I had TONS, or as I like to flaunt on the East Coast, HELLA, projects for my art classes. They are super challenging, super time consuming, and super fun. I have my midterm grade back from Japanese! And it's better than I expected! WOOHOO! I'm so happy! But just to make it EVEN BETTER, I'm getting a tutor and going to office hours. にほんご むずかしい ですねえ！
I'm having the time of my life here. :) However, one down side is the COLD. It's not even winter (It's barely October!) and it snowed last week. Luckily I went to NYC to visit Orlando/Lluvia/Rumika/Rocio and bought a heavier coat at H&M.
So this is my time at Yale thus far. I guess I'm doing ok. :D
After spending my night blogging and going to sleep at four in the morning, I was not in the mood to wake up, showered, and be at the dining hall by 10 am. Instead, I woke up at 10 am, showered, and was at the dining hall by 10:40. I didn't realize that we all go as a group, and that some of the staff members were going crazy looking for me, even though they know what room I'm staying at.
Right after breakfast (even though I hadn't eaten I wasn't hungry at all) we all to a bus to the nearby mall (it was huge!) and everyone kinda migrated towards the Target store. What can I say? Low prices and good quality are my things now. I went all out and bought my college stuff. The plastic bags were HUGE, but there were only two. Nevertheless, there was very little room in the bus for every student to bring back enough junk food to feed a small country, so we were cramped inside. After this, we sped directly to The Fieldhouse, a self-proclaimed family fun center. I DID have fun over there. At first, we ate some really greasy pizza that I could feel was clogging my arteries as I took bites (wiping off the grease would be lame and I would FOREVER be known as the crazy Odwalla drinking, muesli-eating, hippie (even though I like those things...)).
Afterwards, we divided into groups of about eight or so, and engaged in an all out Yale freshman war between two groups at a time. No lie, but I completely dominated. I don't know exactly how one's score is tallied up (number of successful shots, accuracy, number of times one was shot...) but I had almost 8000 points while the other student in second place had less than 3000. Woot woot.
After that, we decided to play this game called "cyber sport," which is, in a nutshell, Fast and Furious on wheelchairs. We get on bumper cars and have lacrosse sticks, and aim to get the ball in one of the hoops on either sides of the court. It was amazingly fun and a lot harder than it looks.
I love Yale's endowment.
Then over pink lemonade that tasted like watered-down Crystal Light, I talked extensively with some other classmates of mine. It was so cool getting to know these regular people. After a while, we went back to the buses and headed back to New Haven. After taking both bags up to my room and setting up my bed, we went to dinner (I was on time now!) and walked with my roommate to the next activity. While chatting, we both said that we still couldn't believe that we're out of high school, away from our families, and this school is our own for the next four years. It really is daunting looking up at the old-architecture, gothic, Hogwarts-esque buildings and walking by them as a student rather than visitors.
We then go to this activity called "Journey Maps," where we have a huge piece of butcher paper and we write or draw out things that have shaped our identity. We had complete liberty to choose whatever methods we wanted to convey this in. After this activity, we were free to do as we pleased, and I wandered over to a circle of about 30 students. They were playing a game with the word "ninja" in its name. It consisted of people lunging at the nearest person's hands, only with one movement at a time. The person being "attacked" could also dodge, but was only alloted one movement as well. Everyone had a chance to lunge at another person once during a "round." It's much less complicated than it sounds.
After four matches of that game (I never won), I went upstairs to take a power nap in my dorm. I was exhausted. Afterwards, I went downstairs at around 11:30 pm and attempted to organize a dance party with this other girl from California. We turned up the volume to Pitbull and Kanye, but no one was feeling it. The small group we had gathered decided to put on some other ghetto songs and were dancing just like how you would except Yale freshman/ex-valedictorians to dance (They were also 100% East-coasters or Midwestern people. I'm just saying...) I then talked to this girl who approached me about painting, and it turns out we both really enjoy oil painting! She is also crazy about graphic design and TYPOGRAPHY, so I know we'll be really good friends. I talked with her for about 45 minutes. She is a really chill person.
Finally, we had at around 1:30 am, we had a guitar jam session. Two of the staff aids and a group of about 12 freshmen sat on the steps outside our dorms and played songs from The Beatles, Death cab for Cutie, and even No Doubt. Feeling like my day was awesome and nothing could stop me, I decided to play "Everlong" by Foo Fighters, all the while not forgetting to present my crutches (I haven't had any formal singing, I just started learning guitar...). Needless to say, it was not a hit. No one sang along. They didn't know the Foo Fighters! Who doesn't know the Foo Fighters!? It was awkward to say the least. I cut it short. The guy who was playing the guitar played a large number of songs for us, and we sang along. Finally, somebody asked him to play "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay, and he didn't know. Heh heh. I knew this would come in handy someday... I then said calmly, "Oh, I know how to play that song." I came to the rescue and it was amazingly awesome. I also recounted my story about playing with Weezer in their Hootenanny. It was a hit. We were looking so chill that the cop patrolling Yale stopped by us and asked us if he could sing along. We told him he could, and soon he was playing the guitar himself.
I then retired to my room to write this blog, another late night. But it was awesome. Much better than what I expected. I got past my nervousness today and had an awesome day at Yale. Hey, I knew it was going to happen all along.
:)
The following blog will consist of occasional posts by me about my life at college in the east coast. Although there might be long intervals between posts, I plan to continue doing this throughout my entire first year. Not everything will be interesting, but it's my life.
[ooh, that last phrase sounded like a TV-intro!]
After packing the entire night, and finally going to sleep at 3 a.m., I woke up to my phone's alarm two hours later. It's hard to decide whether it's my chronic procrastinator practices coming through, or if
I should blame it on my latino culture's tendency to leave things until the last moment. Whatever the cause, I woke up, strangely devoid of any butterflies or other disgusting insects in my stomach.
Soon followed goodbye no1. I had to hug Gaby, Emmanuel, and Kassandra goodbye. I consoled them by telling them that we'd talk everyday and use webcam, but I was really trying to console myself. We put my luggage in the car, and I drove to SFO Int'l airport.
While checking in, I had to lug both suitcases to the scale to get weighed. In the end, I had to pay $90 for the luggage that I checked in. My dad was parking the car, but got lost, so he decided to come back to the terminal before I entered the security check. Then came goodbye no2.
My mom and I shed some tears, but we didn't cry. I told my parents that I loved them, that they've taught me well, and they nodded, knowing that I would do my best to be alright. I also hugged Teresa, my younger sister, and we agreed that she would webcam with me every morning so she could get my approval on the outfits she would wear to school (she goes to high school now; no uniforms...).
Then my parents walked to the car, and they looked back at me as I walked away. This part really sucked. I had the hugest, nastiest lump in my throat, and I know this is stupid, but I wanted them to say, "You don't have to go. Stay!" But I'm going to college! It's going to be awesome! Right?
Steering away from my new college student jitters, as well as my teen-angst-like-sadness, I'll talk about my arrival. I arrived at JFK at 4:05 p.m. and got a shuttle to New Haven. It was so annoying. After 45 minutes of going to different terminals at JFK, we finally got OUT of that airport and drove INTO La Guardia to pick up other passengers. We then embarked on a three-hour journey to drop off everyone before leaving me at Phelp's Gate. The driver was also about to leave me at some random CT Limo stop in the middle of nowhere, New Haven. I gave him no tip.
I was greeted by a staff member from the pre-orientation program that I am attending. I dropped off my luggage (I was late, by the way), and I walked into a room full of incoming freshmen. The door inside was at the front of the classroom, so I had to interrupt the the pre-orientation staff from telling the freshmen about themselves. I walked from the front of the classroom to the near-back rows with everyone's attention on me. Intimidating.
After that part of the program, I got my luggage and lugged it four stories up to my room. The rooms suck. They are tiny. But, hey, let's hear some optimism. They are cozy, and will make my roommate and me closer. The common room is awesome! (This latter statement is actually true; they have a fireplace and an awesome window seat). After an ice-cream social, we went our separate ways. I went with a small group of students to a pizzeria and a small market-place. (It is argued that pizza was actually invented in New Haven... It's better here). I went back to my room, set up my wireless connections through my computer, and although it is almost 3 in the morning, I'm unable to sleep. So I started this blog.
I'm ready for college. I know I am. But there is also a transition between living your home life and packing everything into two large, 360-degree-swiveling suitcases and moving across the country. I'm in that transition now. But I'll get over it. I'll make these the best four years of my life.
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