STEAK and A1 for dinner?! (August 6)

This was quite the confusing morning for me. Last night we were supposed to set our clocks back an hour, so I did- I went around my room and set my iPod dock, my alarm clock, my iPod, noticed that my phone had already changed time zones. Perfect. I set my alarms for the morning- 8 am, so I had time to eat and cram before my test- and went to sleep.

When I woke up, 2 things happened. First, I had 2 text messages. From the UCSD Emergency alert number. GREAT, I thought. The dreaded, terrible, dangerous earthquake I’ve been learning about for the last 2 months finally hit. At least I wasn’t there for it, but HOW is everyone back home!?!?!?! I began to panic. I was especially worried about my Syd and Michelle—we have some earthquake history from our freshman year suite…and let’s just say I ran out of my room during earthquakes to check on the two of them! WAIT. A thought crossed my mind. I should PROBABLY read the text message before jumping to this pretty big conclusion. “VIEW MESSAGE.” Waited, waited, my phone is so slowwwwww, waited…”UCSD Emergency Alert: Campus wide power outage…….”…..Oh. Whew. Okay. In those few seconds after I woke up, and before I saw the actual message, SO many worried thoughts crossed my mind! Whew. Comprehend. Calm down, Julia.

…Wait, huh? 8:02 am is what my phone read. 6:59 am is what my alarm clock read. CON-FU-SION. I knew they were a few minutes apart…but…not an hour. As if I wasn’t already thrown off enough from the emergency alerts…and now…what time WAS it? By this time I had so much adrenaline running through my body from my wake-up texts that there was no way I could go back to sleep. I checked my other clocks and yep, it was definitely 6:59 am. Well, I decided to go up to breakfast early and get an extra head start on the morning cramming. Now that I look back, I’m glad that happened- it gave me a lot more time to study!

In Global Studies, a music professor did a presentation that was really fun. We got to listen to samples of a bunch of music for it! Then a Religious Studies professor spoke about Islam, and told us at the end that we now knew more about the Islamic religion than about 80% of Americans…and I believe it. To be honest, I was completely clueless about Islam and Muslims before I came on this voyage, and—as embarrassing to admit as this is—I always got confused what to call people who associated with that religion. I mixed up when to use the terms Islamic and Muslim. Well, I guess that’s one thing I learned! I’ve really learned so much, starting from when I was in Turkey. Being there when Ramadan started was so interesting and such a great experience, and having a Muslim tour guide also was very helpful since he was able to answer all of our questions. It was a very interesting lecture, but the microphone was very loud so by the end I had a pounding headache right in my temples.

It was time to work out, so I changed and headed up. I did elliptical then stairmaster, then Ab Ripper X. :) As usual, we got all kinds of comments from people walking by. That’s what you get when you do a workout video in the widened part of a cabin hallway! Oh, and I want to take a second to thank Sydney Adler for giving me that techno (that we usually don’t like) mix that was amazing for working out! 15 minutes straight, and time flew by. On repeat, I was able to go for 45 minutes in the gym without even realizing I was tired!

(Oh, during Global Studies I forgot to mention I was multi-tasking. I gave my pictures to the girls finally last night, and finally had room to get theirs! So in class, I got some of their pictures and filled my hard drive up…again…which is why prior to right NOW (10:14 pm) I was just going through pictures with a strict eye deleting all pictures that aren’t necessary. It was fun seeing pictures of us I hadn’t seen before!)

THEN…here comes the good part…I went to dinner and the first thing I saw was apple salad. Apple salad?! That sounded amazing! We’ve never had anything like that before! Then I went to the entrée table and there was STEAK…that looked good…and rumor had it that it tasted good tonight! I indulged a bit, on both the apple salad and steak. It’s been too long since I’ve had good steak! And GUESS what I got the last of (before it ran out)?? A1 STEAK SAUCE….yessssss! I’m sorry if I sound like a man right now, but a girl’s gotta have her A1! It. Was. Amazing. AMAZING! Delicious. And I didn’t even care TOO much about the fact that my steak was a little alive still (Dad…I ate meat that was medium-dark pink!). Okay, not alive…but to me! Needless to say, that was an amazing dinner and I think I’m going to dream about A1 tonight. Wow, and I apologize for really sounding like a man in this little blurb!

Since dinner, it’s been a lazy night. I have a couple things to work on, and I’ve been going through and deleting unnecessary pictures to make room for new ones…as I already said. I’m listening to nice relaxing music and thinking about possibly drifting off to sleep soon… :)