San Francisco Ballet Intensive Week 1!

So today was day 4 of the San Francisco Ballet intensive! I am so sore.  I hope that I will come out of this intensive stronger, because its is such hard work! Here is a little example of how my day goes....

So I have been waking up around 7:30...which is sleeping in compared to the school year! Then I eat breakfast in the dorm cafeteria- they actually have a lot of interesting food for breakfast. Like today they had a quiche! I've been eating SO MUCH here- I feel like I need more energy to dance!!

It takes a long time to get from the dorms to the ballet school.  We have to walk to the MUNI train station (it is like a combination between a subway and train), then we take a 20-25 minute train ride into the city.  Then we walk to the ballet school! 

We have ballet technique class pretty late in the morning- 11:00.  That goes to 2:00, then we have a break or go straight into pointe class.  But we take the entire ballet technique class en pointe! Yesterday we didn't have a break between technique and pointe, so we have 3 hours straight of pointe class!! My feet are in so much pain! I feel like such a wimp here- I hope my toes toughen up!

After pointe class we have another shorter break, then we have either pas de deux (partnering class), contemporary, or repertoire/variations class ( where you learn solos from famous ballets).  

Then I go home and fall asleep! 

Haight-Ashbury

50s dress

I'm in San Francisco!! I got settled in the dorms and met my roommate.  She is so sweet; she is from Japan and still learning English.  I never realized just how poorly I speak English; I need to get rid of the "likes" and stop slurring words together so I can help her understand better!  I am amazed at how brave she is to spend a whole summer in a foreign country...

Before I checked into the dorms, I got to check one of my destinations of the list!  My mom took us to Haight-Ashbury, a location that was the heart of the 1960s hippie movement.  It's a district in San Fran that is considered the iconic center of American counterculture. 

strange i know....

It is actually a very picturesque neighborhood.  It has a bohemian feel, and there are a lot of interesting stores.  I went a vintage store that was categorized by time period and I found these amazing dresses that were supposedly '80s "valley girl".   Then we found this adorable dress shop that was filled with these sailor-style/ '50s clothes that looked like they came right out of Back to the Future! I wonder if the people who work at these stores just hated me; I had a blast trying on a million dresses but didn't buy anything.......

The best came last- we wandered into this outlet-style store called Crossroads Exchange and found a bunch of used name-brand stuff for super cheap! I bought an Andrew Marc coat for 27 dollars (actually I didn't know who he was before, but the coat is beautiful).  I thought it would be perfect for the summer...why a coat for the summer? Because it is freezing here! It was 50 degrees yesterday! I'm going to have to get used to this strange weather....

vintage clothes

I spend hours with my cousins and my sisters trying on our grandma's old clothes.  It is absolutely hilarious to see what people wore "back in the day".  Shoulder pads are the best! They look like a football player. And high waisted jeans are great too.  I love the 80's; I want the 80's to come back!

Going through my grandma's closet is always fun.  My grandmother was probably one of my favorite people in the world. She was the most hilarious and glamorous grandmother I could ever imagine. She was also a shopaholic. I think living through the Great Depression made her appreciate material possessions more.  And food.  She used to tell us that she and her 11 other siblings used to scrounge for bits of tar to chew on for lack of sustenance.  Well, in the time I knew her, she was certainly prepared with enough food to last through a several depressions.  She kept stashes of stale or expired food all over her kitchen, and when criticized she would explain plainly, "when the famine comes, you'll all be coming to me for food".  She was the same way with clothes.  I have countless fond memories of shopping with her, in which, after spoiling me and my siblings with presents, she would spend hours searching for the best pair of white socks in a pile of a hundred identical pairs, or buying multiples of the same perfect blouse.  So usually if we find something in her closet, there's a twin somewhere!

She used to tell me about how she went on dates almost every night (before she met my grandpa), and how she would go home and sew a different dress before each date!  I desperately wish that she kept all of them...

Although the date night dresses are missing, her closet is stuffed with clothes.  I honestly don't know how one woman could have worn so many clothes.

I wear her clothes to school all the time, and I always get so excited when people comment on them.  Vintage clothes are a blast.

dim sum

dim sum platters

different dumplings

If you've never had dim sum you are missing out on some amazing Chinese cuisine.  My grandpa says that "dim sum" is hard to translate, but it means something like, "a little bit of heart".  I'm half-Chinese, and while don't speak the language, I can definitely appreciate the food. My family goes to this hole-in-the-wall restaurant that, like many small Chinese restaurants, serves dim sum in the day and dinner in the evening.  Dim sum is just a bunch of Chinese dumplings and other savories that are served in small portions on little pans.  You just keep refilling this tiny little plate, so you don't feel like you are eating very much until you look up and realize that all the pans are empty and you just ate a whole weeks worth of carbs and seafood and greasy goodness.  But it's totally worth it because it is absolutely delicious.

egg tart

The entire atmosphere at a dim sum is loud and busy and bustling.  This time we went, the place was already packed.  But this one man who works there (one of the managers?) recognizes us because we were loyal customers to the restaurant he USED to work at so he got us a table right away...Anyways, first you are seated, then you are bombarded with successive servers pushing carts of steaming, yummy dim sum, shouting what different foods they have for you.  Then you take what you want , but sometimes they try to get you to take something you don't want , and you have to shout that you don't want it several times before they will try to sell it to someone else.  It's a very exciting way of eating out.

My favorites are

•  蝦餃 har gau, which are delicate little shrimp dumplings
•  燒賣 siu maai, which is pork/seafood in a thin noodle-like wrapper
•  叉燒包, char siu bau barbequed pork buns
• 蛋撻  egg tart, which is flaky pastry filled with custard
• 煎䭔 煎堆 jian deui, the most greasy and delicious: sesame seed covered balls of glutinous rice filled with red bean paste
• wow- did you notice half of my favorites are sweets?

(I just copied the chinese from wikipedia because I was looking up the spelling and it looked cool; I apologize to any Asian readers if I messed it up.)

So for those of you who haven't had dim sum before, you should try it if you ever get a chance! 

i had never had this before and i don't even know what it was called-  it was some kind of shrimp dumpling inside a piece of melon

lombard street

One of the tourist attractions I need to see in San Fran: Lombard Street.  It looks like it should be in Alice in Wonderland or something! 6 days till I leave....

summer t-shirts!

see the blue?

Today I went to Laguna Beach and ended up in this store I had never seen before called LF (which I guess is a chain of indie hipster kinda stores) and saw all these awesome fringed shirts made from vintage-looking T-shirts. Cool right? Except that they were all over 100 dollars! Who wants to pay that much for a cut up old T-shirt?






So when I got home I tried to make one. But...it didn't really work out. I think the shirt I used was too small. I tried to make these intense long armholes but I cut it wrong and it ended up looking more like a shrunk-up racerback than a loose, summery shirt. I'm going to try again with my dad's old shirt.

June gloom..

Right now it's starting to clear up, but this morning was super gloomy and depressing! I thought, isn't it supposed to be sunny and summery right now? The gloom makes me sad- my mom calls it "seasonal affect disorder"... Then I remembered- San Francisco is famous for SUMMER FOG.

looks cool here doesn't it?

Right now I'm googling San Fran weather... According to baynature.org, the San Fran Bay area is known for a thick "tule" fog that occurs mostly in the warmer summer months.

I better get used to June gloom! Oh well, all part of the adventure right?

So right now I'm just posting the stuff I put in my "San Francisco page" but I wanted it to be an official post plus I like posting things.  I'm making a little list of things I want to do while I'm in San Fran.  Here's what I have so far, but tell me if you have any other ideas! We leave on  the 24th, so that makes it 9 days till departure! (Did I mention that my sister is also attending the SFB intensive?)

• Chinatown
• Golden Gate Park/ Japanese Tea Gardens
• Pier 39 Ghirardelli Square
• ride a cable car/go to the cable car museum
• Japan town
• St. Peter's Cathedral
• some kind of hippie history site? 
• and what else? any suggestions? leave a comment!

oh so epic :P

and did anyone else notice how many movies are out this summer? I love seeing movies.  These are the movies I would love to see this summer, how about you?

• Harry Potter 7 Part 2!!! (yes I am a major Harry Potter nerd and I am probably going to cry when i see this) 
• Transformers 3 (can you believe they made ANOTHER one?)
• Kung Fu Panda 2 :)
• X-Men first class
• Cowboys and Aliens? (gotta see Harrison Ford's comebacks)

why hello there!

For someone who usually resorts to hitting the computer in frustration when things go awry, the creation of this blog was a great undertaking.  While I do admit to spending long hours on the internet thanks to Facebook and Youtube, I am definitely the least tech savvy person in my family.  I usually have to ask my little sister for help when iTunes is frozen, or when I need help formatting a powerpoint.  It took me 37 minutes to figure out how to get the starfish picture on the background of this blog. This is all a very new experience for me.

Since this is my first blog, I thought I should just introduce myself and the explain why I decided to venture into this confusing realm of personal expression through the internet.  I was actually inspired by the movie Julie&Julia.  (You know the one where Amy Adams sets this challenge for herself to cook every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook and blogs about it).  Because I want some practice writing, and because I thought it sounded fun, I decided to make a blog for my summer in San Francisco.  I am an aspiring ballet dancer, and I'm going to be attending the San Francisco Ballet's summer intensive training program in a couple weeks.  So I get to live in San Fran for 5 weeks! I'm planning on blogging about ballet in general, being a tourist in San Fran, plus other random summery stuff.  Like food and fashion and makeup and movies.  Fun stuff. 

Well,  I highly doubt anyone's reading this right now.......so...........

With love, Serendipity