Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Bonding At Brown

First of all, I would like to apologize for the misleading title. The Brown Session II cohort has not yet entered the dorms. However, we are now in Providence and if all goes well we will begin classes next Monday!

My dad woke me up around 2:30 AM, which is much too early for me. However, I knew that this amazing ILC experience would be worth every second of lost sleep. Brown Session II met at El Cerrito High School a little after 3. After the distribution of loaner items and obligatory picture taking, we all bade our families farewell and headed off to the Oakland Airport.

I attempted to sleep throughout our five hour plane ride--with limited success. When I finally gave up the battle for slumber, I ate the scrumptious blueberry muffins that my mother had packed me as a makeshift breakfast. 



As a side note for the plane ride, I was absolutely awestruck by the view–the Bay Area looked beautiful this morning, shrouded as it was by thick fog banks.


Once we arrived in Providence, Ms. Larson met us at the airport. After a mix-up with the rental vehicle the ten of us headed off to Hotel Providence, where I indulged myself in the luxury of a shower. We met in the lobby and took a short cab ride to the Capital Grille, where we met Mercedes Domenech and Elizabeth Hart, two admissions officers from Brown University, along with Kisa Takesue, our Women and Leadership instructor. I sat across from Adrianne Ramsey and next to Ava Burnell; I was also close to Ms. Takesue, who sat across from Ava. She gave us some excellent insight about Brown in general and the Women and Leadership course in particular. I am eagerly looking forward to moving into dorms on Monday!

After our delicious dinner, we seven W&L girls had a blogging party in the hotel lobby. I had always known that I would enjoy myself on the East Coast and at Brown, but I had failed to anticipate how much I would bond with my new friends from De Anza. I am so happy that this trip has helped me to form connections with girls from other schools in our district! Josie, Cynthia, and Rebecca are the friendliest, sweetest people I have ever had the pleasure of traveling to the other side of the country with! I know that after our incredibly successful first day we will all have a blast in Rhode Island!

A last, celebratory comment–we didn’t get stuck in Chicago!

2 comments:

  1. Mariko,

    Your father was waking you up about 15 minutes AFTER i had arrived at ECHS to set up for your departure. There's something terribly wrong with that scenario, Mariko.

    Even though you should be complaining about the loss of the Internet in your own rooms, you've pointed out the benefit of organizing a blogging party in the lobby. What happened with the Internet access didn't happen to any one of you--it happened to all of you so, as a team, you worked to work around this problem. When life gives you lemons--make lemonaid.

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  2. You're right - it's ok to not always sleep enough in these two short weeks. Take care of yourself but know that you have limited time to spend on the East Coast!

    Yay for not getting stuck in Chicago!

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