Road Trip Day 1- Driving to Mt. Shasta

    It was sad that I got a final for Introduction to Winery on Saturday afternoon, or my spring break would've started earlier. After my final, I got picked up by my buddy, Karan, who'd rented a Nissan car, and then we picked up Henry at his place. Tim actually backed out of this trip for his sister's wedding was on Wed. that week and was called to attend the reception. This was frustrating at the beginning and almost disrupted our trip. Next time, I am going think more about any worst-case scenarios.
      A picture of me and Karan in front of our car:
 

Road Trip 3/19~3/25

    I still couldn't believe I made the most out of this spring break as I look back on those days on my road trip. I can remember well the many nights I talked with my buddy over the hot pool about my yearning to do something crazy that would stick with me for the rest of my life. Back then, many thoughts came to our mind, one being driving across the U.S. Yet, taking into account the practicalities, like budget and time, we agreed upon travelling only the West Coast, starting from California to Oregon, and then to Washington.  We then came up with several things essential to implement our plan and found people to be part of it. Tim and Henry were thus recruited and with them, we had a group of four. This, as it would turn out, helped us to split the cost of the whole trip and made it thus affordable for me!!

Board Game Night (3/8)

I had a great night with my fellow brothers at T house. I especially liked the board game called Saboteur.

Birthday Party & Indian Dancing Night

   
    My buddy Karan threw a B'DAY party today for himself. I, for one, was invited to the party, yet I also doubled as a helper, taking pictures of him and his friends.

Queen Sheba- Karan's B'DAY

Today is my Indian bro's birthday. I was thinking hard about how to celebrate it. Then, eating out came to my mind or actually, it was the first thing off the top of my head.

Ali Baba

Having lunch with Hide at Ali Baba...

Walking across the Golden Gate Bridge(2/20)

We were planning on biking across the Golden Gate bridge to begin with, yet we later chose to walk instead as it was hard for us to bike to the bridge from SF downtown.

When we got to SF from Davis, it was already a little over 1 o'clock. So, we came to this Greek restaurant, and I had a Greek sandwich, which had a strong taste of cheese.

Sam's Mediterranean

I really like Shawarm over rice at Sam's Mediteranean. Usually, it is served in gyros or sandwich-like wrap.

Sacramento City College

Today, I accompanied Taimour to Sacramento City College, where he was gonna register for his sister. The campus was really dwarfed by the UCD campus, but the tuition of this community college is a lot cheaper than than that of UCD.

Happy Birthday to Me- Fuji Sushi Buffet

Thank you, Hide and Carlos for celebrating my birthday.....A bit offtopic: I am gonna miss the all-you-can-eat sushi buffet in Davis.

New Year's Eve: Namaste

Is it New Year's eve already? Why do I not even notice that?

Christmas- Nathalie's house

I am grateful that Nathalie, a Zimbabwean mom, invited me and Taimour over to celebrate Christmas. Or my Christmas this year would've been a bummer. Taimour and I bought some sugarcoated cookies for Nathalie's family. We rode our bikes all the way from the north to the south of Davis, which took us some 30 minutes.

We  were welcomed with open arms by Nathalie and her husband Fongye. And we also got two know two homestay students who are from China and would stay with them for a quarter. It was really nice to spend time with them, eating delicious food, watching NBA playoff, chatting away, playing games like "Taboo"- a word party guess game, and just relaxing and rejoicing over this Christmas night.

Solo trip to Sacramento 12/15

Dixon Corn Maze

Wow...The world's largest corn maze. It made it into the Guinness World Records book. So, I gotta check this out.

At around dusk, we gathered at DCF house and departed for Dixon to try the maze in the dark. It was another first-time experience for me, and I was realy pumped about this, especially knowing that it was gonna be pitch-dark all around.

Upon arrival, we got to a wooden house where we paid 10 dollar for the pass and were given a map like this

Making Pizza

One of my housemates, Samuel, is a really good cook and baker. Today, he decided to make pizza from scratch with our aided efforts. We got all our ingredients, including but not limited to green and red pepper, olives, and mushroom, from the nearby Safeway store. As Sam said, the prep work was the main and time-consuming part of making pizza. We cut our vegetable into pieces and knead the dough till the texture was smooth and elastic Then, we sprinkle all the veggies, mozzarella cheese, sauce on top of the pizza dough. When everything was about done, we put the pizza on the pan into the oven, and then we just waited for 30 minutes or more. As the smell of pizza wafted through the air, we couldn't wait to dig in. Finally, the pizza was ready and each of us got like 4 slices of pizza as there were two. It tasted a lot better than it appeared. And it was great joy to see all our sweat pay off. Good job, guys!!!