San Francisco, UC Santa Cruz, San Francisco State, UC Berkeley

My friends and I are planning a trip to San Francisco for Winter break, which is what I really need. I have an obsession with moving there and going to San Francisco State, they have a really good Creative Writing Program.

As a senior in high school I was quite indecisive about what university I wanted to go. Here's a few schools I thought I wanted go to: UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, USC, Chapman, Loyola Marymount, Westmont, and Cal State Long Beach. I like how I wanted to go to two rivalry schools, UCLA and USC, and I wanted to go to two different religious schools, the Catholic University Loyola Marymount, and the Christian University Westmont. I honestly think all these schools are amazing and back then I wanted to go to all of them, then I realized I didn't want to go to any of them.  



This bridge was in one of the student blog pictures

Earlier Spring my best friend, Alexia and I decided we needed to go visit some college campuses. Alexia was so committed to UC Santa Cruz and on one of our Starbucks study sessions, she told me how obsessed she was with this school. She showed me a blog regarding UC Santa Cruz students and their student life. I could see it was a far walk to classes and dorms and the scenery was similar to Twilight. Literally, there was a picture of the campus and it was surrounded by thick redwood trees. We decided that would be one of the schools we would visit.  Our friend Sydney, went to CSU Monterey Bay so she let us stay a night at her dorm and tagged along on our college tour. We also told our other friends, Amy, who went to San Francisco State, and Kelsey, who went to UC Berkeley, if they could give us a tour of their schools.  



Alexia and Syd trying to figure out where we were

We left on Thursday, April 11th after school and stayed at Sydney's that night. The next day we got a brief tour of CSU Monterrey Bay and left to UC Santa Cruz. It looked exactly like the pictures from the student blogs, so green and filled with beautiful redwood trees. We didn't personally know anyone at UCSC, so we got a map and tried to figure it out on our own. We found the dorms, walked in a few classrooms, we went to the bookstore, and we even followed a school that was getting a tour by a UCSC student. (We had to stop because, we got the feeling they were on to us)  Despite, the huge trees Santa Cruz really did remind me of Santa Barbara because it was near the ocean and near their downtown. After we spent the rest of the day in downtown Santa Cruz listening to talented musicians playing on the streets, shopping, and eating.

Amy, Syd, and Alexia @ SF State

The next day we went to visit, Amy at San Francisco State. It was colder than I expected there. She gave us a tour around her school showing us, her dorm, the library, where her classes were. What I liked about this school at first was that it was located more on the outskirts of SF. Walking around the campus, I felt like I was comfortable there being there and I started really seeing myself going here. It was later that I found out I could major in Creative Writing and the music scene up there was my type of genre. After, we went into the city to get lunch at a sandwich shop called, Ike's Place.(http://ilikeikesplace.com/) It was amazing! We also got Boba sometime later. At night we left for Berkeley....

the Campanile

Alexia, Kelsey, and I

We arrived at Kelsey's dorm and got settled in. We met her roommates.  This campus was in the middle of the city, surrounded by many buildings. This was indeed different from UCSC and SFSU. We went for a walk that night and I could see many students dressed up for parties at fraternities. It was quite a scene. I could see there was a police car outside of a Frat house that echoed a loud fire alarm. People left in panic. We decided to get food at their school Café, after that show. The next morning we got up and went to the Berkeley tower, the Campanile. It was such a breath-taking view; We could see the whole city as well as San Francisco from across the bridge.
 That day we had to make our way back to Santa Barbara, but we decided to do something really quick before we left. Go to the Golden Gate Bridge...

What I learned from that experience is that if your ever unsure about something, find a way to the answer. Your not going to figure out what you want by sitting and waiting for someone to decide it for you. You must adventure off and figure it out on your own.

- KIKI REYES

Adjusting, Positive thinking, The Coquette by Hannah Foster, History Repeats itself

I confess I'm still trying to adjust to this heavy schedule and hectic workload. Its insane how people manage to take 18 units and work two jobs, when I over here with only 13 units and one job (Picture on the left: my dog visiting me at work I'm holding up a Steve Morris Defensive Driving School Card). Seriously, those people are gifted. I feel like my two years of community college are equivalent to two extra years of my high school senior year, specifically the excitement of events going on, but as well as the difficult courses I am enrolled in. I am not the person to give up and receive a bad grade on anything, so if a professor ever disagrees with my work I get really upset. Some people just let it go, but I take it to heart. I am a perfectionist I want people to like my work, so it gets a bit frustrating. Sometimes I have to remind myself to take it one step at a time and that everything is going to work out fine. And eventually it does.

So I stay positive for myself and for others; I mean I basically go to school on a beach! Don't people go to beaches to relax? SBCC is probably the most relaxing community college a person could go to right? Honestly, I love school the classes are so interesting that I don't find a single subject boring, I meet a new person every day, but the only thing is that it gets challenging very quickly. I'm sure everyone can relate to this. (This is literally the beach across from SBCC, and those two dots are my friends, Leah and Billy swimming).

Something I found interesting this week was a book I read in my American Literature class, The Coquette by Hannah Foster (On the Right picture of the novel).I know books and American Literature typical English Major haha. I liked this book so much I am trying to incorporate it into my short story for Creative Writing. I'm handling two subjects at once by one, studying for my midterm and two, writing my short story. Its genius, its like that idiomatic expression, "killing two birds with a stone"! Come to think of it, why did they associate the idea of completing two tasks at the same time to killing birds? That's kind of strange when you think about it. So basically the story is about a woman named Eliza Wharton, who in the beginning of the story looses her fiancé which results to her moving in with friends. Eliza writes to her best friend Lucy about her stay at the Richman's house and for advice on two admirers that begin fighting for her love. You could relate this conflict to many novels nowadays, but this is in my opinion, where that conflict originated. You have to read the rest to find out what happens.

I'll give you a preview of my short story:
                                               
                                              History Repeats Itself
                                                     by: Kiki Reyes

I.It was a stupid research paper our history professor assigned us that made me come back home to Hartford, Connecticut. I hadn't been home in almost a year and now I had to faced about hundred miles of driving, an estimated hour and half. Of course it started raining during my morning drive that's something I always despised about going home, but this time looking above at the uninviting dull skies and the curious empty roads made me feel more uneasy than usual. At that moment I decided  to shift my thoughts into focusing on the paper. The assignment was to get a better sense of our ancestors and when they migrated to the Americas. I began to think about the stories my grandparents would tell my younger brother, Daniel and I. They briefly mentioned the Hartford Circus Fire in the 1940s, apparently they were late to the circus that day. I remembered my grandma got teary so we had to change the subject. Even though we were on a different topic, I could see her grey eyes staring blanking, possibly re-following the flames annexing the circus tent echoing of swallowed tragic screams. It had nothing to do with my family's history at all, but that was the only story I could remember.

I hope you like it so far, its very suspenseful.

-KIKI REYES
 
 

People Watching, Pants, Clichés

This semester's work load its pretty challenging. I think its mainly because of all the reading from my two English courses, but it is something I am enjoying. And coincidentally the historical period in my American Literature class is basically what I'm learning in my online History class. I didn't do that purposely, it just happened.

 I've noticed the weather is finally cooling down because I happened to be shivering under the shade today, while I was sitting down on the West Campus' Café. It was a great day for people watching, and according to my Creative Writing textbook "...good fiction writers are usually good people watchers" (Starkey 118). I didn't really mind sitting alone. I mean I was accompanied by friends, that I met today, before they went to class. I was reading from my History book, but at the same time trying to become aware of my surroundings to see if I can get inspired for a song or story or anything really. Its awesome to say that you can basically see the beach anywhere your sitting. I could see many people sitting on the grass reading, eating, and napping. Its weird to think that you won't be able to meet everyone on this campus.
(Left: My American Literature book) 


That's one of my goals, to just randomly jump into conversations with strangers at school. For example today I had to stop at a table by the IDC building, next to the library, to fix my pants. I folded them so they were capris, but awkwardly while I was walking one was lop-sided. There was a guy listening to his iPod and doing his homework. I went to the table next to him and he watched me, I told him "I'm just fixing my pants." He took one earphone out of his ear and he laughed. I fixed my problem and said "Have a nice day!" The other day I sat next to random people at a table for about an hour and after I found out their names and their majors.



Another one of my goal is to do well this semester, as cliché as that sounds. Another, Another goal I have is to stop using clichés, especially since I'm going to be a writer.

(Picture toward the right was taken this morning, while I was getting dropped off at school. That's Cookie, my dragon)


-KIKI REYES

Critiques, Creative Writing, CSU Channel Islands, Foxes

I recently wrote a poem called "Holy Water." In my Creative Writing class I signed it up to be workshopped, and of course I went under anonymous so nobody would know I wrote it. Its weird after many years of writing I still get afraid of people's reactions towards my work. So I missed the day my poem got work shopped and I have no idea what my classmates said about my scandalous poem (Until now)... Well its not that scandalous. I do express my view of religion and respect in this writing piece and its something I'm really proud of. And now everyone knows I wrote and I owe up to my words. I got my scraps of critiques back today, it wasn't entirely bad.

(Picture on the right the actual scraps of paper from my creative writing class)

Also this weekend I was able to visit my sister at her school, CSU Channel Islands.(Left picture) It was nice getting the whole college experience because I was able to stay at her dorm and meet some of her friends. My sister gave me a tour of her school, while I was there and one thing I loved the most was the library. It has three stories of shelves filled with knowledge, it was masterpiece. I noticed that this school has a friendly laidback vibe, but I was pretty skeptical when we went up to her friend's dorm and saw him and his roommates watching cat videos on YouTube. Luckily, they decided to meet up with us later on my tour of Channel Islands and we walked around for a couple of hours. They were telling me that they have hiking, running, they go ghost hunting ( I don't recall its haunted) and kayaking as well. There's a lot to do there, I guess when I went the students were just in the need of relaxing rather than exploring.

Wanna know something I learned while I was at CSU Channel Islands? What sound the fox makes... This is quite embarrassing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE
(the best part of this song is that it had the potential of being a very good song, but not anymore)
Enjoy!

-KIKI REYES