Awkward

This morning started off great! We all took a group trip to Starbucks like we did yesterday. It gave us some much needed caffeine for the day, especially since Ray from down the hall ate our shredded cheese during a late night binge and our breakfasts weren't as substantial as we would have liked.

Today was our first day in San Francisco as ASB students, and not just as tourists. We drove to Oakland and met with Vernell Critendon, our trip contact and Tony Crear who is the program services coordinator for the County of Alameda. Tony and Vernell were able to bring some insight into some of the causes of juvenile delinquents and how the county of Alameda is trying to prevent juveniles from returning to juvenile hall. Unfortunately, due to limited funds, the juvenile the probation department doesn't take preventative actions, but try to help juveniles after they have committed an offense. The time flew by and ended with a heated debate between Kang and Kristen about the legalization of marijuana.

We realized that the University of California, Berkley, was close by, and as college students, we were excited to visit another college campus. Here, we took tons of pictures and even decided to climb "The Hill" which had mixed reviews by the group. It was a strenuous hike up to the summit, but the view of the bottom of Berkley and the Bay was amazing. We weren't looking forward to the hike down so we paid a dollar to take the bus back down the hill and saved us about 40 minutes of walking.

Our reflection tonight was based on our meeting with Tony and Vernell and went over some of our thoughts about what we learned today. Overall, it was an exciting start to our week in San Francisco and a good sign of what else we can look forward to learning this week.