What a week!

One more week has gone by in San Francisco and it was crazy. It was jam packed with exciting things almost every night. So here is a brief overview!

Tuesday:
We had our first community night on Tuesday. Community night is a mandatory night once a week (Tuesdays for us) that the VSC program requires us to have. It is supposed to be a time where the whole house gets together and eats together and then does an activity to grow in our faith. We are also supposed to invite our support people to join as well. Support people are individuals that are there for us locally for anything that we need spiritually. We have two support people for the San Francisco house: RJ, who is a previous VSC volunteer and Sr. Kathleen, who works at De Marillac with me.

Our first community night I was "lead" chef and we had spaghetti with meat sauce, garlic bread, and a salad with homemade salad dressing. The 9 of us sat around the table and ate together, asking questions, talking about our days, and just enjoying each others company. Afterwords we did a simple faith, get to know you game. I introduced them to the challenge of summing up your current faith life up in 6 words. Hard right? The exercise is for you to take all the words out of your though and focus them into a simple meaning. I have done this quite a few times, but each time it changes and this time I came up with I'm here, I'm willing, I'm ready. Short, simple, and to the point.

Our Beautiful Meal.

Thursday:

Thursday I had the privilege to go to a conference put on by Evernote. It was an amazing experience! It was a 2 day conference and since I needed to request time off, I was able to go to the educators conference on thursday rather than the "programming" conference on Friday. The conference cost me only $12 (I got a discount code for being a volunteer!) and I got breakfast and lunch. I met lots of educators excited about integrating technology into their curriculums. Education is changing so much! I was in high school only 5 years ago and the only thing you used a computer for was to type assignments and do a small amount of research. Now though, gradebooks, curriculums, schedules, ways to teach, portfolios, and most paperwork is now digital and online. ITS CRAZY. I think there is a very delicate balance of the use of technology in the classroom and now society is trying to find that line.... but thats another posting for another day.

At the end of the conference LiveScribe did a presentation about their product and how it integrates with Evernote. But to show their dedication to educators, they gave everyone there a free LiveScribe Pen! I have yet to test it out, but I'm pretty excited.

Evernote's Educational Conference

That night I went out with some co-workers to the California Academy of Sciences (discounted of course). IT WAS AMAZING! If my family ever comes to see me, this is one of the places I will take you! The special thing about Thursdays is that the whole museum becomes a huge party for guests. They have bar tables, DJs, and lots of food around the museum. So you can go there and socialize and see all of the exhibits too. They have a bio dome, a planetarium, a huge aquarium, and an earthquake simulator, and more! I was like a little kid in a candy store, I hope to go back soon to say the least :)

Bio Dome!

Jellyfish. So cool!

This was the BEST exhibit there. Proof that the earth spins. Its a huge pendulum and because of the earth's rotation, the  ball slowly moves in a circle knocking down all the pins!

The crazy huge aquarium!

Friday:

Since I was only able to get one day off for the Evernote Conference, I signed up for the after party  on Friday (starting at 5:30) and was only $3.75 with my special discount. I was able to get there a little early and listen to a panel of questions about Evernote and where they think their company is going, it was really interesting to say the least. One of the questions was concerning education and I taped what they had to say about it:

Soon after the party began and I quickly realized they had great bluegrass musicians there, free arcade games, free swag, complimentary food, and an open bar.... and remember I only paid $3.75 for it. I made a lot of connections and had a lot of good talks with the people there about what it takes to be in the "start up" business. I don't think I would ever want to be in that world, but its just interesting how passionate these people are that their ideas will change the world.

Oh yeah I saw this on my way to the conference!

Saturday:

Some of us from my house decided we were going to go to the Golden Gate bridge, and so we did. It was a lot of fun to to a little road trip with my roommates. 

Look mom, its amazing!

Action photo!

King of the world, oh yeah!

This was the third time I was able to go to the bridge, but the first time I wasn't under a time constraint. I was really happy about this because I had time to read through the information on how it was constructed, why certain decisions were made about the bridge, and just see how the bridge was built... amazing.

After the Golden Gate bridge, we went to Fishermans walf to walk around and then called it a day... a really good one. :)

WOW! It really was a busy week, but a good one. To all my readers: I think about all of you a lot, I'm finding it really hard to keep up with everyone though. Please though don't take this the wrong way, I want to know about you! and this is the best way that I feel like I can give you an incite into my life right now. I hope that I am able to connect with all of you soon! And most of all I love you.

From the darkness we come into the light.