jellyicemilkbar: catching up; my brother's bday, jkc weekend & great mall

I've been MIA from blogger again but I have a good excuse...I've been sleeping about 14 hours a day. Really a DAY as in I'm up until 6am and sleep til 8pm. But besides that I've been busy too. I've been researching colleges. I have a spreadsheet of originally 31 schools and 20 aspects I'm look at. So far my top schools are Cal, UCSD, Penn State, and Drexel.

Before my nocturnal beast mode, I came home from Berkeley. Barely slept one day and went to an Asian buffet, Walmart, Great Mall, and the Cheesecake Factory for my brother's 14th birthday. Happy Birthday Viet.

the land of cheap labor

$5 sunglasses, yes he bought them haha

I'm such a shorty next to him

happy birthday!

After my brother's birthday I packed and was off to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore for a Scholars Reunion Weekend for my scholarship from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.

About JKCF: Basically 60ish kids are picked every year when we're in 7th grade through SATs and interviews and such and we stay int he program through graduate school if we wish and they pay for everything academic, i.e. my college apps, my summer programs, flights to the weekend/summer programs etc. They also occasionally send us books and such. I think the most useful part of the foundation though is the educational advisor each of us has who guides us through...just about everything.

Okay, so back to the point. So on Wednesday morning, I arrived at SFO to find out my flight to Chicago-Midway was delayed by an hr. great Then at Midway, my flight to BWI was delayed 3 hrs. FML. I finally arrived on campus and moved into my room by 2am EST. What a day...

camerawhoring during my delay

SEAWORLD!

Then the next morning, we had breakfast and went on a JHU campus tour. After that we had lunch and had 3 orientations. At one of them we opened letters from a "Welcome Weekend" we had back in 2007. Apparently the 13 year old version of myself wanted to go to UCLA and major in mathematics haha.

Then there was much networking with the older scholars. As high school students, we're called "Young Scholars," young scholars who go to college are "College Scholars," there are also "Transfer Scholars" who are people who went to a jr college, and lastly there were "Grad Scholars," grad students who were college or transfer scholars. I was offered an internship at CAISO. (:

Then there was horrid dinner, a dessert mixer, and more seminars and such.

before our tour

EE Class <3

at the dessert mixer

playing ninja

we won "College Jeopardy!" haha

On Friday we had a college essay seminar and then a formal banquet that made us all feel a bit older than we really are haha. I'll let pictures tell the story.

essay seminar

tuna

Paul; college scholar

look at that mingling and networking!

Marvin is so tall!; young scholars

our little "group" haha

dinner; yummm

fresh and custom made right in front of you. blackberry creme brulee. Arko and I had 3 rounds haha

fancy drinks with Arko. we go wayyyy back to like...12 years old?

a building? haha

Saturday was a HORRID day. We had the worst seminar in the JHU gym...with NO AC. I don't even want to talk about the day haha. The night was fun though because all of us scholars finally relaxed and on Sunday I flew home. (:

chilling and waiting for pizza!

say what?

should be a subway ad

at around 4am?

to the airport

chilling in terminal A before our flights

home sweet home

my luggage boy (:

After my lonnnng trips. I managed to go back to school shopping with my friend Wendy and today I went with my family. I plan to do a more beauty/haul post right after this. But basically we went to Great Mall, Target, and Sizzlers. A very fun day and today I went to H&M and Nordstrom to get a dress and Toms. (: