#7: NACURH/PACURH 2010

Two vastly different weekends, but both were extremely entertaining. NACURH was held at UCSD (so it wasn’t hard finding anything), while PACURH was held at Southern Oregon University (which was a relatively attractive, yet small university).

There was a ton of more energy among the group with the NACURH delegation (Andrea, Francisco, Jaclyn, Chris, Bijan, Amber, Amul, Rashika, Cindy, & Lauren) than the PACURH delegation (Windi, Amul, Jorge, Lauren, Cindy, Nicole, Geetha, & Bijan) but this was because NACURH was during the summer (NO HOMEWORK) while PACURH was merely weeks before Finals.

I had fun at both, but being that they were so similar, NACURH was probably better in terms of being a “new experience”.

I love the clothespins I collected from various universities during the conference. I also got “free” shirts for NACURH, PACURH, various swap-shop trades with various schools, as well as a “Legends of the Hidden Temple” Shirt, although I never really watched it as a kid because I didn’t have cable… Poor me…. As far as the living quarters goes, we stayed in Marshall Res Hall P. YES!! A Residence Hall…. I felt like a freshman again living in a freshman suite, continuously going up and down from suite to suite (guy’s on top, girl’s on bottom)

My favorite session would have to be “attraction secrets”. Ryan Clauson was extremely hilarious in giving out advice to “woo” members of the opposite gender. The other programs were good too, so I guess I’ll use their ideas in ICRA next year, potentially…

I “rode the pony” for the first time. Having never done it at orientation, it was a good experience… not to mention extremely random. Volunteering at the beach for the philanthropy project entailed walking to the beach for 20 minutes, pulling weeds and talking about “hoes” for 10 minutes, and walking back for the last 20 minutes.

As far as the food went, it was decent. I didn’t really enjoy the vegetarian meat though… that was a little strange. But other than that, everything else was good. But I think I got sick Wednesday night… but that could be because of the Dance.

Hospitality rooms were chill, I still hate dances as usual, and I still love the song “Don’t Stop Believing”. I swear, I was singing that song from day 1, and then on Wednesday it plays before the closing ceremonies and during the dance and everybody sings along. Also, I wore a Glee shirt on Wednesday and some random stranger wanted to take a picture with me. It was quite cute, and I was pleasantly surprised to be somewhat of a celebrity.

PACURH, though semi-entertaining was kind of disappointing in retrospect. For starters, Jorge was there (who was really irritating to room with), and secondly the free food wasn’t nearly as good. There was a lack of spirit, but I can’t say I “hated” it.

Pros of the Conference: Free Food (Which was decent), Met lots of spirited people from other schools, learned lots of things to carry back to ICRA (Mostly lessons learned from the Tortoise and the Hare) & Wonderful Icebreakers!, Programming Sessions was fun, Roll Call was fun (GO UCLA – Partners), and Closing Ceremonies were decently done (Although Bijan kept saying Inception in the middle of it which made me miss key parts of what the speaker was trying to say. In the end he said something about not using one’s SCOTOMA anymore. (and if you don’t know what that is you should personally look it up on Wikipedia). Hospitality rooms were great, still having a ton of food in them. The rain was another good thing, because “Rain makes Corn. Corn makes Whiskey. Whiskey makes my baby feel a little frisky.” Also, my first 4 time being physically and mentally present on an airplane! (I was too young to remember being on a plane when I was a kid). Decorating shirts too was also fun, so was the night of putting “X’s” on T-shirts for the Invisible Children. For Philanthropy, we went to a session where we watched the movie “Go” which made me tear quite a bit over the plague of child soldiers occurring in Uganda, and high school students from all over the United States coming to help them. The trees were also pretty colors.

Cons of the Conference: I felt like our school lacked spirit, and that is one area we should all still work on. Opening ceremonies were also a little dull, the keynote speaker going off on random tangents, and the national anthem being sang in ONE. EXTREMELY. HIGH. NOTE. Christopher Nguyen was not there. Everyone was busy with homework and stuff to be social with other persons from other conferences. During NACURH, I remember us going to everything and not having to worry about “school”, and thus having a better time cause we met a ton of people. Subsequently, because of the overwhelming midterms, and people’s lack of sleep from the night before – the spirit was lower, and people just wanted to “get things over with”. Among other things that were bad. In the end, this all came together encompassing in my mind and making NACURH > PACURH.

And yet this remains: the video below remains the spirit of why this is #7 on my Top 10 list. GLEE-ESK.