International Graduate Student Ministry – Gracepoint Berkeley

Taking advantage of the fact that school hasn’t started yet, we headed out to the City after Friday Forum at the YWCA. What would winter be without some winter activities like ice-skating? We went to Yerba Buena Gardens’ ice skating rink and hit the ice, literally. Some of us ended up with some bruises while others seemed pretty comfortable on the ice and even tried to skate backwards. After some time on the ice, we went to get some ice cold milkshakes and deep fried yumminess at Mel’s Diner. Mmmm.

For the third part of the Connect series, we filled up  110 Barrows Hall, the room we will use for the rest of the semester. I was personally very surprised to see the hallway outside filled with people, pizza, and conversation- and all before 6:30pm. We started by watching our first video about Peter and the lab experiment and then an awesome video about a grad students fluctuating self-worth as he interacts and compares himself with the people around him. Dr. Chul Kim gave a message along the same lines about how we view people in our lives.  You can listen to it here:

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It was a really fun one-day tour around San Francisco on Monday (8/10) with the new friends that we have met through dinners and airport pickups. The weather was perfect. Although the trip was not exhaustive in terms of the number of sites that we visited, We hit several famous spots including Fisherman’s Wharf (and had clam chowder for lunch), Lombard Street (and the flowers were blooming), Golden Gate Bridge, and Golden Gate Park.

Wedmod and I took our small groups of international graduate students for a fun one-day outing in San Francisco on July 3rd. We started the day hiking the Land’s End Trail next the Legion of Honor museum. After the hike, we drove down Clement and spotted a small Chinese dim sum place. We were placed at the back table with a nice man-made waterfall view. Dong was very happy with seating arrangement as he got to enjoy the man-made view. After that, we headed out to the Ocean Beach to play soccer and football. While I love playing football, I believe soccer is a better sport. We wrapped up the day with beach bonfire and Canton-style BBQ over the fire. We also had clam chowder, which really hit the spot in the chilly wind! Check out the pictures.

Before the semester started, we wanted to have an outing with everyone: so we went to San Francisco and the new California Academy of Sciences museum.  They have a very nice rain forest exhibit with poisonous frogs, lots of fish and the deepest coral reef aquarium in the country (I think), African penguin colony (and a fun feeding), and an albino alligator.  Sadly, the albino was getting medical treatment while we were there, so we missed it.  If you go, I highly recommend you skip the Swamp Talk and just go and watch the alligator(s).  They don’t move much!

It was a lot of fun as we divided into smaller groups in an attempt to see everything.  Chul’s group somehow got tickets to see the 3D bugs movie, which tracks the life of a few unfortunate insects trying to survive in a cruel world.  Others of us barely got into the Planetarium show, which took us on a journey through outer space.

We were all tired afterwards, and really hungry.  All we had beforehand was a nice Vietnamese sandwich, so we went to Banana Island in Daly City for some delicious Malaysian/Thai/Singaporean food.  Too bad our president Chin-Long had to miss the Malaysian food.  It was great!

Shufei wrote about their Doreimon cookie night, and I felt that we had to talk about what we did after Friday Forum.  2 weeks ago, Meowmeow and I took a smaller group of people out to Twin Peaks in San Francisco.  Twin Peaks has one of the best views of San Francisco… and for those of you who have never gone, the night view is even better.  (You will always see couples spending time there because its actually quite romantic)  We got there right before the rain started, so we had a fogless, gorgeous view of the city.  We stayed there quite a long time actually.  So long that we all got cold and wet because the view was so great.

We then headed out to Golden Island Cafe in the Sunset district for some tasty Cantonese desserts like sago with canaloupe juice, topped with mixed fruit…  or hot glass jelly and coconut milk…  or my personal favorite: mango sago.  Everyone agreed that the desserts were great.  So next time you are out in San Francisco and want to find a tasty treat, try Golden Island.  Or just make sure to come along with us next time!

San Francisco is fun place to be when you get to hang out with friends together. On Saturday, we took some of our new friends, who just came from China, to the City. We took two minivans with 13 people. We hit many tourist areas: Twin Peaks, Golden Gate Park, Legion of Honor, Golden Gate Bridge, Lombard Street, and Fisherman’s Wharf. It was a day of beautiful weather: sunny day, mild temperature, except a little bit windy in the wharf. We ended our trip in the Fisherman’s Wharf by enjoying a bowl of clam chowder in a bread bowl for dinner. Throughout the trip, we got to know one another better by chatting away. Check out the photo album for this event to share a little bit of our fun time together. If you are new to the Bay Area and want to make some new friends in ISM, please contact us. We’d love to make new friends and hang out in San Francisco.