Ocean City

Today was one of those days that went by really fast. I was on my feet right away as I ran over to the store to get some bagels and milk. We had to wait about half an hour for the buses which was upsetting because I could have been sleeping but at least it was time spent with my friends. Then we loaded onto the buses, did a headcount and went on our way. I went on the bus intending to read my book, but one of our counselors put on the movie “Zombieland” and I decided to watch it for the second time. Zombieland is yet another one of those movies that is stupid but entertaining. It did its job as an entertainment source and the next time I looked away from the screen I was looking at Ocean City, New Jersey.

Ocean City strongly reminded me of the West Coast and specifically Santa Cruz, California. Even though my first impulse was to run straight into the water, I managed to wait about 2 minutes for my sun screen to ‘dry’ and then dove straight into the water. After almost a week of 90 plus degree heat, touching the cold ocean water felt liberating. I helped out a couple of my friends that were hesitating on the shore by dunking them in the water.

I waded into the water until I couldn’t touch the sand anymore and then I tried to body surf some. I had a lot of fun playing with my friends in the ocean and after we swam for about an hour we walked onto the boardwalk and found a pizza place. The pizzas that they served at the restaurant we went to were literally the biggest I have ever seen. They were 26 inches in diameter and loaded with toppings, so we figured one was plenty to feed the six of us. Besides being massive, the pizza was really delicious and of course filling.

As soon as we finished our lunch and we were ready to go back into the water the predicted weather finally arrived. I was glad that the weather forecast was inaccurate as usual, because the forecast predicted thunderstorms all day, but we didn’t get any until the afternoon. It was still disappointing that we couldn’t swim any more, but we decided to spend some time on the boardwalk. On the boardwalk there was a plethora of shops and restaurant s so we decided to look around at some of the close by shops. I went into a couple of T-shirt shops and looked around but eventually realized that I wouldn’t want to wear any of the shirts in the store because they were all ridiculous.

Finally, it was time for us to head back to Philadelphia on our buses. We popped in another movie, but I was tired so I didn’t really pay that much attention to it. As I just said I was mentally tired, but I still had some energy left to burn off so when we got back I decided to go to the gym with my friend Fred. Sometimes I like working out alone, but it’s a lot easier to stick with an exercise schedule if you do it with a friend. Therefore, I really appreciated Fred pushing me to go to the gym with him so that I could avoid gaining my ‘Freshman Fifteen’ before my freshman year of college. After the gym we went to dinner at the 1920 dining commons where we usually go and I had a nice sandwich on a roll.

After I got back to my dorm, my evening wound down a little bit which was nice. I called my sister and had a long chat with her about her summer work and my stay here at UPenn. A little bit later I also got to talk to my mom and hear about her vacation with my dad (Clearly making the best of my absence). I have enjoyed my time at UPenn so much that it has flown by faster than I can believe. With only 6 days left, I intend to make the most out of these last moments.

The Atlantic

Today's day trip was probably my favorite of all. We drove down to Ocean City in New Jersey after a quick breakfast from Wawa. As soon as we got off the bus and lathered on some sunscreen, we ran for the waves to avoid boiling in the heat. It occurred to me that I had never swam in Atlantic before. It was an altogether different experience than the beaches back in California, especially the always cold Ocean Beach in San Fransisco. The first things I noticed was how ridiculously crowded the beach was, but I suppose the people come with the sun.

We had a lot of fun messing around in the waves which were a little more violent towards the shore than those in the Pacific making for some prime body surfing. We spent a couple hours battling the ocean and getting salt water up our noses before we got completely exhausted and hungry.

It's a good thing too because the pizza place we found on the board walk served 26 inch pizzas. That is the size of one of my mountain bike tires. I had to fold my piece in half just to eat it, but six of us managed to finish it off so it must have been delicious.

After lunch, we had about thirty minutes to look at some gift shops, grab a delicious gelato, and soak up some sun before we had to leave. We planed on leaving at four, but we bumped it up to 2:30 on account of the storm clouds brewing ominously in the distance. I am still getting used to the crazy extreme east coast weather. It is rather bizarre.

I was sad to leave so early but I really enjoyed my time at the beach and if I were to become an undergraduate at Penn, I can totally see myself making the trip to spend some time in the ocean when I get a chance.

When I got back to the dorms I washed up and took a quick power nap to recover from all the swimming we did. When I woke up, I headed down to the dining hall for dinner. On my way back I bought a Thai Tea tapioca drink from Beijing, a restaurant next door to the quad. It was almost as good as the tapioca drinks the ASU sells at our school carnivals. I definitely appreciate all the great food that is available for us right here on campus.

After dinner, I did some laundry and got some rest for the start of our final week of class. I can not believe three weeks has gone by so quickly.

Ocean City, We Barely Knew Thee

The long-awaited trip to Ocean City had finally arrived. We awoke this morning at a quarter to nine and prepared for our big day. We all gathered our towels, sunscreen, and plenty of water and headed to the Jersey shore. The drive was a little longer than I had anticipated. I looked up the drive on my phone yesterday and Google Maps approximated that it would take a little over an hour, but we had time to watch Zombieland and then still have another twenty minutes worth of driving (which would put it around two hours worth of driving). I was really hoping we could have gotten to the beach earlier so we could beat some of the crowds. However, I was ok with the drive taking a bit longer because I had never seen Zombieland and it was a funny movie. Once we did arrive though, I was anxious to get into the water.

We arrived at the boardwalk and our first stop was the surf shack right next to the entrance. I waited for Brian to get swim trunks while the rest of the group went to set up camp. It was more difficult to find camp than I originally hoped. In the sea of umbrellas and lawn chairs, it was impossible to see anything or anyone that resembled our group. We decided to set our things down somewhere and just join them later. We ran into the water and started our search for our friends. We found them pretty quickly and began our aquatic shenanigans. Although I can’t swim, I was still able to have a good time in the ocean. Today, I learned that the Atlantic Ocean is much rougher than the Pacific. The waves were higher, stronger, and faster than anything I have ever encountered on a beach in California (but then again I am not one to frequent beaches, so that isn’t saying much). The rough waves made it that much more fun though. While most of the swimmers decided to body surf when the big waves rolled in, I would just let each wave carry me as far as it could. I fell down a couple of times, but we were in shallow enough water that it was safe. We stayed in the water for about an hour before we decided to get out, dry off, and get some lunch.

We walked onto the boardwalk and browsed our options for lunch. There were a lot of smoothie, candy, and fish places, but not too many restaurants. We managed to find a pizza shop that served huge pizzas. There were two options for ordering pizza: by the slice, or a whole pizza. We opted to go for the whole pizza and just split the bill. Whole pizzas at this restaurant are a whopping twenty-six inches in diameter! That’s about as big as the tire on a mountain bike. It was insanely big. The shop even had a challenge that they offered. The challenge was that if one person could finish one of these pizzas in “x” amount of time, they would get “y” amount of free pizzas (ex. If you finish a pizza in forty five minutes, you get twenty-five free pizzas). I was tempted to try it, but before I could give it much thought, they informed us that the challenge was only available on Tuesdays. This probably worked out in my favor…

After lunch, we learned that we had to return to the busses at 2:30 due to thunderstorms off the coast. This was saddening because I had hoped to get more time in the cold ocean before having to return to the humidity of the mainland. We used the remainder of our time to look at some of the shops that they had on the boardwalk. They had things such as mini golf, sweets shops, and a lot of custom t-shirt shops. I tried to buy a shirt that had Charlie Sheen’s face on it that said “Winning”, but they were all out of that design. Luckily I was able to get a shirt with an equally amusing design. I found a shirt that read “Cool Story Bro”, which is a phrase my sarcastic friends and I like to use every now and then when we feel like giving each other a hard time. I think my friends will really get a kick out of it. Soon enough, it was time to return to Penn.

On the ride back, I decided to relax and listen to some music. The ride back seemed to go much faster than the ride there…that is until we hit traffic from the Phillies game. That added another half hour to our travel time. When we got back, I tried to get my things back to the dorm as quickly as possible so I could be one of the first on my floor to get a shower. I really did not want to have to wait for all the other guys on my floor so I was trying to seem inconspicuous and move quickly at the same time. Luckily I was one of the first in the showers. After I cleaned up, I waited for Onur, Fred, Alison, and Brian to do the same so we could go to dinner. We ate at the commons tonight, which actually wasn’t bad because the food was better than it has been the past few times I had been there. After dinner, our group disbanded and we went to do different things. I returned to the dorm, Brian and Fred went to the gym, and Alison went to study. Onur stuck around with me and it was nice to have company.

Although the day was not as exciting as I had originally hoped, we all still had a good time getting pushed around by the Atlantic and touring the boardwalk. Our final week is beginning. The next couple of days in class will be spent in our three different lab groups (one from Hershey, one from our special interest groups, and another from our exponential change labs). We will be preparing presentations on our respective topics and will have to present them over Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The last leg of the race is here. I feel very prepared to present all of the material this week and I feel confident that my groups will do well.

A Breath of Fresh Air

Today was the most relaxing day so far. I got to sleep in almost until noon to catch up on some of the sleep I've been missing this week. When I Finlay got out of bed, I picked up some pastries from Starbucks. After that I returned to the quad and laid down in the grass of the quad until I couldn't stand the heat any longer.

I have run into a dilemma here at Penn; it is hard to motivate myself to do any physical activity when it is almost 100 degrees outside. Today, I found the solution to that problem. I utilized the gyms lap pool and cooled off while raising my heart beat a little. The facilities were very nice and the girl I shared lane with was nicer (I didn't think to bring goggles so I may have drifted into her lane a couple times, but she was very understanding).

After swimming, I explored the campus with some floor friends. We found a restaurant called "Hummus" and I got a really delicious falafel that rivaled the ones I get at Jerusalem Cafe back at home. On our walk back to the quad, we stopped and watched a pair of musicians playing an interesting type of music. It was a sort of psychedelic fusion of blues and jazz. One man played trombone, harmonica and sang while the other was on drums. It was mesmerising. We spent a good 30 minutes sitting on the grass listening to them before we made our way back to the quad.

After dinner, I played a sort of photograph scavenger hunt that some girls in the camp organized. I was on a team with Brian, Alex, and some of our floor friends. We had to walk around campus and capture photographs of another doing silly and embarrassing tasks. The team who captured the most ridiculous moments from the list won. It was a great team building experience. It also gave us a chance to really get to know the campus better. My favorite moment was when Alison from my floor asked a woman who walked by how to turn on the fire hydrant.

We returned to the quad by 11, which is sign in time, to watch Dazed and Confused before getting to bed. We'll need our sleep for tomorrows exciting day at the beach.

"Excessive Heat" Didn't Stop Our Fun

For me, today began late, but it still seemed like a very long day. Brian and I woke at 10:00 this morning with the intention of going to Center City as soon as possible. However, we would later learn that we could not leave campus until 2:00. This did not matter much because we took a while to actually get moving. Shortly after waking up, Brian went to the gym. I hung out in the room for a while and then cleaned up so I could go grab some breakfast. I decided to go to Au Bon Pain for breakfast, since the commons are not open on Saturdays. I grabbed bagels for Brian and I, then headed back to the dorm. Upon Brian’s return, we ate breakfast and then got ready to head to Center City with Fred, Alison, and Onur. This was when we headed to the office and found out we couldn’t leave until 2:00. Since that was only an hour away, we couldn’t do much. First we went to get sandwiches for lunch. We ate outside in on a lawn near the quad. After lunch, we decided to say goodbye to Chandler, one of the RC’s in the lower quad. He will be leaving Penn to return to Indiana tomorrow. We played Frisbee with Chandler a lot and he took pictures of our group a few times, such as on top of the Rockefeller Center. He was a cool guy to chat with and we will miss him.

When we were finally allowed to leave, we signed out and headed into the bowels of the Philadelphia trolley system. The trains were packed today, which is to be expected since it was Saturday and everybody wants to get off of campus. Once we got off the trolley, we headed to Love Square immediately so we could get to the souvenir shop long before they closed. This idea was executed in vain though because the shop was in fact closed. We arrived to a sign on the door that read “Store Closed Due to Excessive Heat.” That is too ridiculous to lie about… We were still able to enjoy the square despite the shop being closed because we waded in the fountain for a while, which was quite refreshing. The rest of our time in Center City was just spent walking around the city and visiting a few of the malls. I bought a nice watch, Fred and Alison got hats, and Onur got a poster. I also bought some swim trunks for tomorrow’s trip to Ocean City, New Jersey. We had yet another great day in Philadelphia, despite the insane heat and humidity.

When we got back to Penn, we went to dinner at the Chinese restaurant next to the quad, Beijing. Alison and Fred had a lengthy discussion about the differences between Chinese and Korean table manners. For instance, in Korea it is rude to refill a cup or glass before you are finished with your drink. It is the opposite in China, where it is seen as insolent if one is to completely finish their drink. Unfortunately I would seem very rude dinner as per Chinese customs because I was making up for the lack of water I didn’t have earlier today by drinking glass after glass at dinner. I always enjoy talking about how our backgrounds are different and the discussions that follow. It really puts things into perspective about how things can be so different when people really are not that far away geographically.

After dinner, we joined in on a scavenger hunt that some of the Summer Discovery students organized. It wasn’t a scavenger hunt in the traditional sense where we had to find things, but actions that we had to perform. Our groups had to do things such as approaching random people and pretending like we had known them previously and asking someone that we did not know for a piggyback ride (we stuck to people in the quad for our actions). There was a long list of tasks and we didn’t finish within the two hour time frame, but it was certainly a fun way to spend two hours.

Tomorrow we travel to Ocean City for a fun day at the beach and boardwalk…with thunderstorms. This won’t put a damper on my spirit (pun intended) because I actually like the rain. I just hope that the storm doesn’t get too severe because we will probably have to leave early. Either way, tomorrow is bound to be fun and I am looking forward to my last Sunday with my friends.

Brian is the Luigi to Fred's Mario

This can't handle this cut-out because it's bi-winning

Alison's best nerd face

Pay no attention to the severed hands in the background...

Running is Relaxing?

For the one day of the week with no scheduled activities, today was really busy. Alex and I caught up on a bit of sleep by sleeping in past our usual 7 o clock wake up. I was energized from the extra sleep, so I got some shorts on and then headed over to the gym as fast as I could. I burnt of my energy by setting the treadmill as fast as it would go and then sprinting for about 15 minutes. I really enjoy the gym here at UPenn because it is free, clean, the equipment is brand new, and the staff is all very friendly and helpful. I finished my workout by trying out an elliptical runner, lifting weights, and then stretching out to make sure that I’m not sore tomorrow.

By the time I was through at the gym, it was past 11 and Alex was on his way to a café sop I had him grab me a bagel. Soon enough, it was time for lunch, so I went and got a hoagie with my friends at the local store. I cleaned up and then got ready to go with my friends to Center City, Philadelphia. The sign-out process is pretty easy, and we quickly caught the next train downtown. As soon as we got off the train, we decided to go to Love Square to cool down a bit. In Love Square there is a large fountain that we played in for about half an hour. The water felt great, and it’s a cool place because it’s a nice park in the middle of a very dense city. After the fountain we still wanted to cool off some more so we found a nearby frozen yogurt place. After I took a copious amount of samples, I decided on a mixture of orange sherbet and blueberry. Finally, we headed back in to the heat and decided to do some shopping which I don’t generally enjoy, but I went anyways because it’s somewhat fun when you go with friends. We went to a large mall in the middle of Philly and started browsing through the various stores while a couple of the others actually bought stuff. After looking through a few reasonably priced stores, I couldn’t help but take a peek in one of the really expensive suit stores. The suits there were pretty nice, but not worth their price tags which were often high enough o be the down payment on a nice car. We left the mall and then went to some other smaller stores on the street. My friends Fred and Alison both found cool hats that they bought.

We left Center City at about 6:45 in order to be back with some time to spare before we had to check in. We checked in and then decided to go out for dinner because we don’t have meal plans on Saturday so we have to eat elsewhere. The restaurant we chose is actually only about 500 feet from our dorms and it’s called Beijing. Beijing was a nice Chinese restaurant, and the meals are served family style so we each chose a dish that we liked and then shared it with everyone else. We got pork chops, fried rice, lo mein, and a hot pot dish. I enjoyed the food and conversation a lot, and luckily there are some leftovers for tomorrow.

The final part of my day was energizing but eventually relaxing. I ran around with my friends on a scavenger hunt around the campus for a while which was quite fun. Eventually we got tired and settled into our dorms where we are now. I’ve been relaxing and studying a bit of Italian and reading a book for school. Tomorrow should be a lot of fun in Ocean City although the weather forecast is not great.

Goodnight.

A Physics Playground

Fridays are the best days. That is a well known fact. But it is especially true here at Penn. This weeks class field trip was to the Franklin Institute, and I never thought I would say this about a museum, but it was probably even more enjoyable than the roller coasters. Or, at least it was a close second.

Most of the displays were designed for children, and by that I do not mean that they demonstrated simple concepts or not advanced ideas,but rather that all of the displays were very hands-on. The exhibits reminded me of Bill's lectures in that they each had many very creative ways of explaining complex ideas with simple demonstrations that were both fun and interesting. It made me really happy to see all the young children around me truly excited about physics. In many instances I found myself wishing that I had had the opportunity to visit the museum when I was younger, but even at my age I learned a lot and had fun doing it.

The first exhibit we visited was a giant Foucault pendulum, the first experiment that proved the rotation of the Earth. It was really pretty amazing watching this gigantic mass swing back and forth. There was a plaque that showed the calculations for how long it took for the pendulum direction to shift a full 360 degrees at that particular place on Earth. At the end of the day, we visited it again, and sure enough, there were a few extra chess pieces that had been knocked down because of the shift in the pendulums path.

The next exhibit we went to was more biology oriented, but as we learned before from our pair of lectures on the brain, the two subjects are not disconnected. In this case, the subject is of interest to everyone. We all have a heart and, as it turns out it is quite important that we take care of it. This pointed was stressed to us all when we watched a video of an open heart surgery and got to look at some of the tools the surgeons used. It was both fascinating and horrifying. In addition to this, we spent some time in the famous model heart that is available and large enough to walk through (or at least large enough for a child to walk through; it was a tight fit for Brian).

There was another really cool exhibit on electricity where one could give and receive some fairly high voltage shocks. We also held hands to complete a circuit and light up a light bulb and spent a fair amount of time with out cell phones in front of the light up screen that detects radio waves. My favorite was the machine that detected the electricity that flows through your nerves when you flexed the muscles in your arm.

After that, we ventured up to the roof to withstand the sweltering heat just long enough to peer through a high-powered telescope with special lenses that allowed us to get a clear view of the sun. It was amazing. There were even a few sun spots visible.

We also spent some time in "Issac's Loft" which was an area with a collection of interactive demonstrations about simple machines such as levers and pulleys, the conservation of momentum, and transfers of energy. It was comparable to an educational playground. I raced Brian in a nifty contraption where you can sit in a seat and raise yourself with a pulley.

One of my favorite exhibits was one about engineering and inventions. It was really an interactive explanation of how things worked on the simplest levels. They had cases that contained everyday items such as windshield wipers, vacuum cleaners, and combination locks that had been disassembled in such a way that their inner workings were made clear. There were also stations where one could mess around with gears and pulleys to make simple machines. It was very entertaining.

There was also an entire exhibit on optics and optical illusions that was kind of trippy. They also ad some long exposure light pictures up, which got me really excited because I had just finished making a similar picture the night before. One of the most mind-blowing optical tricks was the one of the dragon whose face was build in a box that was going away from the view but painted in such a way that if one blurred their eyes, it appeared to be coming towards them, and then if they were to walk around the room, follow them wherever they went.

After lunch, we went as a group the the planetarium where we watched a movie on a dome-shaped screen called "A Journey Into a Black Hole" or something along those lines. There were some amazing images of space, and seeing the stars and galaxies all around our heads was pretty cool. Even cooler was the feeling that we knew exactly what the narrator was talking about when he discussed the bending of light and space-time that occurs around black holes. It was a really good way to end an extremely exciting day of "class".

When I returned to the quad, I had the intention of playing squash with a group of people who were interested, however the courts were closed due to excessive heat, which was probably for the best because instead, we sat in an air conditioned cafe sipping on some refreshing smoothies.

After dinner, we watched the final Harry Potter movie, which honestly surpassed my expectations and then returned to our dorms for some Friday night card games before bed.