Hurricane? In the Summer? On Independence Day?

It's Independence Day, (aka The Fourth of July!!!)!!! The weather today was not as great as it was in the past days. After a very long night yesterday, I woke up very late, almost in the afternoon. I realized I has skipped breakfast. Luckily, I had water and beef jerky & trail mix that I got yesterday. That was enough to keep me satisfied before lunch, when I reheated (thanks to my roommate's microwave) my gigantic cut of steak from yesterday's dinner. It was until then that I realized it was actually finally raining here! It had only rained once before, only for like a couple hours or even less, but today has been the first official rainy day in Providence since I've been here. I was pretty bummed, particularly because the weather itself caused the beach trip to be cancelled, but I soon realized that "dancing in the rain" was clearly all I could do. I peeked out the window and reached for some fresh drops of East Coast rain. I sparsely sprinkled some on my face to begin my afternoon.

I didn't do much the first half of the day, other than giving my room that usual cleaning touch up. I tried getting a hold of Brandon so that we could go to the mall, since Jing and Amulia had already headed off there in the morning, but couldn't. I stayed in and eventually saw Joe in the hallway at one point and it was from there that the day really began. I got ready and by that time, surprisingly, it was 6 p.m already. Morning and day passed up pretty quickly, yet the rest of the evening felt much longer. It just comes to show that making something out of your time really makes the difference between being bored and having some kind of way to have fun.

I was texting my sister at the time, and somehow in the time that I was, I called her. I didn't notice until I was already about to my make my way to the Keeney entrance to meet with Brandon and Joe. I was able to make half of the trip (by the way, we were walking.... in the rain...) on the phone while battling the strong wind with my umbrella, but it only added to the interest of the walk down to the mall (Providence Place). I'm glad I was able to talk some with my sister, niece, dad, mom, brother, and brother-in-law. Along with the fresh, pouring rain, calling back home was refreshing as well. Alas, the call came to an end and I began my real struggle with the wind & the umbrella along with puddle and a slippery ground. Okay, so yeah it's not all dramatic, but let's make it interesting, right?! The rain managed to pour over my shoes and drench them, as did the puddles on the cross roads that were inevitable to step on. The umbrella, as you may tell, was not much of a match for today-- a sadly lost battle with the rain.

We got up the elevator at providence Place and quickly saw that we were way off time to be in the mall. It took no more than 2 seconds after walking out the first store to realize that all the stores were closing. As our priority to eat, though (since the dining halls were closed), we went up to the food court on the third floor. There Joe and I had some Popeyes, while Brandon had suchi. We sat down for our, not very dinner like, but still, dinner. Everything was closed so what else could we have done? Well there was a movie theatre upstairs..... so you might image what went down next, except it didn't go down that way. Disappointingly there were no movies that we would have been able to see in time before curfew, so it was a bummer heading back down. We did decide to walk a bit just to see if any stores were for some reason, miraculously open, and made a quick stop at Zumiez. Nothing much went on there, so we just made our way back down into CVS (it's right next to the mall elevator). We picked up a couple things and made it back through the, then more settled, streets of Providence back to Brown.

I rested up for a while and then made my way to Lupe's, where her, and Keben had finished up some studying on their cell biology class. I joined them and the three of us had some Chinese takeout and chatted some more. At one point she gave me a fortune cookie. I anxiously cracked it and read the little strip of paper. It read, "YOU ARE MAGNETIC IN YOUR BEARING", which is sort of difficult to understand since I am amiable, but have not exactly been magnetic on the East Coast (must be some crazy, mathematical, formulaic mystery as to why I'm magnetic on the West, but not East Coast, huh?). Lupe's read, "IT IS NICE T BE IMPORTANT BUT IT IS MORE IMPORTANT TO BE NICE", and that totally made sense, as she is super friendly and really chill. I don't exactly remember Keben's, but it had to do with money, so (P.S. Keben, hope you hit the jackpot or something!)... It feels cool chilling at Lupe's though, since it's just easier to carry a conversation and is simply a comfortable place to hang out. Like I''m glad she's a friend I've been able to make here out on the East Coast, as well as Keben, and Evelyn and Lytisha (who unfortunately weren't there today). In the times I've been able to spend with them, I feel as though they're more like my kind of people, so that's nice to have out here. I actually find it kind of funny, but cool though, how I tend to connect with people not my age, but point is they're a great group of people to be with. Like many of the other evenings, today's also ended up passing by fairly quickly but again, it was time well spent.

Lupe was kind to walk Keben and I back to our dorms (since he's and RA and obviously, I'm a student). I said my thank yous and from there, it was time to head back to my dorm. If I could only lay down and instantly fall asleep, that'd be great, but then there's that blogging requirement to do! It's so hard to not think of blogging when the laptop's just hangin' out there on the desk, calling out to you to blog. So here I am, now blogging, towards the end of today's entry. There are quite a few things I want to do in this last upcoming week for summer@Brown and in the East Coast (yup, 2 weeks have just gone by, that quickly). One of those things is going back to the RISD Museum and actually going up to look at the art up in the other floors I missed last Sunday. There was some Egyptian artifacts of some sort and other things I don't really know of, but that's precisely why I want to go back; I don't want to leave knowing I missed something. I also want to go to the mall again, since today was a disappointing fail (I do need some clothes, though) and probably one of the cooler things that I want to do is go jogging all around the nearby hilly parts. That should help me get a good workout in before I leave the East Coast.

The day's been pretty cut in into a very slow and a faster half. Tomorrow's planned trip is Newport, so we'll finally be able to perhaps hang out at the beach and maybe some of the mansions there. I'll take a look and explore into it and see what else there is to explore too. I'll just go out of my way and check things out. On that note, that's it for today! A mellow 4th of July! Oh, and now that I remember, tomorrow well be walking down to India Point Part to check out the fireworks, which we'll have tomorrow. So tomorrow should be pretty packed, but very fun! I'll try to get lots of pictures for that, since I haven't posted many for these past blogs. Anyway, I'm going to head off to sleep! Happy 4th of July! (A day of historic action has been written 238 years ago, and just like July 4th, 1776, tomorrow will have a day of its own to be written as well. It'll be yet another page to be written in this chapter of mine.) Goodnight!