Five months and two days ago, I was chosen for this one month trip to Brown on a scholarship. Five months later from that point, I was packing up to leave Brown. What seems like ages ago now seems like such a small amount of time when put into the perspective of words. For me, the opposite can be said about this past month at Brown. The entire experience seems like it was only a week or two but was actually a full month. I remember driving down to SFO and arriving in Warwick, Rhode Island as if it were just yesterday.
I sit here now in my living room after remembering that my parents shut off my internet at 1:30 AM every night in attempt to get me and my brother to sleep. I've now been forced to finish this blog on my phone and that I will do. The flight back to the bay was quite the miserable experience for me once again (as some of you may recall from the first blogs) because I get motion sick extremely easily. Thus, there's really not much to talk about in those hours of travel besides the fact that we happened to have the same flight as Amulia to Chicago and saw a few fellow Summer@Brown students on the flights as well.
Rewinding to before we started to time travel back in time, I woke up to an empty room for the first time at Brown as I remembered that those days of waking up and disturbing my roommate with my alarm were gone. I quickly packed everything and left for breakfast with everyone, or at least I thought I was. After about 15 minutes of waiting for everyone, I was informed of the fact that our cards no longer unlocked the residence halls and this quickly escalated into a huge problem for me. I left all of my luggage in my room thinking I could come back and get it. I ran back and luckily someone was there to open the door for me and was able to go back to my room to grab my stuff. I had to say an early farewell to the floor and room in which I had lived in for 3 weeks and tried to keep the image of the residence hall in my memory. Charlie unfortunately did not answer his door for my check out, so I just slapped my name tag (from the first day of Summer@Brown) on his door, hoping he got the message. After that, I was left outside with my stuff waiting for everyone to finish breakfast at the V Dub while I had to skip out on the final meal. Thankfully, Arnold delivered a chocolate croissant to me from Starbucks so I didn't have an empty stomach. After a few more half hours of waiting, I spotted Ms. Scott waiting for the shuttle a few minutes prior to meeting time. I called everyone over and we took taxis instead of the shuttle for the same price to the airport for an early arrival. From there, we checked in, went through security, got Dunkin' Donuts (my first time and I can see now why everyone strongly recommended going), and waited for our flights. Again, there isn't much to mention about the flights so I'll be skipping to our arrival.
Our arrival consisted of slowly finding our parents one by one at the baggage claim of SFO and me trying to hold back my tears of joy at the sight of my mother and grandmother. Our last moments as a cohort were surely bittersweet as we finally made it through the long journey but were to be physically separated by our schools once again. I hugged everyone goodbye in hopes of reuniting with them and left with my family to a dinner at a nearby restaurant celebrating both my return and my grandmother's birthday. I'm sure my grandma was glad to see me back in one piece, grown up and all, a nice birthday present if I do say so myself.
Dinner was quite brief as I talked about my time at Brown, although I still have much to say. All the while I was also texting Alex (not the roommate Alex) who is back home in Florida. The conversation helped me realize that I was slowly losing consciousness to jet lag and that time zones still exist. From the time I'm writing this blog, I would be waking up in about 2 hours to get ready for class normally st Brown. Now, I'm sitting at home with nothing to do besides badminton practice two times a week until I leave for Vancouver on the 26th to visit family. All of us may have left Brown to truly start out summer vacation, but part of me can't help but think that all the connections and friendships we made will still live on after the summer ends.
With all my stuff still not unpacked and coming home to a new bathroom sink and desk in my brother's room, I think I'm ready to go to bed and slowly and relucatantly adjust myself from my beautiful time at Brown.
I sit here now in my living room after remembering that my parents shut off my internet at 1:30 AM every night in attempt to get me and my brother to sleep. I've now been forced to finish this blog on my phone and that I will do. The flight back to the bay was quite the miserable experience for me once again (as some of you may recall from the first blogs) because I get motion sick extremely easily. Thus, there's really not much to talk about in those hours of travel besides the fact that we happened to have the same flight as Amulia to Chicago and saw a few fellow Summer@Brown students on the flights as well.
Rewinding to before we started to time travel back in time, I woke up to an empty room for the first time at Brown as I remembered that those days of waking up and disturbing my roommate with my alarm were gone. I quickly packed everything and left for breakfast with everyone, or at least I thought I was. After about 15 minutes of waiting for everyone, I was informed of the fact that our cards no longer unlocked the residence halls and this quickly escalated into a huge problem for me. I left all of my luggage in my room thinking I could come back and get it. I ran back and luckily someone was there to open the door for me and was able to go back to my room to grab my stuff. I had to say an early farewell to the floor and room in which I had lived in for 3 weeks and tried to keep the image of the residence hall in my memory. Charlie unfortunately did not answer his door for my check out, so I just slapped my name tag (from the first day of Summer@Brown) on his door, hoping he got the message. After that, I was left outside with my stuff waiting for everyone to finish breakfast at the V Dub while I had to skip out on the final meal. Thankfully, Arnold delivered a chocolate croissant to me from Starbucks so I didn't have an empty stomach. After a few more half hours of waiting, I spotted Ms. Scott waiting for the shuttle a few minutes prior to meeting time. I called everyone over and we took taxis instead of the shuttle for the same price to the airport for an early arrival. From there, we checked in, went through security, got Dunkin' Donuts (my first time and I can see now why everyone strongly recommended going), and waited for our flights. Again, there isn't much to mention about the flights so I'll be skipping to our arrival.
Our arrival consisted of slowly finding our parents one by one at the baggage claim of SFO and me trying to hold back my tears of joy at the sight of my mother and grandmother. Our last moments as a cohort were surely bittersweet as we finally made it through the long journey but were to be physically separated by our schools once again. I hugged everyone goodbye in hopes of reuniting with them and left with my family to a dinner at a nearby restaurant celebrating both my return and my grandmother's birthday. I'm sure my grandma was glad to see me back in one piece, grown up and all, a nice birthday present if I do say so myself.
Dinner was quite brief as I talked about my time at Brown, although I still have much to say. All the while I was also texting Alex (not the roommate Alex) who is back home in Florida. The conversation helped me realize that I was slowly losing consciousness to jet lag and that time zones still exist. From the time I'm writing this blog, I would be waking up in about 2 hours to get ready for class normally st Brown. Now, I'm sitting at home with nothing to do besides badminton practice two times a week until I leave for Vancouver on the 26th to visit family. All of us may have left Brown to truly start out summer vacation, but part of me can't help but think that all the connections and friendships we made will still live on after the summer ends.
With all my stuff still not unpacked and coming home to a new bathroom sink and desk in my brother's room, I think I'm ready to go to bed and slowly and relucatantly adjust myself from my beautiful time at Brown.
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