SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON (and some other fun things)

Hej, hej!

So after moping around a little bit after Grace left, I went to Balboa park with Jarett, who is an RA at USD, and lives across the hall from me. :) While there, we went to the International Cottages, where the Colombia house was having a festival. We visited the Polish house as well, where I got to speak Polish with this lady who was giving out little kanapki (sandwhiches) with kiełbasa and pickles!

Colombian festival!

After the International Cottages, we went to the San Diego Museum of Art.  One of the highlights of that trip was seeing one of the paintings rescued by the men in the movie, the Monuments Men. :)

Madonna of the Roses, by Pseudo Pier Francesco Fiorentino. If you want to read about it the plaque is below.

So that was a lot of fun! :) We got to see a lot of cool things as well, like the first manga:

I am going to take a brief interlude here to do some reflecting. I was thinking the other day how all I focus on in my blog is the positives, but sometimes the negatives really do shape an experience, and how everybody only posting the positives can not only alienate people who might not be having the best day, but also distort your own experience.  I understand that optimism is one thing, but optimism without a healthy dose of reality might border on delusion. So... in that vein of thought, the next morning as I left for work, this is what I found:

I was extremely distraught, and the first thing I did was call my mom who thankfully picked up. I didn't know if I should cry or scream, because I still had a month left in San Diego at this point.  I was planning on buying the bike, fixing it up a little, and then selling it back at the end for a relatively cheap rental. I was not expecting some asshole to come and steal my rear tire in the garage of my own building. I called public safety and they did a report, but I doubt they will find the piece of shit who nabbed my entire wheel.  After a lot of anxious and racing thoughts, I decided that the bike served me well in the time that I had it, and that maybe I could pass it on to somebody instead of selling it. Maybe this was a sign. Anyway, the first thing I saw at work after I saw my defiled bike was this:

<3 :')

I was out for my actual birthday (at Disneyland), so I saw this a few days late but it was so nice to have a reminder that not all humans were the scum of the earth.

Anyway, after this experience, my week was pretty uneventful, except for getting super sick with some weird cold and spending all of Thursday in my room with a fever.  People were amazing though and offered to buy me juice, soup, medicine, etc. :) <3 That morning I woke up to pee out the gallons and gallons of water I had been drinking, and saw some super intense fog:

I was bummed that I had been sick for a while, because Comic-Con started on Thursday and I wanted to head down, but I ended up getting better and heading down during the weekend. Saturday was pretty great, I just wandered around on my own for a while and saw some pretty cool things, LOTS of cosplayers, and just experienced the passion filling the air.  I checked out Nerd HQ, and walked around some more before meeting up with Jarett. Together we went to an art gallery with comic inspirations, grabbed lunch, and explored Gaslamp a little bit.  Afterwards we walked around and saw the Zombie walk, and walked back to the convention area so I could buy tickets to a outdoor Star Trek showing in which the San Diego Symphony played the score live! Amazing! My friend Terrence who also works at USD joined me for that viewing. Anyway, now for some pictures!

They had an Assassin's Creed version of Ninja Warrior! How cool is this?!

Look at all these people!!!

Ghostbusters!

Get this, these were UBER taxis! So you could theoretically take them somewhere! Ahhh! :)

Zombie walk! :o The crazy thing is that a little farther down, there was an incident in which, what was later revealed to have been, a deaf family got spooked by the zombies and fled, hitting a woman and breaking her arm. Nuts. D:

The Nintendo gaming lounge!

Outdoor showing of Star Trek! :)

The next day I went with my friend John, who is a graduate assistant starting his first year at USD in their higher ed program. My goal was to look around, then wait in the Game of Thrones exhibit line, and then explore Comic-Con. Little did we know the Game of Thrones line would be 6 - 7 hours... Eep!  After Game of Thrones I got the chance to go into the convention for one hour of frenzied running around (thanks Sarah! :) ) while John did a Simpsons exhibit, and then we finally had dinner and walked around some.

Me proving that I was in line so that if I came back from the bathroom to crazy people, they would believe me. Didn't happen but it pays to be safe!

The Game of Thrones exhibit line wrapped around the building and overlapped... MAN! 

They had the outfits the actors wore in the show... Really beautiful!

My friend John and I got to take this AWESOME gif!

HODOR! :D

And Tyrion! <3

They also had this virtual experience thing where you could take the lift up to the top of the wall and look out over it. The lift moved, wind blew, and everything!

Inside the convention! :)

So that was Comic-Con! Sorry for the picture heavy post, but it was just crazy and I had to capture it! I am so happy I went and was able to experience it a little bit at least! I was so tired the next few days, but I did it! :)

Next up, LA part deux and my last days in San Diego. I leave in 6 days and it is surreal. I can't believe it! :( Writing these posts is kind of great because I get to relive the memories, and I am sure reading them will do the same for me down the road. Anyway, until next time!

A