Birthdays, festivals, food, oh my!
I must say, the first couple of days I came back to Caltech felt odd. I remember sitting at my desk after coming back from the lab thinking, ‘Why am I not doing any work!?’ It’s definitely nice being here at Caltech with all my friends but actually having enough time to actually spend some quality time with them (not that we don’t during the school year… it’s just usually a different kind of quality time like late night boba runs to keep us going another hour or two to finish math problem sets :P)
The first weekend I was back, I decided to take advantage of my new-found freedom to spend some time with my friends:
I know I said I left Japan. I really did!! It’s just that my friends wanted to go to a Japanese festival the very week I came back. This is at the Obon Festival we went to. There were so many cute kids dressed in traditional Japanese clothes such as these.
To beat the summertime heat, festivals usually always serve shaved ice. It’s super yummy and very refreshing in the summertime. This one is strawberry and lime flavored!
Look it’s another Caltech blogger!! Here’s Mario attemp…dancing very nicely :) I must say I wasn’t any better at dancing. But it was fun trying it with all my friends and making fun of each other.
Another thing I love about Japanese festivals other than the dancing and spending time with friends? The food of course! There are always tons of stalls selling food like chicken teriyaki, sushi, Japanese noodles, you name it! And since everything here was run by local organizations, the food was super cheap as well. My friends and I must have bought at least one of everything and shared it.
Switching gears here a bit….
Another thing I love about being back at Caltech is the sense of community. In Venerable, my house, we always celebrate birthdays in 1.5, our common area. We all pitch in to buy a cake and sign a card and bring the person to 1.5 and sing them happy birthday. It’s a nice way to show how much everyone cares and definitely strengthens our bonds!
This week, we had three birthdays in a row! That means…
Lots of free cake!! Obviously they were too engrossed by the cake (and I may have caught them by surprise…) to smile.
Yum.. cake!
Till the next yummy food I encounter!!
