Birth of a New Banner Photo and an Eventful Night

Yesterday night was one productive, eventful night to be remembered. It was the long-await ILC dinner, joint between the Vanderbilt and UChicago groups. As our ILC group gathered at the BART station waiting for the last few people to show up, I met my UChicago chaperone, Ms. Tori Sciacca, for the first time! An English teacher at Richmond High School, Ms. Sciacca gives off the impression of an extremely fun and smart person, and I am so excited to have her chaperoning our trip to Chicago. (I am obviously not biased just because she is an English teacher and I can't wait to talk about literature and books and that good stuff with her, of course not.) Unfortunately, she and I did not have many opportunities to talk afterward, but I did find out that she is friends with my current English teacher, which is super cool. 

Once everyone is gathered, Don handed out Clipper cards to everyone, and we were off to ride the glorious BART. On the BART, Jahnvi, Raqueeb, Cameron, and I formed our own little BART squad, and it was really nice getting to know Cameron (Can I call you Cammie?), who is part of the Vanderbilt cohort. We talked about everything from prom to sports, and we even got Raqueeb to divulge his secrets about how he styles his hair, so all in all, I considered it a success for team bonding. 

A beautiful salad. Simply beautiful.

We got off the BART and walked about five to ten minutes to the restaurant. Once there, everyone squished into this tiny reception area, and there was not really room to move around. I talked to a few parents and made my introduction to Alice Johnson, a senior from El Cerrito who has the participated in the UChicago program last summer and is going to be attending UChicago this fall. I died a little inside after my introduction,  though, because I was so awkward and tripped over my own words. It was quite embarrassing. However, I was given a chance to redeem myself when she was seated to my left at our assigned seating. I took this chance to talk more to Alice throughout the night, and I would like to think that by the end of the dinner, she and I have become friends. 

Eduardo Moreno talking to Jahnvi.

Joining us at our table also was Eduardo Moreno, a UChicago alumni from 2011. Eduardo was a bit of a more reserved person, especially compared to the other UChicago alumni, Christopher Dewing, but he was still very nice and answered all of my and Jahnvi's numerous questions readily. His answers are always insightful and thoughtful, which I appreciated, and, coupled with Alice's frequent inputs as well, I gained a lot of useful information about UChicago from talking with him. I also found out he majored in philosophy, and it was very fun and interesting to get to know him as a person as well.  

The rest of the dinner passed by very quickly. Soon enough, Don gathered all the ILCers and the alumni outside to take photos. The Vanderbilt group went first, so as we (the Chicago cohort) waited, we had the chance to talk with the other Chicago alumni that we hadn't talked to yet. Jahnvi and I talked to Christopher, who is very open and cheerful. He is from New Jersey, and Jahnvi thought his accent was a New Jersey accent, which, as it turned out, was not, but it was a fair guess. 

We took multiple photos and surprisingly, all of them turned out really good. I'm super happy about that because this time I did not ruin the pictures by closing my eyes. I especially loved the group photo we took with the banner because it just looked super professional to me. After those photos, the Chicago cohort also took some extra photos for the banner picture on our blog. We couldn't stop laughing so there were a couple ones where we messed up, but I think we still took some pretty good pictures to work with. 

Look at us! Aren't we cool?

After the dinner, we embarked on the journey home through BART once again. I talked some more with other people, but I was extremely tired by then and was about to fall asleep while standing up inside BART. It was well worth it, however. Over the course of this dinner, I was given the opportunity to meet many people (who came a long way and gave up an entire evening just to come talk to us), and I was able to learn so much from the experiences and insights that they so graciously shared with everyone.