Davis and Berkeley

Last weekend, I went to both Davis and Berkeley. Friday to Sunday, I was at UC Davis for a MUN Conference. Then Sunday afternoon, my parents picked me up from Davis and we went down to Berkeley, where my cousin was graduating on Monday. Those 4 days away from home were a breather. I was able to relax and not worry about a lot of things. And getting to see the campus and towns around UC Davis and UC Berkeley gave me a first impression of the school.

We totally dominated the MUN Conference at UC Davis. Our school, Cerritos High School MUN, won the best school delegation award as 37 delegates represented various countries. That award was the goal for us going into the conference. We won many commendations and outstanding awards and one gavel. In addition, we won a lot of research awards. I won a research award for my position papers. My committee was WTO and my topics were Global Financial Crisis Impacts on Multilateral Trade and Effects of Trade Policies on the Environment. In committee, we had 7 Cerritos delegates so we backed each other up. The chairs did not care about us at all whatsoever the first day as our chair was tracking a San Francisco Giants baseball game and was on Facebook. He called this one delegate like 5 times in the first session alone! I made moderated caucus speeches and comments but wasn’t really that aggressive. Saturday was the worst day. We had 3 sessions of committee, totaling about 9 hours. Sunday was much better as we only had a 3 1/2 session committee to close out debate.

Besides being in committee, I got to see what the city of Davis is like. When we arrived at our fancy Hyatt Hotel, I thought were in the middle of nowhere as all I saw was farmland. UC Davis has the largest square area of all the UC’s. Our hotel, Hyatt Place, was really nice. It was built last year so everything was new. In our room, we had a HDTV, a couch, granite marble counter tops, new restroom, and free Wi-Fi. The hotel also provided us with free continental breakfast that was plentiful and abundant. Since we had to eat four meals by ourselves around Downtown Davis, I went to restaurants that were delicious and had high reviews. Friday night, I dined with two other people had “Sophia’s Thai Kitchen.” We had a 30 minute wait but it was worth it. It was the best Thai food I have ever eaten. I ordered chicken beef and spinach with peanut sauce and it was tasty. Saturday night, I ate with about 10 people at “Crepeville”. I ordered seafood alfredo along with chocolate crepes desert. Those were nice too. For Saturday and Sunday lunch, I just ate it with a few buddies at this Japanese restaurant and Korean Restaurant since we had limited time. Man Downtown Davis is so small and so easy to walk around. All the streets are straightforward. I have Downtown Davis memorized in my head. At night as we were walking back to the hotel, Mr. Mustard led us in walking on the riverwalk nature trail. It was pitch black but we were able to find our way back to the hotel as the girls were all scared and freaked out. It was actually quite fun. Davis is a nice school and a nice town. My impression changed a lot ever since we arrived on Friday and I saw all the farmland. 

Sunday afternoon, my parents picked me up from Davis after awards ceremony and we headed down to Berkeley. I accomplished a lot in the one night I stayed there. Sunday night, I stayed at a hostel. Now the word hostel, I had never heard that word until this year in Spanish class when it was a vocab word but never quite understood what it was. So here’s what a hostel is: It’s basically a house where they rent out rooms for the night. The bathroom is shared by all the people who are staying at the hostel. I had a pretty good night sleep Sunday night. It was a cool experience. Monday morning, I dined at the “Cal Dining Hall”. That is the place where Berkeley students eat their meals. My graduating cousin got us in and it was a pretty cool. The dining hall serves all kinds of meals and it is “all you can eat.” After breakfast, we went on a campus tour of UC Berkeley. We walked around the campus and saw a few important and meaningful buildings, such as the chancellor’s office and the library and the science building. Berkeley gave me the feel of those east coast colleges. Its buildings seemed really old but yet unique. That big tower was cool. After our tour of Berkeley, it started raining so we took shelter in the student store, where I bought a Cal T-shirt. In the afternoon, it was graduation time for my cousin. Her department, sociology, had their graduation at the Zellerbach Hall, where Dali Lama, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton spoke before. My cousin is so special. She was a valedictorian when she graduated Cerritos 4 years ago and she graduated in the honors program. She was a honorable mention for this one award. There were many speakers giving the commencement speech. They each spoke about how sociology matters to us. Some were funny, others were boring. The commencement ceremony was amazing and impressive by the way it was run. My cousin is so awesome. Afterwards, we took a lot of pictures with her and then went home. Got back home Tuesday morning at 12:30 AM.

Congratulations Annie on graduating from Berkeley! I had lots of fun. It was a great 4-days up in Northern California.