Making my way to the Irish pub at the corner of the street, I skipped from one sidewalk to another, trying my best to dodge puddles on the floor and cars passing by. I immediately found our table and gave everyone hugs, besos, and handshakes accordingly. It was nice to see familiar faces again; the last I've seen most of them was the day we threw our "fake" diplomas in the air during graduation last year. After a round or two of drinks and answering questions ranging from the how are yous to what are you doing heres to where are you headed tos, we left the bar, crammed ourselves inside the car, and drove across town in search for a place to eat.
It was an exciting thing to be out and about in a new area with a new crowd. We all travelled from different parts of California—through planes, trains, and automobiles, that sort of thing—to be in San Fo for the weekend. Lianne was from San Jose; Karsie, Oakland; Kevin, Fremont; Em, Los Angeles; and Anton, Santa Clara.
Lianne, the one I'm closest to of the bunch and who planted this idea of a get-together in the first place, spent a semester in University of San Francisco as an exchange student and thus had a few suggestions for dining spaces. We settled for the pizza parlor which served tasty yet affordable meals and is often frequented by students. There we had to wait for a good forty-five minutes to be seated, met up with Lianne's USF buddy Christine, and continued with our discussions—which now moved on to US politics and gender issues.
Unfortunately, later on I had to be the party-pooper, being a month away from turning twenty-one and all, unable to get inside clubs which everyone would've wanted to check out. I'm glad the gang had been quite understanding, though. Instead we ended up having our own small party in this Spanish-themed bar and restaurant in bohemian Haight-Ashbury. Cha-cha music and laughter filled the dark room, drowning with it the clanking of our sangria-filled glasses and beer bottles as we kept toasting to the night and the rest of our lives.
Of course all throughout the evening, we had our fair share of bloopers while on the road: ducking at the backseat whenever we encounter cop cars, missing the right street despite religiously following instructions, and circling residential and commercial blocks just to find a parking spot. Meanwhile, we squeezed in a few sightseeing in between those wrong turns. Still, being invited to a stranger's garage party and actually showing up gets the award for most random thing to ever happen on a night in San Francisco, hands down.
I obviously had to bail out from the party, though a slight part of me was curious what it would be like; I was tired from the full day of touring and catching up. And at some point it hit me: I have finally lived through a page ripped from one too many David Levithan novels with just one night. And you know what, the bookworm and adventurer in me couldn't be any happier. Thanks for the memories, friends and San Francisco!
I'm slowly retracing all that's left of my US adventures in the latter part of last year. Hoping I get to finish it soon because I'm itching to update you with real-time stories. In the meantime, I made a Facebook page for this little blog of mine for notification purposes or something like that. Kindly hit "Like" on that one. How about you, what have you guys been up to? I seem to have missed out on a lot! Much love from home.
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