It is hard to believe that it is the last day of Spring Break of my junior year. It seems that time has gone by so quickly; I cannot believe that the year is almost over.

This was an especially fun, busy, exciting, stressful, beautiful, wet, weird, just about everything you could imagine break. I spent Easter with my family and we had a lovely day together and during the week since my parents were working and my sister had school- her break was a week earlier- I went on a college tour with my grandparents eventually ending up in the bay area for my High School sailing Pacific Coast Championship regatta.

Spending the week stuck in the car with my grandparents, and visiting 3 amazing schools had its ups and downs, but mostly ups. It was stressful at times to give driving directions, I need to remember not to say "left, right here" or its the at way and point in the backseat where my hand cannot be seen, I've only got my permit as a backseat driver, but soon I will get my backseat drivers license, watch out world!

I toured UC Santa Cruz, Stanford, and Berkeley. UC Santa Cruz had the most beautiful campus out of all of them in my opinion because of the amazing views of Monterrey Bay and the fact that the school is basically in a forest, The city of Santa Cruz was a tad to hippy for me, I need a little mainstream in my life. But I was glad to see that they had a Trader Joe's, Urban Outfitters, and a Forever 21. We accidentally ate dinner at a Vegan restaurant, I thought they served meat, I was completely wrong. It was okay but I will not be turning vegan anytime soon, I'm not really sure what my grandparents thought of it but my grandpa kept on saying that his soup would be better with some beef broth and cream if that gives you any idea. Stanford was extremely pretty and I know understood why this is so many peoples dream school; it's definitely mine now too. I loved the feeling of Stanford; the school was so intellectual and witty, but you could tell that these kids also liked to have fun. I actually came on the first day of admit weekend which was really cool because I got to participate in some of the admit stuff like seeing the band perform and the tree dance and all the dorms come out and cheer. The Stanford band is wild but I already knew that. I also loved the fact that Stanford is 20 to 30 degrees warmer than the rest of the bay area and that they have a mall next door and a Trader Joe's across the street. One interesting thing I noticed about Stanford was that every kid rode a bike, my Dad would really enjoy that as he loves to bike.

The last school we toured was UC Berkeley. I had already been to Berkeley before as I had done a Model UN event there a month earlier but it was really cool to go on an actual tour of the campus. Unfortunately it was raining the day we went to Berkeley but it had been extremely sunny and beautiful during the MUN conference so it was cool to see Berkeley when the weather is stormy. I got to explore Telegraph Avenue more and I was so happy when I saw a Diaso near campus. Since we got to Berkeley early and because it was raining we stopped at a coffee shop across the street from the urban campus to drink tea and so I could do my homework. I very much enjoyed doing that because first I got some of the massive pile of AP homework and studying I have to do and second I got a feeling of what it is like to study and be a college student at Berkeley. The only thing that I didn't really like about both Berkeley and Santa Cruz was the fact that they are so large as are the class sizes but wither way they were both beautiful campuses that I will most definitely be applying to .

I had ton of fun so far on my trip. It was extremely windy on Saturday and we will have to see what Sunday is like, it is suppose to rain again.

Wish me luck on finishing all of my homework.

Julia