Greetings from San Francisco!

After a nice night in a real house we made our way to the city of San Francisco. On the way into the city we had the opportunity to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge. When we arrived at Fishermans Warf, we had about an hour before lunch. We all split up for lunch and shopping until around 2:00. Many had their first experience at the "IN N' OUT BURGER". To our surprise, the quality of the wood was far from over rated. When we all met up after our tummies were full and our wallets were not, we took a cable car up to china town.

China town was a favorite for many reasons. We were suprised to find that china town wasn't just a bunch of little shops and it wasn't necessarily set up for tourists. There were hundreds of honest to god chinese people. This was their culture, created on the opposite end of the world they originated from. They were speaking fluently, buying groceries, making crafts and living their lives together in one small, crowded space. We tried a lot of different drinks and foods that were cheap and were found every 10 steps. A few of us were fortunate enough to enter a fortune cookie making factory. We sampled flat fortune cookies and even managed to get a picture of the place. The real hilight of the day was probably being the odd man out for once. There were a couple caucasians, no african americans or mexicans. The few of us girls stood out like a sore thumb in this little mini culture filled with Chinese people. They were quite welcoming and were excited to share their culture with us, although they are obviously very used to it being a part of one of the most famous cities in the U.S. What was so different about my experience in china town was that not only did they speak their language comfortably and openly, but they also did not know much english themselves. They were courteous enough to know enough to communicate salestalk but few could hold a true conversation. I know this because when i tried to make conversation, they just smiled and nodded, or just laughed. There was also some culture SHOCK (as many of our SMS international students would know about). We saw some things we weren't too curious about such as dead rats floating in jars and shredded squid being sold out of unprotected barrels, but they seemed to be happy with the way things were. Overall it was a fun day and we are excited for the adventures to come!

~Le-jit's
Tory & Emily :-)