Ladurée

 I enjoyed some amazing macarons that I smuggled across the Atlantic. They are actually from the famous Ladurée in Paris. yum! 

Please, I Should Be 'The Mayor'

As I mentioned a couple posts ago, I just joined foursquare last week. I'm not quite sure why I hadn't joined before, since it basically is advanced instagram that comes with tips. Since I've been obsessed with making sure I post my location on all my instagrams and my instagram is almost entirely food, foursquare makes perfect sense for me. 

Since I'm such a late and recent addition, this week I've been trying to check in as much as possible. (However, I only check into restaurants and always forget that locations, neighborhoods, and stores are also something you can check into at foursquare). So far, it's been pretty fun but there's been one thing that I've found annoying about being a 'Newbie' foursquare. Every time I check-in to a new restaurant (or really anyplace), it tells me CONGRATS! This is your first time at this restaurant or CONGRATS! This is your first ___ type of restaurant. 

This has been particularly annoying this week, since I've mainly been going to all of my favorite restaurants that I'm pretty much a regular at. This was particularly true at Sushi Raw in the Lower Haight. I first went to Sushi Raw with my family because my grandma lives around the corner, but I kept going because my friend Camille lives right next to it too. They also have pretty reasonable prices, so everyone time I come home, I go there for some sushi or soup. 

Despite going to school on the East Coast, I manage to go to Sushi Raw so often that they greet me with a friendly welcome (even more than their normal welcome) and I frequent it more than my parents do.

In my opinion, there should be some sort of test or way to get the 'Local' badge or 'Mayor' position on foursquare even if you just joined. Honestly, them knowing where I go to college, where my grandma lives, general knowledge about  my parents and friends should mean more than how many times I remembered to press the little 'check-in' button. Right?

Udon after a long day is always such a great choice. It's nice and warm, which is always perfect in foggy San francisco. But it's also the cheapest thing you can get at a sushi restaurant at about $8 while being extremely filling (way more filling than sushi). Not to mention, that it is really healthy. Look at all those yummy veggies! (But don't worry, if you want a less healthy option, tempura udon is always a great choice!)

Let's Go to the Beach, Each!

One thing I didn't take enough advantage of growing up in California was the beach. Actually back in high school, I hated the beach. I found the sand annoying and my grumpy self proclaimed them stupid and unappealing. This was actually part of my reasoning for choosing Colgate over UCSD, a choice my parents didn't understand since UCSD is located a short walk from the beautiful La Jolla beaches. 

Since going to college in the rural farm lands of Upstate New York, my opinion of the beach has definitely changed. Now, I just dream of going to the beach, feeling the sun on my skin, and of course getting a little color. For my spring break freshman year, I went on that stereotypical Spring Break trip to Miami. And that summer I went on a whole beach hopping adventure from the beaches in Tel Aviv, to Santa Barbara and then finishing off the summer on the Cape. 

My semester abroad was rather dreary with a long cold and grey winter. So the whole semester, I tried to come up with some way to the beach. Ultimately, I never made it. My dreams of going to Greece were shattered and even my plans to go to southern France just didn't work out. So this week, I decided I just had to go to the beach before I headed back east for my internship. 

So this past Saturday, I headed over to Stinson Beach in Marin with my friends Mattie and Camille as well as my friend Albert from Colgate who is interning at WeHeartIt in San Francisco this summer. 

Beyond being just a trip to the beach, this trip was also a great lesson in Bay Area microclimates. Microclimates are when the weather can change from  this phenomenon that apparently only occurs in the Bay Area. I think it happens because we have the ocean, bay, and so many hills all smushed together.

As we headed over the bridge, we were completely engulfed in fog. But Camille, our new marinite, assured us that it would clear. And did it clear, as we reached the final tower of the bridge, suddenly the fog lifted and we saw the sun shining on the beautiful hills and water of Marin. 

Unfortunately, as we continued on the windy road to Stinson beach, the fog reappeared with a fury. In fact, the entire coast was just covered with fog that just got thicker and thicker. At this point, I was pretty nervous. We almost turned back to the city to just hang out in the dolores park, but decided we should make the whole trek since we had already spent an hour to get there. 

When we finally reached the beach, the fog was thin enough to have some sun shine through. Despite the layer of fog, the beach was pretty crowded. Throughout our time there, the fog fluctuated, coming and going. In fact, I got a slight sun burn--my first burn since third grade. Honestly, fog might be more dangerous than pure sun.

Let's go to the beach, each 

Let's go get away 

They say, what they gonna say? 

Have a drink, clink, found the bud light 

Bad b-tches like me, is hard to come by

-Nicki Minaj, Starships

Pakwan

When I'm away at school, the main thing I miss is ethnic food. Growing up in San Francisco, I was used to have authentic and absolutely amazing anything-you-can-imagine food. When I was little, my favorite restaurants were thai, chinese, and mexican. As I got older, I ventured into puerto rican, burmese and nepalese food as well. So when I come home for breaks, there are a couple stops I just have to take. One of these is Indian food.
I met up with my friends Camille and Mattie one night after they both got off of work and headed over to the Mission to get dinner. While the Mission District is best known for mexican food (big surprise there), I had already had mexican food three times at that point so we opted for Indian at Pakwan instead. Pakwan was the perfect choice since it was pretty fast and cheap (like Mexican), but wasn't yet another burrito. Here's some pics!

Mattie is certainly happy with the food!

Also, I just joined foursquare. Add me!

That One Time in China

Found these pictures from 2007 looking through the mess of my Facebook albums. I had completely forgotten about these pictures, and it's funny seeing them all now. The group of us, awkward teenagers running around Beijing and Seoul  in bright red polos. That's one of the thing I actually love about social media. Yes, it's kind of creepy that all these kids from high school you barely knew get to stalk you, but in five or so years, you can stalk that strange person you were all those years ago.

Wow, I was so cool taking these disposable hipster photos back in 2007. Or maybe my parents just didn't trust me with a digital photo when traveling...

Look it's yours truly, looking a horribly disgusting freshman in high school. 

22-Hr-Layover

After my amazing five months in Europe, it was finally time to go home. However, I had to get through a 38 hour journey before I arrived in my hometown of San Francisco. Now in case you didn't figure this out yourself, that is not a normal amount of time for a flight. That is because this journey wasn't a simple GVA-->SFO non-stop flight, but instead a Geneva-->Amsterdam-->Boston-->Minneapolis-->San Francisco adventure. Oh and did I mention that I had a 22 hour layover in Boston!?

Luckily, I have friends in Boston, including one of my best friends Rui who I hadn't seen for a year since we went abroad different semesters. So this ridiculously long flight home wasn't a complete pain in my butt, but was also a great opportunity for me to catch up with some friends. 

But it wasn't only a good opportunity to catch up with friends, but also a nice little opportunity to celebrate being 21 in America. I had turned 21 in April and had a little weekend trip to London. However, turning 21 in Europe is kind of a underwhelming experience. To start off my legal American drinking career, we met up with our friend Nicole, who had also just come back from abroad, and headed over to Boston (Rui was staying in a MIT frat house in Cambridge). 

After wandering around, we stumbled on this pretty nice bar with the prices to match the fancy ambiance. Unfortunately, Rui got this great idea to start chatting with these guys so they would buy us drinks. Even more unfortunately, these guys were not cute but rather old, creepy Arab men. So creepy in fact, that one of them asked me if I had ever been with an Arab man and if I would like to....Not particularly enjoying our conversation, I beelined for the bathroom and chatted with some girls as I pretended to fix my makeup. 

After Nicole had come to the bathroom for similar escaping tactics, we decided to leave and took a cab back to Cambridge. There, we met up with some friends Nicole had made in Costa Rica. Quickly, we realized that we had actually crashed a birthday party of some 27-year-old chick....we were most definitely the youngest people there. Somehow, we made friends with some of the guests and we headed over to an 'after-party' at an apartment close by. Mind you, I had just come back from Europe that very day so it was 2am and I woke up at 7am Switzerland time--that was almost 24 hours earlier. And where was I? I was in an apartment in Cambridge with a group of 26-28 year old grad students as I sipped on a cocktail. 

These are some pictures we took after we woke up at 7am (note the 5 hours of sleep) and got breakfast with our friend Suzie.  Harvard and MIT have the best campus housing, right by the river with amazing views. I can only imagine how much these buildings would go for if they weren't disgusting and covered with beer. 

So that's what I did during my layover in Boston. I guess you could say those 22 hours were pretty eventful. 

humid + airplane hair = not cute

Outfit--Shirt dress: Topshop, Flats: Banana Republic, Sunglasses: Banana Republic

Daydreaming About: Prints on Prints on Prints

Lately I've been just obsessed with patterns. Obviously, I turned to my favorite american stores to find the cutest patterned items, Madewell and J.Crew. Honestly, I've just been dreaming about buying some of their perfectly clean and chic clothing since I went abroad five months ago. Here's some things that caught my eye as I perused their websites this morning. Maybe I'll stop by after my haircut tomorrow?

A Day Trip to Napa

Apparently all I do these days is go wine tasting. For a person that admittedly doesn't have the most refined palette for wine, I find this slightly amusing. But as you know, during my last weekend in Geneva I went wine tasting and during my 22 hour layover in Boston I also had a quick wine tasting moment. So here I am my second full day back home and I'm in the Napa Valley wine tasting.
I went with my brother, my niece Malayah, and her mom MJ (who I've known since I was eight years old) to this winery in St Helena called V Sattui. The place was really nice and the lady who did our wine tasting was really nice and super funny. I was a little congested from allergies, which I think is why I liked the super fruity and girly wines more than usual that day. After tasting about 15 wines, my brother and MJ both bought a case of wine each.

 I was pretty hungary after consuming all that wine, since unlike my pretentious brother I did actually swallow all my wine. Luckily, the place that MJ chose had a picnic bbq area. MJ and my brother ordered quite a spread with oysters, bruschetta, shrimp, and pork ribs. We paired that with some white wine, a baguette of Acme bread, and a couple of cheeses we had tried at the cheese tasting. It all hit the spot as we sit in the warm Napa sun. 

It's been rather exciting being able to finally drink legally in America. Although I've been drinking in America for awhile now (I know, big shocker) and I've been drinking legally in Europe all semester, it still wasn't quite as exciting as my new power as a 21-year-old. So my first drink on the plane was a white wine, I went to a wine tasting and went out in my 22 hours in Boston, I had a mimosa after breakfast my first day in San Francisco, and then I went wine tasting yesterday. You know what that means? I just have to go out today or else I'll break my LEGAL streak! Tell you about it later.