Thanksgiving Trip

Had a nice Thanksgiving trip to San Francisco, California! This was a weeklong trip starting on Monday, and originally to end on Friday, but actually ended Saturday.

I arrived in SF Monday afternoon and Debby came to pick me up. We took the BART and other means of public transportation to her place. I really got to see SF up close. I was surprised at how "bian" or squat the houses are...and most of them are old AND cost up to 600-800K! Ridiculously amazing!

Already this was looking to be a trip of several things 1) I was going to be stuffed with a ridiculous amount of food 2) I was in for the cold. SF is actually warmer than Durham, but the ocean breeze is chilly, and the apartment didn't have heat! Dinner was at Hotei's, a Japanese restaurant. I was stuffed.

Tuesday I had an opportunity to visit Debby's sister's kindergarten. She's teaching at an immersion program kindergarten. So the kids are multiracial, but the class is entirely taught in Chinese! Not a word of English is allowed by the teacher. It's amazing to see how these kids are learning. Several of them are really picking up the language. In fact, only one child comes from a Chinese speaking family. I was really impressed.

In the afternoon met up with Al at Berkeley and got to eat Top Dogs which were really juicy hot dogs. I met several of Al's history pals, and I really liked the vibrant intellectual atmosphere. We also saw some people protesting in the main square, voicing their opinions about a recent Taser scandal at UCLA. Somehow I always feel Duke doesn't have this kind of toss ideas in the air vibrancy...

Then we left for Uncle's in San Jose, taking the BART to get there. Immediately went to watch Jia's basketball game. Unfortunately, they lost this one as the other team was significantly better coached.

Wednesday was pretty laid back. Al and I drove to eat Tainan delicacies and picked Jia up from school. We shopped around Santana Row, spending most of our time at Borders looking at comic books. Then we met up with Nancy and Abao. Abao seems to be having a rough time in law school, but he's as usual. I think he's going to be a pretty good lawyer.

Thursday I returned to SF early to join Debby to do some volunteer work. It was an extremely rewarding experience. She was involved with stuffing the turkey, and I got sectioned to do meal preparations. So I spent a lot of the morning heating the turkey, shipping it from place to place, and sometimes stripping turkey from the drumstick. Everyone there was having a good and happy time, because we knew we were helping others. Basically, there was enough food prepared and packed to serve roughly 4000 people. This was really a wonderful experience.

Then came our own dinner at Debby's sister's. There was soooo much food. We played some poker afterwards, and I must say, Debby's pretty good at it.

Friday was time to leave, but unfortunately, I remembered the time wrong and so we missed our flight. So we had to get booked for a later flight. That turned out to work quite nicely, since we ended up doing some shopping. I got some pants at about 20 bucks a piece!

All in all, a very good trip