This is George Clooney's yearbook picture.

A summer of delicious food!

Because summer isn't summer without plenty of good meals and desserts so I made a giant post about all of the delicious things I got to eat x)

(Also I realize that this makes me look like a total fatty but I exercised and walked ten millions miles around FIU's campus! And some of it's homemade so I had to brag a LITTLE)

Apparently movie theaters have curly fries now...

Hummus?

Because my family has always gotten the Hershey's Pies from Burger King and now we could buy an ENTIRE freaking pie for ourselves

Legitimate hummus from our Jordan-ese neighbors!

IHOP at odd times of the night :)

Free slurpies on 7/11!

Jordan-ese rice, chicken and beef during Ramadan!

The most delicious potato soup known to man

AMAZING homemade chocolate chip cheesecake!

Homemade fruit tart!

Delicious Panera mac and cheese :)

Ramune soda!

Pancakes at odd times of the day...

Lots of cheesy pasta x)

I felt very American

Our demolished breakfast that I probably should have taken a before picture of...but it was homemade "jam", pancakes and eggs. We were teaching Suzanne how to cook!

Ice cream :D

Tower of caps

I know I shouldn't post all of this on the same day, but you have to understand how excited I got when I found out there was a Blogger app and I wouldn't have to email myself all the pictures from my phone, then download them, then make a post on blogger THEN upload them and wait 20 hours for my Internet to do the only thing in the world it's supposed to do.

SO, my last post for tonight, dedicated to the sophomores (now juniors, but whatever) that brought in a kajillion caps for me to count. So far, I've counted every box but the biggest and gotten 1500+ caps. So I thank you guys!

*UPDATE: 3500 caps!

Suzanne's farewell

In the first week of summer, my best friends and I parted ways. It sounds really dramatic and it kind of was. For the first time in 5/6 years, we wouldn't be able to spend summer together or hang out or be weird together or stay up till 5 talking on the phone. It felt very Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants-y.

Right after our last AICE exam on June 11th, Suzanne left to Virginia for her NASA program on Wednesday for the ENTIRE summer (she comes back August 11th, only 6 days to go!!).

I left for NJ/NY on Thursday so I was a little too excited to be properly realize. When Kailani left towards the end of June and Alyssa and I became pretty busy with actually being productive, I realized how much it sucked and also how much I'll miss them for college.

2 out of 4 at a racing track for Alyssa's birthday

The 5 of us! (and a new boyfriend)

Just like old times (also this is Suzanne's super fancy neighborhood)

She's probably the weirdest

The official last time all of us were together (featuring very sleepy and very sad teenage girls)

Internship!

So this is what has taken up all of my summer. From 9-5, everyday, I go to FIU south campus for an internship with the USDA and the agroecology department at FIU.
It's a wonderful experience and I've met some really wonderful people (and a not so wonderful scary ecoterrorist) but I have to say, it has been worth it. My inner (or maybe not so inner) tree hugger really squealed at the opportunities and everything we learned. It really confirmed that this is something I can imagine myself doing for the rest of my life. It was a 6 week program in campus and during the last two weeks, we worked on our research paper on a topic we learned, created a PowerPoint and went back August 6th to make a giant presentation to a room full of people about our internship. In addition to that, we also made a video about the internship and a giant poster about the six weeks

Here are some pictures of my FIU experiences (not a lot, sadly and including pictures from my long rides there and back). The last two days were definitely the most fun, as we not only got a mini party but a field trip to Fairchild Gardens.

They thought the coffee would be like fruit punch, "because you always see people drinking it and laughing!"

The scenic route home

$1 venti iced tea!

We visited Fairchild Gardens on the last day

A really old tree

My walk from the bus stop everyday

Not the best picture of us, but these are the people I spent my summer with. The background was really funny because at the moment, we were making biofuels from waste vegetable oil (with lots of chemistry stuff like titrations that I understood! THAT'S WHY YOU STAY IN SCHOOL!)

About half of us hiding in the shade. Every Friday we went to the garden and worked there--not pansy stuff like planting flowers, but uplifting old gardens beds, pickaxing grass away (I also realized I am NOT good with a pickax), transporting barrels of dirt and laying down new garden beds. It was at the FIU organic garden which is really cool because they compost everything themselves, collaborate with the FIU cafeteria and get coffee beans for use in compost, and have biofuel plants.

Not the funnest lab ever. It was picking nodules off plant roots.

Waiting to get picked up

The wedding area at Fairchild

A really pretty but really funky smelling flower

The advantages of being in the engineering building: lots of nerds

Long bus rides home .-.

Collecting water from the greenhouse pond to test for pH, nitrogen and phosphate

Thank goodness there's a Blogger app

Some extra pictures from my New Jersey/New York trip that I found on my phone!

One of the many gorgeous buildings on Princeton's campus!

Princeton sign and a very happy me

Columbia's Admission Officer! I forgot his name because we started calling him Jack Black (he reminded us of  Kung Fu Panda).

Gorgeous NJ trees outside of our hotel room (which had a giant living room area of sorts, with an actual FIREPLACE!)

Central Park! (and a bit of my finger)

Times Square!

Princeton University SUGAR. How cool is that?

A miniature cathedral made entirely out of wood, at Ripley's Believe it or Not museum

Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum x)

Atlantic City Boardwalk!