Visit to San Francisco

So (as promised) here is the giant update for everything that took place when I went to get my VISA. It was a great week and I really wish that it could have lasted longer, especially since it was raining when I got back to Korea...

Wednesday:
Flew from Korea back to the states. The flight out left at 8am Korean time and I got in at 10am Pacific time ... the same day (with a 6 hour layover in Japan). Crossed a few timezones... I didn't do a whole lot Weds: Visited the Korean Consulate to drop my stuff off, meandered around the city some, and worked to get adjusted to that timezone. Thankfully Denny's is open 24 hours because I swung down to grab food around 1am that night. I really wanted an omlette.

Thursday:
Slept in (which was awesome) and checked out the shopping area near my hotel. There was a ton of stuff: shops, markets, etc around so there was a lot to do. I had a few things that I wanted to pick up, and I was able to find them with little problem. Thursday night I met up with Frances (met via craigslist) to go to a Giants' game. It was a good game, we had a great time and really got along, and AT&T was a beautiful park (on par with PNC park, in Pittsburgh) and looked even better from our seats. After the game we checked out the carnival that they had going on next to the stadium.

Friday:
Checked out parts of downtown, some scenery and the piers (mostly Pier 39, well known shopping center) with Frances. We contemplated going to the game, but decided to continue going down the Warf until we got to Ghirardelli square. Only later that night did we realize that Sanchez (3-8, and just back up from the minors) threw a no-hitter and we had missed it. I took several pictures and all of them should be loaded up sometime this weekend. I'll probably put them into Photobucket again and try to comment on each picture. Its just easier than posting here.

Saturday/Sunday:
Traveled down to Phoenix to meet up with Amanda to see her since I was so close (relative to PGH or Korea). It had been quite a while since we hung out so it was great to get to meet up and see how she was doing. I also got to meet a lot of cool Teach for America (TFA) teachers too. It was really interesting to get a "behind the scenes" look at all of the work that they do, even if in the end it reaffirmed my decision to not be a teacher. I just don't know if I could put that kind of time and effort into creating lessons and figuring out what to teach, and how to teach it. However, I still think that I could teach a high school science, but I would be a lot better suited to teaching some kind of collegiate level math (calculus) or science (physics or chem). Maybe someday in the future, I've still got a lot of time to do different things in my life.

Monday/Tuesday:
Flew back into San Francisco, did a little more shopping, picked up my VISA, watched parts of the home run derby and all star game. Also visited Berkley, parts of Cal's campus, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Golden Gate Bridge park. Pretty packed two days, but it was a lot of fun and I have a lot of great memories from the cities. Same as above, look for more comments in the photos because it will be easier to explain there.

Wednesday/Thursday:
Checked out of the hotel and flew back to Korea. Left the SF airport at 1:30pm Wednesday got into Korea at 9pm Thursday... timezones again.

All in all it was a great trip. I really liked San Francisco a lot more than I thought that I would. I was expecting to see the city and take in a few sights while I was there, but I honestly really loved the city and the people that were in it. Everything was always very interesting and varied which made it a good experience. It has its own kind of personality and charm (much like Pittsburgh) so I really could see myself living there at some point and time.

The weather during the trip was great SF was about 65-70 during the day and 50 at night (sunny every day), Arizona was up to 118 during the day and down around 90 at night. They say that its a dry heat, but it still feels really hot all the time. In my opinion, Phoenix was a great place to visit (and much larger than I was thinking it would be) but I don't know if I could live there, its just too warm for me.

If you want to know more about any part of the trip shoot me an email and I'll fill you in, or add another blog post.