Yet Another Weekend in Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz is steadily turning into one of the places I visit most frequently. The city will always hold a special meaning to me, yet not for the reason many would think. My cousin Jeremy, who was the very first person in my immediate family to graduate from college, graduated from UCSC. My cousin is the biggest hero in my life, basically because of how well he speaks and how well he brings people together. Whenever I visit Santa Cruz, I always think of my cousin and I wonder how he's doing all the way on the other side of the country and I get to reminisce about my family. This is what I usually think about when I'm driving to Santa Cruz, so whenever I go there I always arrive with a sense of confidence because thats the feeling that my cousin evokes from my soul.

I arrived in Santa Cruz pretty late that night, and we all ended up playing video games till pretty late that night. I wanted to get a good nights sleep because the next day was a pretty important day for me. I was to head over to the UCSC campus and meet up with the chapter of AphiO there and help them out by adopting one of them as a little sib. Their chapter is rechartering and they needed big sibs for their members, so I decided I should go out and help them since I was going to be in Santa Cruz that weekend anyways.

Their event was really fun, albeit a bit disorganized at first. I had a great time finally meeting alot of the UCSC people, because I really hadn't met any of them during other IC events so this was really a great friending experience for me. I met practially everyone in their chapter that day, as well as making new friends from other chapters as well. I made some new friends from University of Pacific which was super cool because I didn't know anyone at all there. Now I can go to both UCSC's meetings and AAXI's meetings and not have it be awkward since I'd actually know people. I'm also really happy with the little sib that I got. He seems really cool and enthusiastic about everything so yeah its all going to work out just fine!

Even though that Saturday already seemed pretty full with the whole BSR, it still wasn't done. When I got back to my friends place, we drove all the way back to San Jose to go hang out at one of the malls over there. Even though they told me the name of the mall about 3 times, I still fail to remember the name of it but it was a pretty huge and nice mall. We were supposed to go eat at the Cheesecake Factory there, but the wait for it was too long so we decided to go to CPK instead. The pizza there is insanely good, even by my standards. I used to work in a pizza shop so my standards for a good pizza are pretty high, but CPK almost always hits that good spot in my stomach.

After that we went on a sort of driving adventure around San Jose. We drove into the place called Santana Row which I immediately recognized as the place Sara, Daisy, and Gisselle dragged me along to just for their frozen yogurt. I hated going to this place at first because I felt so out of place. Everyone walking down the street looked like they were worth a couple hundred thousand dollars more than I did, and even just driving down there this time was pretty disheartening because of some of the cars I saw parked on the sidewalk. I hate seeing people with cars that are worth more than I'll ever make in my lifetime because its just discouraging. I know that I'm supposed to be confident and I'm supposed to aim for whatever I want to, but I'm also a realistic person and I know that just like the stars I always dream of when im stressed, some things will always be out of reach.

The next day turned out to be pretty eventful as well even though we didn't have much at all planned. We originally planned to go to Costco early in the day so we could get some free samples there for lunch, but I guess I woke up too late and we didnt get to go there early. We actually got there at around 3, but to my surprise there were still alot of free samples out! Too bad there wern't that many good ones. Costco's free samples are the one and only reason I love going there, because its a free meal and thats something you can't pass up. They should just give every single homeless person a Costco card. They could just go there and get the free samples when they're hungry. Solves everyones problems.

After Costco and a brief attempt at skateboarding, we headed off to the Boardwalk to go meet up with some friends and we basically just hung out there in the arcade for a little while. We then went to downtown Santa Cruz and walked around the shops there. I don't really remember much of what happened there because I was too focused on trying to stay warm since I forgot to bring a sweater. I just remember somehow ending up with Denny's with this super nice lady as our waitress and having a great meal there. Eventually the night came to a close and I ended up driving back to Hayward. The drive back was exciting because I finally decided to see the capabilities of my car. There was a long straightaway where I was the only one on the freeway, so I decided to just floor it and see what happened. I ended up hitting about 120 before I caught up to traffic. Its weird how when you're going that speed, it doesn't really seem fast but the sound of the road and the engine tell you otherwise. Also, if you slow down to 100, it seems incredibly slow, when normally its way to fast to even fathom.

In all, this weekend turned out to be everything I had hoped for. Thank you to all you Santa Cruz people for always putting a smile on my face. (and for pretty much being my 3rd home haha)