Great American Saturday

Saturday, June 9.

10:00am.
The adventure today began at California's Great America theme park! There were a bunch of EP that went: me, Lucy, Ishwarya, Ramya, Xunjie, Jingyou, Liam, Jarvis, Sean, Kojo, Lauren, Sarah, Julie, Erica and some others. Thanks to Liam for organizing it all! Since the group was so large, it didn't seem practical to travel all together, and everyone broke off into different groups. I am not the biggest fan of roller coasters, so I spent most of the day with Ramya, Xunjie, and Jingyou. FYI, most of the pictures in the post were taken by Xunjie. :)

The first ride we went on was called the Celebration Swings. This one wasn't very intense. All the ride did was swing the seats in a circle. It was actually kinda fun! Reminded me of swinging when I was a little kid. lol

Ramya was ready to go!

Google keeps us well fed at all times of the day, so we went and checked out the food court area. Everything was so expensive, but we caved and shared some curly fries.

Me, Ramya, cute little duck, Jingyou :P

Ok, so now it was time to get on some rides that weren't too scary. We went and got in the line for Tiki Twirl. It is another ride that involved some spinning - its kinda hard to explain though. As we got closer to the front of the line, they closed the ride. :( We were sad that we didn't get to ride it, and figured we would just go back and check if it opened up later. Instead, we took pictures with the Tiki next to the ride!

So cute!

After the Tiki Twirl disappointment, we found ourselves in the line for Psycho Mouse. This one was actually marked as a level 4 "high thrill" ride, so we were proud of ourselves for riding it. I actually thought it was fun! I think Xunjie thought it was really scary. lol Next, we went on Centrifuge which is similar to the spinning teacups. Ramya and I had our own cars, while Xunjie and Jingyou shared one. There was so much spinning on this ride, that of course I slid to the outer edge of the seat because of the centripetal force (or some other physics term) - as did everyone else. It was so hilarious watching Xunjie and Jingyou's car, because in the end they were literally on top of each other from all of the force!

Centrifuge

We then met up at the food court with the rest of the group for some more overpriced food. 

After looking at the map for a while, the decision was made to go to a magic show! I'm not sure what we were expecting, but we should have known to have low expectations since it was in the "Kidzville" part of the park. As we walked to Kidzville, a High School Musical song came on and we found out that Jarvis knows all of the dance moves to that song. It was awesome! Anyways, we got to the magic show about 15 minutes early, and the stage looked really cute. As the start time came closer, we noticed that the audience was filling up WITH KIDS (and of course their parents). I felt like I was 5 years old! Oh well, how bad could it be. Pretty darn bad. hahaha I think the little kids really enjoyed it, but I think we all wanted to gouge our eyes out. And maybe we should have left after we realized the "tricks" weren't going to knock our socks off, but I think we were, or at least I was, hoping that it would get better. We took pictures of it anyway... haha

Excited for magic show to start!

Magician...

After that wonderful magic show, we headed over to the Action Theater where they were showing a cute little Spongebob animation. Spongebob had to stop Plankton from stealing the secret Krabby Patty recipe (just like all of the other episodes). It was essentially a movie theater, but the seats had seat belts - thats an indicator of how much "action" there was going to be on this ride. The seat mostly just tilted forward, backward, and some side to side. It was cute! Once that was over, we walked around some more and signed up for karaoke! They jotted down our team name: Googlers. Not very original, I know. Then they drew 6 team names, and ours wasn't one of them. Sad day. We were gonna have so much fun singing to one of Justin Bieber's songs. Oh well...

We were very focused on choosing a song

We went on another ride called Whitewater Falls. It was a water ride, and luckily we didn't get too soaked. It was refreshing since it was kind of hot outside. Actually, now that I think about it, it was a really nice day!

yay, us!

3:30pm.

The plan was to play Ultimate at 4pm. A small group of us left Great America, while the others continued to feed their thrill-seeking, adrenaline-filled Great America experience. When I got back to the apartment I was surprised to find Brenda chillin' at the kitchen table watching something on her computer (probably a Korean drama). We chatted for a while, spilling all of the details from our day. That's always fun! 

4:30pm.

A little bit late, but I finally arrived at Moitozo Park where we play Ultimate. It only takes a few minutes to walk there, so it is very convenient. It was a little bit breezy, but it didn't stop us from playing Ultimate for a couple of hours! :) It was so much fun, but I still miss throwing the disc around with Michael, and the YWiC girls (Jen, Janie, Alyssa, Nicole, and Steph). I left my frisbee with the Google Chrome logo on it with them - I know it is in good hands. They are all gonna be pros by the time I get back home! :P

7:00pm.
I got home, but nobody was there. :( Brenda had gone out with a friend, and Lucy and Ishwarya went to the the mall after Great America. I had been complaining to Brenda that I needed some sort of thumb tack or something to hang my keys on by the door, and something had to be done about our badge situation (all of our badges were in a little basket and so it made it easy to forget them in the morning).

8:00pm.
My solution? A trip to target! I was at Target for a while, and besides thumb tacks, notecards, stickers, and a notebook, I can't remember what I bought. As soon as I got home I started working on my little "project". By the time I finished my project, Lucy and Ishwarya were already home. Yay! We watched Gossip Girl for the rest of the night. :)

Ishwarya!! Where is your badge? :(

12:00am.
Sleep. 


"If tragedy elicits our compassion, comedy appeals to our self-interest. The former confronts life's failures with noble fortitude, the latter seeks to circumvent them with shrewd nonchalance. The one leaves us momentarily in a mood of resignation, the other in a condition of euphoria." - Harry Levin