Dear reader,
I apologize for the delay with this week’s post – it’s just been getting even busier this past week and there’s simply not enough hours during the day to finish everything.
Anyways, I’d like to start off this post by kindly asking all my Dominican friends as much as I appreciate the thought that they put behind this to stop reminding me how much time I’ve left in here and how much they’re going to miss me. Every time something moves inside of me and I feel as if someone poured a bucket of water over my head. The thing is that I’ve met some incredible people here at Dominican and it makes me sad to think about how fast time is flying. This whole adventure was so amazing in so many ways and I can’t believe my fellow exchange students and I are almost at the finish line. Don’t get me wrong my dear friends and family back home – I’m excited to go back and catch up with everything I’ve missed, but it’ll be hard to get separated from the whole environment that I got attached to faster than I expected. That’s something I’ve noticed throughout time – I always leave a piece of me in every place I go that touches me in a way. Once I leave, it calls me back constantly. Not fair . . .
Okay, I’m stopping this rant right now! Let me tell you about what happened this week! I’ll keep it short first of all, because it’s past 1.30am here and second – because there’s just so many things that happened!
The week started off strong with the usual classes and work, but in the evening I volunteered at the Ted Koppel lecture organized by the Institute of Leadership Studies (or ILS). It was my third event as a helper, but this time my role was to take photos before the lecture started. I was incredibly excited, because I get called “photographer” and I just love taking pictures and experimenting with angles, lights and composition. Not to mention that Mr. Koppel is a quite influential figure in the journalism field at least in the US. He talked about his new book and the theory that he developed was that the world right now is extremely vulnerable to cyberattacks due to our over connectedness to all kinds of devices. So attached to them that literally one man with a computer and all the right moves and information can shut down the whole system. I was very intrigued by the topis and I look forward to reading his book. However, Mr. Koppel made one big mistake – he totally disregarded the Communications majors calling it insufficient if you want to go out and be a journalist. He then added that it would need to be complimented by another major such as Political Science or Economics so that the person has extensive knowledge in a specific area. Oh well, half of the students in there were COMM majors and were too mad to hear the explanation . . .
After the lecture I got to share day 2 of the birthday celebration of Ms. Zanatta who turned 20! We were quite the crowd. We invaded The Cheesecake Factory where I got to have some of the best meals in a while. Not to mention the cheesecake – that was just heavenly! I keep dreaming about it once in a while 😀
The night before we celebrated day 1 of her growing up. We put on our fancy clothes and we headed to the fanciest restaurant I’ve been to in the US. It’s called The Melting Pot and everything there is all about fondue – chocolate, cheese and cooking the meat yourself. It was quite the experience.
Wednesday night was ILS lecture number 2 for the week and the special speaker was Mrs. Isabel Allende or in other words – the most famous author in the Spanish speaking world and not only. She was there to present her new book “The Japanese Lover.” She is a very fun, young spirited sassy lady. There were so many love/sex related references that it made me just a bit uncomfortable. An example would be this one – “Love can endure with a lover, not with a husband.” She did finish off on a high with these words – “Vulnerability occurs not in the things I share but in the secrets that I keep.” Made me think . . .
Thursday was as busy as always – class and then work, work, work. I can’t complain though – it’s so much fun with my lovely co-workers in the office and just preparing the International Week that’s coming up 5 days from now. It’s stressful, but once you have the sun rays coming into the office and the smiles and support of your work BFFs everything suddenly becomes more enjoyable 🙂 As a much deserved end of the school and work week for me I got together with friends in the evening and I spent some proper quality time with them.
Friday was the day when I made my way to the stage of Dominican. Not to sing though, well kinda. I was part of the LipSync battles and I performed as a part of the Drama club. We were doing Disney songs and I got to be Princess Tiana from The Princess and The Frog. One of the most enjoyable and kinda random things I’ve done so far here. Now’s the moment to apologize to my dear friend Mr. Salvador Chavez for hitting him with the tray in his cheek. Some weird fores had gotten into me and made me throw my tray during the bows at the end. (just for clarification – there was candy on the tray and we were throwing the candy to the audience.) I’m sorry, Sal!!! The move looked so much cooler in my head. Anyways, the event itself was pretty cool – people were going for it. From people in shark costumes “mating” during Katy Perry’s “Teenage dream”, a sassy portrayal of Destiny’s Child with Beyonce played by a guy, to the ASDU President strutting her ass-ets in a very attractive performance of mashup between “Anaconda” and “I like big butts”. It was a night to remember! Here’s the video of the winning performance!
Coming back home my roommates and I snuggled up in our blankets and had a chill movie night that ended up being a loud boy band karaoke. They’re crazy and loud and this is what I love most about them!
The weekend included a trip to the Legion of Honor Museum in SF which was basically a super fancy art gallery that had numerous pieces by Rodin as well as Degas and some other famous artists, whose names I can’t recall right now. The building itself looks like an ancient Roman palace and has a view of the Golden Gate Bridge – no wonder there were two weddings, a quinceanera and several limos that were lined up in front of the entrance for pictures.
The rest of my time over the weekend was dedicated to finishing my school assignments and working on my articles for Forbes (which I submitted successfully an houra ago – wohooo!) And yet the time was not enough to do everything I wanted to, but I’m definitely not complaining 🙂
That was it for this week, folks!
Don’t forget to take a look at my blog next week, because we’re getting closer to the end and oddly enough I feel like the best is yet to come!
Have a great week, everyone!
All the best,
Tsveti
Tsveti's Adventures in California 