Chinatown

It's good to be home. I really like Oakland's Chinatown. You can find everything you ever need and want. I went out there for lunch these past two days. On Monday, I met up with some friends from middle school. We got pho and chatted for a long time while looking at all the phone charms in Chinatown. We went into 3 or 4 trinket shops. Seriously, you can get everything you could possibly want. We managed to bump into another friend on the street. It's interesting how we're all at this uncertain point in our lives. What are you going to do next year?

On Tuesday, I went to Chinatown again, this time with a friend who's at Stanford. We went to this cheap cafe place. We got the 2 specials of the day and the bill was $8.70. The special even came with milk tea.

On Wednesday, I did some massive cooking. My mom was thinking about where to go out for lunch when I pointed out we have a ton of food in the house. I stuck a frozen lasagna in the oven and some hot pockets in the microwave. Victor really liked those hot pockets and ate 3 that day. And then I decided to attack the pumpkin the grandma brought over. She grew it herself. It's huge. Apparently that's just one of three. Family didn't know what to do with pumpkins. I had my brother carve it apart. He carved a face into one side. I steamed parts of it and we salvaged the seeds. Then I tried to make pumpkin puree with a hand mixer but it didn't break everything up since it doesn't have any blades. I made soup with this goop but it wasn't very popular. So then I pureed the rest of them in a blender and made a pie and some muffins. The muffins were terrible. Must've skipoed a step.

Later on Wednesday, I went to dinner with my high school math club teacher and three girls who were on the team as freshman when I was a senior. So all three just graduated and is starting college. They were in math club for 4 years. We went to a sushi place. Seriously going to get fat eating like this everyday.

I did some packing for Sierra Leone yesterday. My brother was packing for his Yosemite trip so I started digging through the house for stuff too. We have a lot of junk. Wayy too much junk. I found everything I was hoping to find so I feel better about this whole thing now. Can't believe I'll be going there in less than 2 weeks. I feel a lot more travel savvy now than when I went to Germany but still, this is different. We're supposed to be going in there and helping people. Seriously, these people who we're trying to help know so much more than we do, are so much wiser. We're going to show up with our gadgets and they're not going to believe us, a bunch of kids.