The Tough Week

This week turned out to be one of the busiest weeks of college so far. I had everything from tests to quizzes to homework. I did a lot of stuff but none of that involved having fun. I went from Monday to Thursday without doing any athletic activities or hanging out with any friends. Going home last weekend and doing nothing over the weekend was fun but really messed up my schedule. Usually I do all my homework over the weekend but that weekend I spent the whole time hanging out with friends or spent the time watching television as football was on all weekend. Since I was home I wanted to relax and not do anything. I learnt my lesson, from this experience, not doing any work only meant that I would have no fun for the next four days, and this was really bothering me as I love to do stuff outside my dorm and not having to do work all the time.

On Thursday night once I was done with all my work I decided to go out for a walk around campus. Even though I was freezing cold I really enjoyed my walk since I got to go out of my dorm, which felt like a prison cell by the time I found my way out of it. I stayed out till about three am that morning since I wasn’t tired and didn’t feel like sleeping. This late night was also supported by the fact that I didn’t have class the next day till one thirty. I came back and watched all the television shows that I had missed due to all the work I had to do in the past few days. I stayed awake till about five that morning just watching shows on my computer.

The next day I woke up at around twelve and then went to eat and then went to class which was probably the lowest point of my day and it was an interesting class too. That shows how good my day turned out to be. After class I had a Frisbee game which turned out to be an awesome game in which I had about four catches that were for scores, which included the game winner. I also got speared by the other teams’ player but it was okay since we were winning and therefore easier to take in.

After the game my friends and I decided to get some food since we had burnt all those calories running up and down the field. We all got three boxes of pizza from west end and before you knew it they were all gone. After this we went and watched the Yankee game which turned out to be an awesome game since the Yankees won and Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter continued their amazing post season.

Then came Saturday, which turned out to another day which included some homework, some football, some baseball and some partying. The day started with me doing homework for about three hours and then I went and got some food. After this I watched college football for about 5 hours and then the Yankee game for about another five hours since it turned out to be an amazing game, with the game going into extra inning with Alex Rodriguez tying it in the ninth with a home run. At that point I exploded out of my chair and from that point to the end of the game I was basically jumping up and down with every play. Then I went to DX with my friends and got some food since we were starving after sitting and watching the games for about ten hours straight.

Then came Sunday and I had to write this blog post and it took about an hour while watching football of course. This weekend I had fun and did my work at the same time which made it a good weekend and now I am ready to go back to class this Monday since I am refreshed from the fun over the weekend.

Six Flags...It's Playtime

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HRfe5gxKVI

Ever been to six flags; well then you have heard and seen the commercials on television promoting the park. They use an old and crusty person to promote their park. The commercial starts by showing people working around the house and getting done with all their chores. This town is supposed to full of hard working people, and then this bus comes out of nowhere and this old guy gets them all to leave everything they are doing and go with him to six flags. There are many things in this commercial that do not make sense with what the advertisement is trying to promote.

First thing that doesn’t make sense is that everyone is working outside on such a nice day. You would expect some of the people to be having fun on this nice day, but no, they are all hard at work like the advertisement says in the beginning. Even the children are hard at work which is even harder to believe especially since the sun is out and it’s a beautiful day.

After you get over the fact that everyone in that neighborhood was out work at the same time and on a beautiful day, then comes the part with the bus coming down the road. Now this bus is not close to being able to fit everyone in that neighborhood but somehow it does and they all end up going to six flags with this strange old guy, who I will talk about in a little bit. I thought there was a rule that said that you’re not allowed to talk to strangers. I guess that rule doesn’t apply when it comes to old people.

The old man then steps out of the bus and speakers appear out of nowhere, especially since there is no one in the bus, but I guess you can explain that by saying that he pressed the button for the speakers before he came out. That’s not the part that bothers me. The old man then starts dancing and jumping up and down like a fifteen year old teenager. The old man then ends up on top of the bus dancing which is the most shocking part of the commercial, as the old man would have to be really fit in order to get up there. There is no way that a person that old could possibly dance or even move that fast and dance that well at that age. Then they all trust the old man to drive the huge bus full kids and parents all the way six flags, and I know there are rules against that. The old then goes on all the gives which I think there are some rules against; if not there should be rules against that. This totally makes the advertisement seem stupid and make no sense especially since six flags is supposed to be for kids and young adults. Not for old, eighty year old grandparents.

At this point I realized that the point of the commercial might be for older people, and making them realize that six flags are for them too. By having an old man having so much fun at six flags attracts old and young people to come to six flags. They already know that they are going to get the young kids to come to six flags no matter how much they advertise, but the old people need some convincing, as to why they should come to six flags.

The old man is the perfect person to use in this case. It serves the ultimate purpose for the commercial. Taking the extreme for the situation can only help convince their audience of what they are trying to put forward. Picking the old man instead of a random middle aged male was an excellent idea, since people would actually pay attention to an old man dancing and having fun at six flags than a kid or a middle aged man having fun at six flags.

The music is also a great and catchy which helps them get the viewer to pay attention and therefore see the old man and get involved in the commercial itself by connecting their lives to it.

The Surprise!!

Just to change things up, instead of talking about how the football game went this weekend and how V Tech won again, I am going to tell you my plan for next weekend and how I am planning on going home.

This coming weekend is fall break for us, and only a few days ago I wasn’t planning on doing anything the whole weekend but watch the football game and do homework, maybe play some sports while I am at it. This all changed when my friends and I decided to go back home for fall break and surprise our parents by just showing up at the door step.

This plan came up since we would not be able to go home till thanksgiving if we didn’t go home this coming weekend. We are planning leaving on Thursday night after all of us are done with our classes. We plan on getting there at about 10 at night. I can’t wait to see the reaction of my parent when they see me standing at the doorstep. I am really hoping that my mom freaks out when she sees be standing at the door since she hasn’t seen me in a while and she wasn’t expecting me at all.

I plan to go home and visit my school and also visit my friends at the University of Maryland in college park and in Baltimore County. Thursday night I just plan on spending time with my family and catching up on everything I have missed in the month and a half that I have been away from home. Since my parents have work the next day I will probably go hang out with my friends after I spend time with my friends.

The next day I plan on going back to my high school and visiting with some of the friends who are still in high school and also visiting my teachers and also my coaches who I haven’t seen in about 5 months. This should be an awesome time since I loved high school. Going back to my old school will be somewhat awkward since I don’t go there anymore and I was so used to going there.

After school I am going to go to the cross country team practice, and might even join them and do their work out. This would be awesome since I haven’t run on a team since I stopped going to high school. This was the most amazing time of my day when I was in high school since it would get me away from all the work and help me release all the stress that I have compiled throughout the whole day.

After this I plan to do back to my friends’ house and then have game night. Game night was invented when we were in the tenth grade. Game night is basically when we play board games till like two in the morning and watch sports center over and over again. The games include Balderdash, Scattergories, Apples to Apples, and Uno. It is a group of six of us just sitting in a room and having fun for hours.

On Saturday I plan on spending the whole day with my cousin and maybe going down to UMCP to visit my friends. I haven’t seen my friends in a month and a half and I was used to seeing them like every day, therefore I miss them so much. Over the summer we would spend at least 5 days a week together, and before that we would see each other in school all the time. The reunion should be amazing and apparently they have a party for me to go to since they are still in school and don’t have fall break till next week.

Finally on Sunday I plan on spending the day with my family and going to church we would probably eat breakfast together like we used to before I left for college. This was a family tradition, go to church every Sunday and then eat breakfast together.

Then will probably come the saddest part of the weekend when I have to leave. This is probably even worse for my mom since she is not used to me leaving home all the time, and not living there all the time. It was especially hard for her since I am so far away and can’t go home very often and they cannot visit me often either.

I will probably leave Maryland at about 4 with my friends, hopefully having had a good weekend and spend enough time with my friends and family. This trip will be good for me since I won’t miss my friends and home that much. At least not as much as much as I would if I didn’t go home now. I can’t wait for next weekend to get here.

Rain Rain Go Away....

It was game day once again and unlike all the other football games, it was pouring when I woke up in the morning and I had no tickets which was no surprise to me since I have not won a lottery yet to any of the football games at tech. This is why me and my friends decided to go scalping for tickets since it was Miami who was coming to play and they were ranked higher than us making it an interesting game to go to. We also decided that we weren’t going to pay more than thirty dollars for a ticket, and this was six of us trying to find 6 tickets for thirty dollars or less, which would probably seem impossible for a game of this caliber, but we still decided to try and see if we got lucky.

Before we actually went and started looking for cheap tickets, we decided to try and get some free food too. So we found a tail gate at the international student center and ate hotdogs and hamburgers there. Then at about 2:00 pm we started walking around in the rain trying to get people to sell us their tickets. We got many different responses from the many different people we encountered selling tickets. Some of them even cursed at us when we told them how much we were willing to pay for the tickets they were selling. Then we also got some sarcastic responses, which included “good luck”, with a chuckle added in. By this point we were soaked from all the day, but still had not found any tickets and there was only an hour left before the game.

Before we continued on our search for tickets we decided to take a break and have some fun by participating in some of the activities going on outside the stadium and win some free stuff at the same time. So we did the field goal challenge from state farm, won a foam finger which says VT on it. Then we signed up for something which I don’t even remember and got a free VT shirt out of it. So even if we didn’t get to go to the game, our trip around the stadium in the rain was successful as we had won some free stuff.

After having some fun with the random games outside, we continued our search for ticket and we had about half an hour left, almost time to give up and go back to our dorms. We started walking towards our dorms when we walked into these two girls who were selling their tickets for twenty dollars each and they had six tickets, exactly the amount we needed. At this point we are going crazy and buy the tickets. This is when we realize that we are soaked and would freeze to death if we went to the game soaked. This is when the mad dash back to the dorm began.

We met back in front of the stadium at 3:15 and were able to get into the stadium just in time to see the teams take the field. Then began our search for our seats, which was another adventure, as we had no idea where the seats were. Well eventually we found our seats, and started watching the game being out of breath from all the running.

The rains were pouring down now, and we were winning which made it easier to bare the cold and rain for almost 5 hours now. We decided to stay the whole time since we actually paid for the game tickets. By this time we were soaked, and could not feel anything, and there was still another quarter of football to go. By this point we were so cold that we couldn’t feel cold anymore. I am going to guess that hyperthermia was setting in, but we were enjoying ourselves and yelling our guts out in the process.

The game was over and we had officially turned into icicles, and I could barely walk down the stairs after the game since everything hurt when I tried to move. I still managed to somehow get back to my dorm and get into the shower, and unfreeze myself.

After this I went to my friend’s dorm and tried ordering pizza since we were really hungry but this didn’t work out since we would have to wait about two hours, so we just went to DX. After eating we went to a party and had a lot of fun there, since we had just won.

I got back to my dorm at about 2 am and then played some madden with my friends in the dorm. We were playing NCAA football and he played as Miami and I played as V Tech. The game ended with me winning and this was a suitable ending to this rainy day.

Long Week

This week was a very interesting week. It started at 7 am Monday morning with my alarm going off. This would signify the start of my long week of classes and tests. I only got four hours of sleep that night as I was out till 2 am the night before. I felt really exhausted when I woke up and did not feel like sitting through another boring engineering lecture in which you learn nothing, and then get homework on the stuff that you haven’t learned yet, and that was only that start of my long Monday which consisted of four classes of which two were math classes. This was going to be a fun day.

I barely got through Monday by being patient and almost sleeping through some of my classes, and then came Tuesday, when I had to go take my calculus test at the math emporium. This process took me about three hours. The worst part about this was that by the time I got back all the dining halls were closed, so I had to go eat at DX. This didn’t help since I was really hungry and needed more food. Luckily I had food in my room and that’s how I got through dinner and there was still homework left to do. That was only Tuesday, with still three more days of classes remaining, and another test to take; I knew this was going to be a long week.

Then came Wednesday, and this was another long day, with four classes, which again included two math classes. This was when I started wishing that the weekend would get here as soon as possible, but somehow I knew that would just make it seem even longer before it actually got here. So the day went by with me going to class and then coming back to my dorm and doing homework since there was nothing else to do. Later that I night I hung out with my friends playing pool at Squires. This was the highlight of my day, which speaks to how boring my day was.

Then came my easy days of the week, with only three classes in two days, I was really looking forward to having nothing to do once I got out of class, and not having to do any homework since all of it would be due next week. I also donated blood in between the two classes I had, this was a good break from all the work. I spent about two hours going through all the tests and screenings, before I could actually give blood. Then it took about five minutes to actually donate blood, but it was worth the wait since I got free food after I was done donating, and I would do anything for free food.

Then on Friday I just had one class and could sleep in since it wasn’t till 1:30. So after class I went to Christiansburg with my friends and hung out there for the rest of the day. This gave me time to get a break from school and going anything, even playing basketball, which I do like at least five times a week. When I got back I just went to sleep since it was one in the morning and I was really tired.

The next day I woke up to people yelling and music blasting, and that when I realized that I didn’t have a ticket to the football game. So I spent the day in my room watching the amazing football game, which had an awesome ending. The whole game I would hear the crowd from the stadium and then I would see the play on TV, and with every cheer from the crowd I knew that something good happened but wouldn’t actually know what happened till seven seconds later since there was a delay in the game broadcast. This kept the suspense somewhat up as I wouldn’t know if the cheers from the stadium were from Nebraska fans or from Tech fans. This was somewhat of an awesome experience since it was the first time I actually didn’t go to a game that I could hear from the outside.

Later that night I spent my time at a birthday party for one of my friends from high school. This was a lot of fun since I got to catch up with people that I had not seen in a year or two but was good friends with while they were attending high school with me. I returned home at about two in the morning but I wasn’t sleepy, so I spent my time walking around campus watching all the drunken people getting back home after their adventurous nights, and some of them even took the time to entertain me with their stories from the party they had just attended. This was especially fun as most of them would not even remember me the next day, and talking to me.

Finally came Sunday, I spent most of the day doing homework and typing this blog post. This was really annoying as I could not be out enjoying myself and watching football. hopefully once I’m done writing this blog post, I can enjoy the rest of my day, by either playing some basketball or watching some football like I planned on doing when my day began, but somehow I ended up typing this.

Are You Ready for Some Football!!

I woke up Saturday morning to the noise of cars strolling down the street, and people to excited for it to be any other regular Saturday. Then I realized that it was game day, and I was the one with no ticket to the game. The thing I didn’t know was that, there was a surprise awaiting me when I got out of bed to find my roommate still at his desk doing homework. That was just the beginning of what would be a wonderful and a very exciting day.

My roommate, James, who had a ticket to the game, was busy doing his Linear Algebra practice test, so I decided to ask him if why he wasn’t at the game. This is when I found out that I would have an opportunity to go to my first Virginia Tech game, and it happened to be the first home game of the season. My roommate had a test the next day, and therefore he wasn’t going to the game and offered me his ticket to the game. Me being really excited about the offer, I accepted at once, and then jumped out of my bed with only an hour before the game.

I ran down my hall to the bathroom and into the shower, and probably took the shortest shower since I have arrived at V Tech. I came back to my room and changed my clothes, and almost ran out of the room without brushing the teeth. It was almost one o’clock and I had had nothing to eat, but there was no time for me to go get food and get to the game in time. So I decided to grab a bag of chips and a bottle of water on my way to the game.

I got to the game and found out that you were not allowed to take in food or drinks, and therefore I was told to throw the food away and that when I knew that this was going to be a long day. I got into the huge stadium to the crowd going wild even before the game had started. I was starving and the food in the concession stands was really expensive. I decided to find where my friends so I could sit with them and enjoy the game. This turned out to be another grueling task as the stadium was packed and for some reason my friends were not answering their phones. So I basically had to guess where they were sitting, and I fortunately got a break for the first time the whole day.

So the game began and I was sitting next to all my friends who were at the game, still starving and really thirsty. The game started really slow and both teams weren’t doing much, and this made me even hungrier since I wasn’t really paying attention to the game. This is when I decided to make paper airplanes out of the booklets that were handed to us as we walked into the stadium. That was a fun activity while the teams were still getting used to each other, and no one was scoring yet. The air currents were perfect for the planes to go a long way, especially the ones that glide in the air. One of these almost made it to the field as there was a perfect air current that hit it as I let it fly.

The game got really exciting after this as Tech started scoring in bunches, and soon it turned into a blow out, and the paper airplane activity started again with many other people joining into the fun. The game was over and tech won by 42 points, that how much of a blow out it was, but it was worth going to as I really enjoyed myself.

After the game was over, my friends and I decided to go to get food from West End, and it was the most delicious meal I had in a long time, mostly because it we had won the game. After that I went to one of my friends’ birthday party, and this was a lot of fun and I was there till 3 in the morning. We played a lot of games and there was some drinking too, but the point was that it was a fun day and it was a good ending to the game with the party and everyone being in a good mood after the huge win over Marshall.

I cannot wait for the next few home games and hope to go to those and have the same amount of fun I did during our first game, but without all the rushing and turmoil.

A Week of College Life

I arrived at Virginia Tech to a long line of cars; I remember the day perfectly, like it just yesterday. A bright sunny day, with tons of people everywhere, and students just like me trying to move in. some people might describe this as chaos, but to me this meant freedom. Freedom from home, from parents, and from a restricted life with a schedule of everything I had to do. It meant that I no longer had to follow the tedious routine, of waking up when the sun was still on the horizon and having to ride the bus to school to find the different races of people divided into their little groups all along the narrow halls of the school. Then the classes began and it was the same teachers every single day and you sat in the same seat every day since teachers had assigned seating. Once school was done I would go to practice which would end with me lying on the track, exhausted and gasping for air, trying to capture every ounce that I can. Then I would get home to see my mom cooking and my sister coming to the door to annoy me, but that’s another story I won’t get into right now. Then I would get into the shower and enjoy my nice cold shower only to get out and find myself doing my tedious homework which would take up to one am in the morning. And so it would go, five days a week, seven months a year. This would all be gone the moment I stepped onto the campus of Virginia Tech. I was something that I was really looking forward to.

So getting back to my story, I arrived here to find a lot of new faces, and many different races. The new races part was not a new experience since my high school was a very diverse place, but seeing all these new faces was a little weird since I was used to seeing the same faces every day. Even though two of my friends were attending Virginia Tech and I knew people who were attending here from classes before mine, I still missed my friends. Those same faces now felt about 256 miles away, since most of them are attending school in Maryland. Suddenly I felt a sudden rush of sadness, I don’t know why I was feeling this way but it was happening and there was nothing I could do about it. Even though I really wanted to come here and get away from all those same faces that I saw every day, a part of me wished that I could do back and not have to go through the same process of finding and getting to know more new people in order to complete my friend circle again, like when I moved here from India.

The first day went by with me hanging out with my friends from high school and the new people they had met since they had been here a few days before I arrived, but that first night was a totally different story. I came into my dorm and there were people everywhere. I met a whole bunch of new people and they happened to be really friendly and I made a few new friends that first night here. This made me feel a little better and miss my friends from high school a little less, but this didn’t stop me from speaking to half of them that night.

The next few days was a lot of fun for me, since it was the weekend and there were many activities all around campus, I found myself going to most of them, not to meet new people, but to get free food. This didn’t stop me from socializing and meeting new people. I met people from all different places and I did all this while enjoying the delicious pizza in my mouth. These events helped me settle in and fell a little less home sick.

And then it was Monday. First day of classes and then came another anxiety attack, but this time it wasn’t that I was sad, but it was because I was nervous for all my new classes and I didn’t know what to expect from them. All these fears were erased by my first class of the day, which was Engineering Exploration, where we did basically nothing at all, since it was the first day of class. The whole class went by in a matter of minutes for me since I was enjoying not doing anything, but in fact the class was fifty minutes long. Then came the long five hour break, which was a very new idea for me since there were no breaks between classes in high school. I spent my break eating the delicious food here at Virginia Tech. I stuffed myself till I couldn’t stuff anymore, I was eating like I had never eaten before, it was like there was no tomorrow. I couldn’t tell if I was eating so much due to nervousness or deliciousness. All I knew was that I was eating.

The next few days were pretty exciting since I went through all my classes and my schedule got easier as the week went along. I figured my way around campus, even though I don’t know where half the stuff is yet. Walking from class to class felt like it took forever, since in high school it only took a mere two minutes to walk to class, but here it was like an average of eight minutes.

The week went by pretty fast and before I knew it was the weekend and I had enjoyed myself and had almost forgotten about my friends that I had left behind in Maryland. When I eventually got the time to sit back and look back at my whole week I realized that this was going to become another one of my cycles or routines. But in this case it would be different since I was actually having fun while I was in this routine of mine and this made me feel very eager for the weeks of school remaining before I could return home to see my parents and all my friends who I still miss dearly.