Between Goodbyes and Hellos

Hey loves!

I cannot believe that I have already spent more than six weeks at Stanford! Time is flying by and it is so sad that I will have to leave this place in one and a half weeks. I love living on this incredibly beautiful campus with all these amazing people and I will miss them all.

Although I do not really want to leave, I am also excited about going back to Hong Kong and meeting my first years. I have already skyped with my two German first years, but I have not met them in person. I am also curious about the more than a hundred other first years who will come to LPC this year. It will be weird to be back because all our second years will be gone and now it is on us to be second years and show our first years everything!

I also cannot wait to find out why my roommates are! Our first years will arrive shortly after us so I will live in a dorm room on my own until my three roommates arrive. It feels really weird to think about saying goodbye to my lovely roommate Kennedy who I have been living with for the past weeks. We became good friends over the time and I will definitely miss her. I am sure that we will stay in touch, but as with our second years, it will never be the way it used to be.

Next week, I will take my final exam in my "Introduction to International Relations" class and I will also have to hand in my final paper for my "Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention" class. I am a little bit scared of taking a final university exam, but I am really glad that we took a midterm exam in this class as well. The midterm exam gave me a taste of what university exams are like and in which environment you take them.

Over the summer, I have also worked on several essays for school. If you are one of the students who successfully procrastinated over this summer, take this as a kind reminder to open your books and start doing your summer work! You definitely do not want to go back to school and finish all the work intended for several works in a few sleepless nights. I am glad that I took the time to focus on these papers because it will give me enough time to study for the SAT when I am back. One advantage of working on the papers while being here is that I can use Stanford's resources to do my research. through my library access, I was able to use many more sources for my essays than I had initially planned.

I hope you guys are having an awesome summer - enjoy the last days of summer break!

Lots of Love,

Elena

P.S. Are you guys looking for a TV show to binge watch on your last days of summer holidays or on your plane ride back home? Check out "The Bold Type" from Freeform! I have started watching the series and it is incredibly funny and definitely worth watching.

All photos were taken by Kennedy V.