Hi everyone! I hope your first month in school has been going well! I am so glad to be back in my groove at USC and reunited with all of my friends! Even though being apart from them all summer was not necessarily fun, it is really cool to have friends from all over and be able to visit them! That is one of the main aspects that I love about USC; the diversity of places that people come from. This makes me think of an adventure my friend, Taylor and I went on at the end of summer to Northern California. I’ll give you a little scoop of what that was like!

As summer was coming to a close, Taylor and I decided that we wanted to go visit one of our friends, Eamon in his hometown of Palo Alto. It was a very spontaneous trip that we knew would be a lot of fun! For both of us it was our first real road trip without our parents and we were so excited to head out. We went and bought all kinds of food because what is a road trip without yummy snacks? We loaded up the car with our bags, snacks, and of course our iPods and off we went…at 5 am. At first we were both so tired and barely said a word on the freeway, but as it got later in the morning, we started jamming out to some of our favorite throwback songs. Nothing beats the fun times we had dancing in my car on the freeway. The five-hour trip flew by together and before we knew it we were on Eamon’s doorstep anxious to see him!

When Eamon came to the door I gave him a giant bear hug. I had missed him since leaving USC and was so excited to get to spend the whole weekend with him! Since Taylor and I were both famished, we decided to go grab some lunch together at a delicious sandwich shop called Ike’s. It was located on Stanford’s campus so we got to look around since we had never been there before. It was huge! However, since we were on football enemy territory, Taylor and I had to keep fighting on and took a picture of us doing so. After we left Stanford, we went to downtown Palo Alto because Eamon said we had to try a place called Cream. It is a very popular ice cream sandwich shop very similar to Westwood’s Diddy Riese. I ordered vanilla ice cream between two oatmeal cookies and it was delicious! If you are ever in Palo Alto, you’ll have to give it a try!

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            The next day had some of my favorite memories from the visit. Taylor, Eamon, and I drove to San Francisco to spend the day at Fisherman’s Warf.  When we arrived, we walked near the water and looked at the several boats on display. We even saw two women in the ocean doing synchronized swimming. I do not know how they remained composed considering how cold the water was! After that, we headed inland and bought ourselves bread bowls with clam chowder. They were huge and oh so yummy! Since we were stuffed from that meal, we decided to walk it off and look at all the little shops. We went into a hat store and could not stop laughing from trying on all of the goofy hats.  After that, our other friend from USC, Chris, came to meet up with us. It was so nice to see him as well! When he arrived, we walked back to the car and drove to the Golden Gate Bridge. No trip to San Francisco would be complete without a touristy picture with that famous bridge in the background! After that we parted ways with Chris and headed back to Eamon’s to hang out for our last night before heading home.

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The next morning, Taylor and I packed up the car and were ready to head back to LA. Saying goodbye to Eamon wasn’t as hard knowing that we would be reunited with him so soon at USC. Who would have thought that living in Trojan Hall would have brought the three of us so close together? This may have been the last of my summer adventures, but now I am back at USC taking on another fun year! Hope you enjoyed my little snippet. Have a good one! Fight on!

Jacquie

Jacquie

Industrial & Systems Engineering, Class of 2016, Learn more on her profile here!