This was the first 4th of July that I didn’t celebrate with my family at home in Sacramento, so I was definitely missing them. I did, however, spend this 4th of July with my boyfriend and had a decent weekend. I say “decent” and not “spectacular” because of the fact that things did not go quite as planned. We had dinner at P.F. Chang’s in Emeryville instead of bbq-ing  with some friends because we were planning on driving to San Francisco from there anyway, so we just decided to dine out. By the time we had finished dinner at around 8:00 p.m., the streets around SF and the Berkeley Marina were already starting to close and crowds of people were already making their way to take their seat in order to get the best view of the fireworks. Being the lazy people we are, we decided to just drive back to Berkeley and watch the fireworks from the roof of my apartment instead of finding somewhere to park and walking the long distance to the seating area of the fireworks show. Watching the fireworks from the rooftop did not work as well as we had anticipated. The fireworks were quite distant, AND there was a HUGE thick blanket of fog covering San Francisco, so we could only see the traces of the fireworks before they exploded in the sky. We watched in disappointment as we barely saw faint remnants of color tints within the blanket of fog, masking the full magnficence of the show. So we decided to go back into my apartment and watch the rest on TV. Nevertheless, having a 3-day weekend to relax was great. And now I am back at work

-Monica, GBS San Francisco

My name is Monica and I am currently a student at the University of California, Berkeley with a major in Political Economy of Industrial Societies, and will be entering my 3^rd year for the 2008-2009 school year. I have thoroughly been enjoying my time at Cal and am quite sad that my college experience is already halfway over. I was born and raised in the Sacramento area, more specifically, Roseville. In my spare time I enjoy playing golf, watching scary movies, spending time with my sorority sisters, and just going out and having a good time. I have already learned so much within only my first week of work as a GBS intern and am looking forward to continuing to grow professionally with this internship.