International Food Fair & Language Exchange

Like every Friday, yesterday I went to the weekly International Student Ambassadors Program meeting. We are currently working mostly on two upcoming events, which are a Food Fair and the Ambassadors signature event: the Beach Volleyball Tournament. 

While last year I was leader of the Vball tourney committee, this semester I decided to switch it up. Originally, I asked the program director if I could get a position in the Marketing committee; however, she informed me she would have preferred I stay in the Event Planning committee, of which I am a co-leader. I decided to stay, and I am in charge of the Food Fair committee, together with my friend Felipe (whom I mentioned a couple of posts ago).

The International Food Fair and Language Exchange event, sponsored by SBCC International Student Ambassadors Program and the International Student Support Program, will take place at Antioch University between 3pm and 5pm on Friday, March 11th. The reason why we host this event at Antioch is mainly because SBCC has stricter regulations regarding “food-based” events; specifically, we would need to purchase the food from the SBCC Kitchen if we wanted to hold the event at SBCC. However, the International Food Fair and Language Exchange concentrates on typical foods that are not commonly offered by the cafeteria: in fact, international students from all over the world come together to share their culture and their country's characteristic food with everybody. 

At the event, we will set up tables of different countries, such as Italy, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, China, Japan, and many many others. So if you are a student reading this, you probably don't wanna miss out! No need to be said, the event is not restricted to students; everybody is welcome, and this is a free event. 

During the event, we will have a raffle with $1 tickets (or a food can), Every single dollar (or piece of food) will benefit the hungry, and by participating you will get a chance to win a sweet prize! 

In fact, the Food Fair is a wonderful opportunity to meet people and make friends around the world as well as try delicious food from various cultures at the same time! This is also a great opportunity to meet with Antioch's transfer advisors and get a tour of the campus, in case you are considering transferring to Antioch or are interested in learning more about the University.

Finally, you will be enjoying a wonderful view of Santa Barbara, as the event will be held at Antioch's beautiful patio, overlooking state street and the mountains, located on 2nd floor, 602 Anacapa street.

You can find more information on the International Student Ambassadors Facebook Page, or by clicking on the Food Fair Event link right here.

Calling SBCC donors to say thanks with PTK.

Wednesday afternoon was a special Wednesday. I went for the first time to a meeting of the Entrepreneur Club of SBCC (as you can read in my last post), and I took for the first time an online midterm, in the subject of Art History (as you can read in the same post). 

After the exam it was about 5 pm, time to tuck in my shirt, pull out my blazer, and get ready for my weekly PTK Leadership meeting. Oh! Wait a minute; we did not have a regular meeting this week. 

In fact, instead of holding our general weekly meeting, this week the PTK Leadership has agreed to take on the job of calling and thanking the supporters of the SBCC Foundation, who have donated over 4 million dollars to the various programs of the school. 

So this Wednesday afternoon was also the first time I picked up a telephone and called strangers to thank them.

Pizza and a view. That's my friend Adam at work.

This was a new experience for all of us, and as always it was fun and entertaining just because we were doing it together. It started out very awkward. We were handed a list of names and phone numbers and a script. We were supposed to call the phone numbers and thank the donors by reading off the script, which read something like: “Hello, am I speaking to ______? Hi _______, my name is Federico. I am a student at Santa Barbara City College and I am just calling to thank you for your support of the SBCC Foundation. It really means a lot, and I wanted to personally tell you how much SBCC students appreciate your contributions.” After that, we were instructed to stop and give them time to reply, and let them say anything they wanted; if they wanted to carry on a conversation, we would give them the opportunity, and once they were done, we would greet them and wish them a wonderful day. 

While it definitely felt kind of weird at the beginning (especially when I was saying “I wanted to personally tell you how much we appreciate…”), all of us soon began to have fun with it. It was funny to hear each others trying to be professional while reading the script, but although we were having fun we also managed to call and thank almost 500 people! 

Some of the donors would literally just answer “ok” to our message, and some were even slightly rude; but many others were very glad we did take the time to call them and they thanked us back and wished us a great day.

The experience was made even better by the fact that there was free food… Rusty’s pizza, and I LOVE PIZZA so that made me happy. Finally, this took place in one of the press box rooms at the top of La Playa Stadium, and the view from there is breathtaking. 

It was another great experience, thanks to my fam in PTK. :)  

A presto,

- Fede

Entrepreneur Club and an online midterm

Commonly known as “hump dayyyyy,” Wednesday is actually my rest-day of the week. While I have class 9am to 9pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, on Wednesdays I have no classes at all. My only commitment is a 1-hour meeting with the Leadership Board of Phi Theta Kappa, from 5:30pm to 6:30pm. 

It is great to know that no matter how stressful my Tuesday may be, I don't have to worry about my next day, because I can just sleep in if I want to catch up on rest. I like Wednesdays because the fact that I am not going to class gives me extreme motivation to workout, so I give my best on that day and I really enjoy it. I wrote a post a few months ago specifically talking about workouts, and you can find it here if you are interested.

My Wednesday morning was therefore pretty average, but in the early afternoon I went for the first time to a meeting of the SBCC Entrepreneur Club. My friend Isaac (one of my best friends and my partner in E-Launch) is the Vice-President of that club. We were supposed to meet at 1pm in order to work on our business idea for the Enterprise Launch class. As I mentioned in my last post, our next step is to figure out what is our target market, and then reach out to our target customers and interview them, in order to learn what they think about our idea and then analyze the data to elaborate an effective marketing strategy. 

Instead, I ended up in the middle of his club’s meeting, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. The club is pretty small, with less than 10 people actually involved. But they are all very passionate, and I already got to meet most of them in the past one way or another. I liked the club meeting because the young entrepreneurs and the wanna-be-entrepreneurs (like me) that were there discuss on interesting business ideas and dream big. Entrepreneurship is a fascinating lifestyle because bases its success upon the goal of improving society.

When the meeting was over I walked over to the Library, found a quiet spot, and I took my Art History online midterm. This was the first time I took an online exam, and my professor said he makes the exam very hard, because he has no way to check on us since we can take the exam at home on a computer. Although some of the questions were phased in a way that multiple answers could have worked, I personally didn’t find the exam to be all that hard, but probably it is just a result of the fact that I prepared for it. In addition, when studying for my SAT exam, I learned that when taking multiple choice tests, it’s always a smart idea to eliminate the answers that are for sure incorrect, and then take the ones the make sense, and read them a second time focusing on what the question is actually asking. Most of the times, it is possible to realize that in the context outlined by the question, only one of the answers is actually correct in any sense, while other answer choices may be true under certain conditions, but not under others. If you find yourself claiming: "But... both C and E are TRUEEE!!!," then you just have to ask yourself... "Which one is more true?" Or "Which one is true most of the times in this specific context?" After all, only one answer is the correct one, and an educated guess will usually lead to good results! :) I ended up with a 98%, which made me proud of myself.

A presto,

- Fede

Long hours but lots of learning.

The beginning of this week has been pretty rough. 

On Monday, after school, I took a bus back to Isla Vista. I had lunch at home, and then I hit the library. Not that I didn't already expect so… But I realized that my E-Launch class is really hard, and there is A LOT of work to it. Being a 1-day class, it requires more discipline and responsibility, because you need to be able to spread the work throughout the week, otherwise you'll end up crammed and overwhelmed on Sunday and Monday night, like it happened to me and my partner Isaac.

This week is Week 6, and Week 6 is the week of Pitch #2. Pitch #2 is a 2-minute pitch like all other pitches, but its focus is on the analysis and description of the Industry, Intellectual Property, and Competition for our business. In case you didn't read my previous post in which I talk about Enterprise Launch (or E-Launch), ENT 206 is an Entrepreneurship class in which students work on an idea and launch a business in one semester. In order to do this, a lot of research and “figuring-things-out” are essential every single week. In the upcoming weeks, we will need to research, analyze, and get ready to present in front of judges important elements of a business such as the target market and marketing strategy, customer validation, use of funds, exit strategy, and the presentation of a working prototype.

Isaac and I ended up doing all the research for Pitch #2 on Sunday night and Monday afternoon, and we spent Monday night putting together a speech and a power point presentation. Since our idea involves an app that provides a service that deals with physical products, figuring out what industry our business fits in was a little confusing, but we decided our industry will be that of online bartering services, which connects to the service that our app will provide. This is a $12+ billion industry in constant expansion, with over 450,000 companies in the United States alone.

We worked very hard to put together a presentation, and I finished writing the speech at 2am. At that point, I left the library and biked home. 

On Tuesday, my alarm goes off around 7:30 am, so I was tired the whole day. I have been busy with work and classes until around 2:30pm, and after that, I went back to edit the speech, but it’s really hard to cut it down to only 2 minutes. 

Finally, I started memorizing the speech around 4pm, and class starts at 5:30. This is a very stressful and very much not efficient way to approach tasks, and I do not recommend it. Everybody procrastinates sometimes, but Isaac and I would agree that procrastination is the worst choice one can take if you want to succeed in ENT 206, and in entrepreneurship in general. 

For our next speech, we are planning get on it way in advance, so we will have time to edit it, practice, and memorize it to perfection.

When I got home at 9pm I was exhaust. That is alright though. After all, “long hours” appears in every description of Entrepreneurship... It is part of the game! ;)

A Presto,

- Fede

Economic Club of SB 1st Event

The first event/meeting of the Economic Club of Santa Barbara was a success. Although we didn’t have as many people as we expected, the event had a good flow and was interesting. 

UCSB Visiting Professor Shinder Thandi, an expert of Political Economy of Development, started off by talking about the positive force of Globalization for about 15 minutes; he was followed by SBCC and Ventura College Economics Professor Phillip Bohan, who rebutted with a discussion of some of the negative consequences resulting from the issue of Globalization. Finally, SBCC Geography Professor Jennifer Bernstein gave a PowerPoint presentation on the role that Globalization plays in our world and the importance of space in the field of Economics. 

A picture taken in a sweatshop in China

The discussion proceeded with an analysis of pros and cons of sweatshops: for example, on  the one hand, sweatshops workers are paid low wages to work long hours and in very poor working conditions; sweatshops often employ child labor, and have many negative connotations attached to them. On the other hand, however, it is true that most of the times sweatshop workers take the job voluntarily, which means that although the job conditions are poor and the pay is minimal, this situation is still better than anything else available in the area; some would also make the case that $1 in China is worth more than $1 in Santa Barbara, a claim that suggests that the impressively little pay is not actually that insignificant.

Left to right: Prof. Bohan, Prof. Bernstein, Prof. Thandi, and Sebastian, Club President

I think this is a very controversial topic, which makes it interesting as a result. Eliminating sweatshops would mean eliminating jobs for the poor people who have no other options than accepting the bad working conditions offered by sweatshops. Improving working conditions would mean that clothing and apparel giants would not be giant, and probably would have to pay more for your Nike shoes and Under Armor shorts. The discussion continued to include the impact of Globalization on the environment, but by then I had already left to go to my class. On Thursdays, I have Macroeconomics lecture from 6PM to 9PM, so I had to miss over half of the event.

The students who did come seemed to be interested and payed attention

Overall, although we had less people attending the discussion that we had planned, the event was a great success because it was organized with tight deadlines, by a group of students, and most importantly it was the very first event of a newly started club. I think it’s great that we were able to get three speakers be our guests, and now we have some room to improve our marketing strategy for our future events. 

Making sure we had all the needed materials for the event.

Some of the ideas I will bring to the table when the club leadership meets on Tuesday are to consider holding future events of Wednesdays rather than Thursdays (because most SBCC students don't have class on Fridays, so they are less likely to stick around on Thursday night), raise enough funds to offer coffee and cookies at the event, plan to involve the Economics, Political Science, and other related departments by asking the professors to allow us to advertise the event in their class (i.e. at the beginning of lecture), and perhaps even considering offering extra-credit for attending our events. I also would like to reach out to UCSB students by promoting our club and events on the UCSB campus, which would require we turn to our connections and try to involve UCSB students in our club, The Economic Club of Santa Barbara— not just SBCC Econ Club.

I'll catch you in my next post. As always,

A presto!

- Fede

The Economic Club of Santa Barbara

As some of you may know, starting this semester a few of my friends and I have started the Economic Club of Santa Barbara, which— far from being a typical SBCC club— is extremely promising and resourceful. 

While we didn't host any meetings or events before today, hundreds of people at SBCC are already talking about the club. This is in part merit of its interesting nature and in part merit of the preliminary work of the leadership, especially the club President. Sebastian Rothstien is only 20 years old but has the makings of an experienced president. He has dedicated extensive hours to the creation of the club, which included finding faculty staff to be the club advisers, designing an official constitution for our organization, and working out the many resources to be offered by our club. 

In addition to weekly meetings and events (starting today, Thursday, February 18, at 5:30PM in PS101), The Economic Club of Santa Barbara (ECSB) also provides free online resources such as a website inclusive of free study links, study guides, and tutor assistance. Included in the website is a link to the ECSB’s Journal, which has had an outstanding success to say the least. The posts published on the journal have received attention from countries all over the United States and the world after only a few months from its existence. 

Screenshot of the ECSB Journal webpage.

I have the honor of being an editor of the journal, which entails proofreading, correcting, and editing some of the articles before we publish them on the ECSB Journal. In addition, I plan to write my own first article soon. A part from being an editor of the journal— a position that we have officially included in the club constitution as of Tuesday, February 16 although I have been practicing it for a while before— I am the ECSB Events Chair. As such, my tasks include creating and executing exciting, interesting events for the club constituency and ensuring the fiscal viability of all events; I also work closely with the club secretary, the public relations officer, and webmaster to promote the upcoming events.

The rest of our leadership board is composed of a group of smart and ambitious students.

Johan Hallin is the Vice President. He is a freshman from Sweden, and will collaborate with Sebastian to ensure the club grows throughout the next academic year.

Sherwin Amstutz is the club Secretary. He came to SB with his delightful girlfriend, Elysia Arci, and they are perfect for each other: how sweet is that? They are both freshmen form Switzerland, and Elysia is the Treasurer for the ECSB.

Felipe in his most professional looking picture. JK!

Last but not least, Felipe Domingos is our Public Relation officer. A naturally ongoing Brasilero, he works by my side in the International Student Ambassadors Program as well, where we are co-leaders of the Event Planning Committee.  (Yes, we need to update the ECSB Leadership web page to include Felipe. Here is a photo of him:)

Don’t forget to visit and like our Facebook page!



A presto,

- Fede

That unforgettable way back home.

As you can read in my last two posts (PART 1 and PART 2) I have spent the 4-day weekend in Berkeley with my housemate Mikey. We stayed at his house with his family and I had a great time. I had a chance to visit the town and the university, check out two fraternities, meet some new friends and have some great food. I’ve also seen beautiful landscapes, got a ride in a Porsche race car, and watched a high school baseball game for the first time. The weekend was very fun, but on Monday, on our way back, something unexpected happened. 

The harsh feeling when the car stopped working.

We left the Bay Area around 1:00PM, after we picked up our friend Elena, who needed a ride back to Santa Barbara as well. We were a little tired, and definitely not excited to spend the next 5 and a half hours in the car. After you know how the rest of the day unfolded, you will agree with us that the 5 and a half hours trip would actually have not been all that bad. 

Around 5:00PM, we were on the left lane when the traffic started to slow down, until we ultimately stopped. When it was time to accelerate again, the car totally bailed on us! That cool black Jeep was like: “Nah, I’m done, I am not taking you anywhere!”

A picture of Mikey dealing with the Police. :)

Mikey— the designated driver— turned off the car and then back on; he put it in gear, and… nothing! The engine was raving, but the car was not moving. As we correctly guessed, there was a problem with the transmission, so we needed to get towed. 

Around 6:30PM, the tow truck finally arrived. They hooked us up, and then gave us a ride to the closest dealership, which was just about to close when we got there a few minutes before 7:00PM. A cop who had been with us since around 5:45 gave a ride to Mikey, since he could not fit in the tow truck. 

I never had my car towed before, so it was a completely new experience. 

All very optimist people, we hung out in the parking lot of the dealership until 10:00PM, playing basketball and eating tamales.

We were hoping that some good soul would come all the way from Santa Barbara to pick us up, but we didn't dare asking too many people. All the friends whom we did contact, said they were too busy, so we decided to spend the night at some friends’ house in San Luis Obispo.

I slept on the couch for about four hours, and I took the first train in the morning to Goleta.

Tuesdays (and Thursdays) are very long days for me, with work, classes, and club leadership meetings all day long, from 9:00 am to 9:00pm.

The train ride had some beautiful views.

When I finally got back home on Tuesday night I was dead tired, still wearing the same clothes (I could only manage to change my shirt) and only kept awake by inconsiderate amounts of caffeine. 

After a nice shower, I finally saw my bed again, from which I have been separated for 5 days. I had a good night sleep.



A presto,

- Fede

Weekend in Berkeley, PART 2.

To read PART 1 of this article about my weekend in Berkeley, click here.

San Francisco Skyline

Saturday was a rather dull day… Mikey and I woke up late, grabbed some sandwiches, and went to Maddy’s game. Maddy is a high school junior, and he is the pitcher for the baseball team. Among all the American sports, baseball is the least appealing to me, but it was still nice to watch Mike’s younger brother play… For the first hour! It was a scrimmage game, and they played 11 innings, or, in other words, for 3 hours! 

In order of distance: me, Berkeley hills, Berkeley, Oakland (left), the Bay, San Francisco.

After the game, Mikey took me up on a hill in East Berkeley, from the top of which I was able to see the whole bay, including Oakland, Berkely, San Francisco, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate, and so on. It was such a breathtaking view, although pictures could not nearly portrait the beauty of the landscape. 

Later that afternoon, Maddy’s teammates came over, and they ended up spending the night, too. I have to say they are all very fun. While sometimes age differences are a burden to bonding and mutual understanding, Maddy and his friends are cool and they get along with Mikey and Mikey’s friends very well.

Sunday was the day when I finally got a chance to visit the town of Berkeley and the university. I met with Alessandro at Phi Psi, his frat. He was eating a salad on the roof enjoying the sun— which I thought was pretty cool. 

The walk to school wasn't too long, and Haas is the part of UC Berkeley closest to Greek Street, which is where all the frat houses are (good to know!). The campus is great but definitely different from what I expected. 

I have visited UCLA and USC in the past, and those two campuses, although somewhat different from each other, have a similar style. 

For some reason, I was expecting to find something similar at UC Berkeley, too, but obviously I was wrong. 350 miles apart, Los Angeles and the Bay Area have a different culture and a different landscape, which is reflected in the look and general atmosphere on the campuses. 

Cal is, in all aspects, more of a serious ambient. The people at Cal look very professional, and somewhat more focused. The spaces are smaller and more interconnected, while the campuses in LA have more… huge, wide open spaces. Also, while buildings and floors at both UCLA and USC are made of red bricks, most of Cal’s buildings are in the shades of gray, which is again a more serious, less fun color. 

Overall, Cal is a wonderful campus, with many trees, infinite resources (32 libraries! Not a typo), and a thriving atmosphere made up by go-getters and doers.

Nonetheless, I think it is worth mentioning that studying in Southern California has the valuable advantage of making me feel like I am on vacation, which in turn, makes me enjoy my studies more. Southern California, with its palm trees, colorful flowers, and bright buildings that reflect the sun, is a very joyful and relaxing environment, while Berkeley, with its pine trees, hills, and cloudy skies, is still very beautiful but does not feel like that paradise that is, for instance, Santa Barbara.

Later that day, Alessandro and I went to get Gelato at Caravaggio Gelateria Italiana, an ice-cream shop that was opened by one of my Italian old friends’ father— who decided to move to the States and open an ice-cream business. The Gelato (an American word that is nothing but the Italian word for ice-cream, with an American accent) was delicious, and on the house!  

As a way to demonstrate my appreciation for being their guest, I stopped to buy some flowers for Mikey’s mom, and she really appreciated it; when we got back home, dinner was almost ready, and it was something so delicious that it is worth mentioning. Mikey’s mom cooked homemade lasagna and barbecued three different types of steak: New York Strip, Ribeye, and Fillet Mignon. What a great way to end the weekend!

We left on Monday, which was a holiday, and the trip back was full with unexpected surprises… You can read about it in my next post!

A presto,

- Fede

Weekend in Berkeley, PART 1

It was a very fun weekend in Berkeley. 

We left Santa Barbara in Mikey’s car around 9:30 am on Friday morning. The drive up was pretty long, about 5 and a half hours, but it was also full of beautiful landscapes.

On the way up, we stopped to have lunch at In-N-Out and I tried Animal Style fries for the first time… They are not bad, but I think the burgers are a tastier way to gain 700 calories!

We arrived at Mikey’s house in the afternoon and I had a chance to meet his family. Both Mikey and his family are such wonderful people. They all are very nice and super fun to be with.






Mikey, in particular, is one of my best friends. He is my housemate, and he is the guy who rescued me from my old living situation, which I did not like at all. When I first moved to Isla Vista, I found a living situation that I thought looked appealing but soon turned out to be a bad fit. I was about to give up on moving, and I remember I even called my previous landlord to ask if I could move back in.

But the very next day was when I met Mikey, and I immediately had the feeling I would have liked living with him.
After only one month of living together, I feel like I’ve known Mikey for years, and we have developed a wonderful friendship based on mutual respect, similar traits and interests, and a genuine sense of brotherhood. 

Mikey’s new house in Orinda (a town right next to Berkeley) is really beautiful and spacious, and Mikey and his younger brother Maddy often have friends over. On Friday afternoon, after we arrived, we hung out in the yard for a while, and then we went to buy sandwiches for dinner at Mikey’s favorite sandwich place.


Mikey drove his father’s car and it was definitely a fun ride! I really like sport cars and I asked Mikey not to play any music because the sound of the engine sounds like music to me!

On Friday night we went to Berkeley to visit some of his old fiends, and I got a chance to meet with my own old friend Alessandro. He used to be a student at Santa Barbara City College, and this is his first year at UC Berkeley. He got accepted into the prestigious Haas School of Business, to which I have applied too. He joined a fraternity and he is very happy with his decision, because he says that joining a frat allowed his to make friends and start building a network of connections fast. If I get accepted to Haas, I will consider joining his frat, too. Alessandro is a very ambitious student, and he is like me in many ways. In fact, while he is a little older, our paths have been similar, with the both of us being SBCC students from Italy, and being involved in similar extracurriculars and classes. Alessandro has helped me by giving me advice from his own experience, and he is one of my dearest friends. 

Read about the rest of my weekend in Berkeley in my next blog post!

S.Valentines with PTK and Macroeconomics.

Saint Valentine’s Day is approaching… And the Phi Theta Kappa leadership celebrated today with a themed event. We bought roses, chocolates, and candy; we set up a tent nearby the library, and decorated our station with heart-shaped balloons and St. Valentine’s signs. Then, for the whole day, we offered a free delivery service, where students could buy roses and other sweet gifts for about the same price we paid to buy them, and we would ask them to write a little note including their name, the name of their “loved one,” the classroom and time to find him/her. Then we, Phi Theta Kappa leaders and some members as well, delivered the gifts to the person inside their classrooms. 

Fortunately, SBCC professors are nice and friendly, so they were not too bothered by us interrupting their lectures to deliver roses. After all, it is a good deed
and they know we are a Honors Society and we are not trying to be invasive. This event was incredibly successful, and although early in the morning we were struggling to find “customers,” when I came back in the early afternoon after my classes all the roses were gone! We were sold out. Our advisers were very proud of our efforts and happy about the results and the positive impact that PTK made on our campus community today. As always, it was very fun to be around friends and do good together. 

Today I also had my first midterm. It was in my Microeconomics class. I am taking it on Thursdays from 6– 9pm. Although this could be challenging for some students, I love Economics, and I really wanted to be taught this subject by Professor Cynthia Benelli. She is such a great professor, because she makes each and every class engaging, clear, and fun! I am so happy I was able to have her as a teacher because she is teaching me the subject of Economics under a whole new perspective, which keeps me passionate about this fascinating discipline. If you are willing to stick around until late on Thursdays, I highly recommend taking Professor Benelli. She is knowledgable, fair, and so clear and engaging that I cannot stress it enough.

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In my Econ class I also had a chance to meet Alyssa, my new friend. She is a little crazy, which is the one characteristic that I love the most in people. “Crazy” people are unpredictable, fun, funny, and optimist, and really great to be around. I met her one night in class and she offered to give me a ride home. That was very nice of her. Now, she takes me to school in the mornings too, and I give her Stats tutoring when se needs it: since I tutor in the morning, we just go to the Math Lab together as soon as we get to school and it works out perfectly! Although I realize it might sound like a mere exchange of favors, it is not. I feel like a real and good friendship could flourish between us, because I really like her personality. Tonight, when we were driving home after the Econ exam, we stopped to grab a burger at In ’n’ Out, and we laughed a lot and had fun.

I hope this friendship can grow and develop :)

Tomorrow I am going to go visit Berkeley with my roommate. I am so excited, and I will keep you posted!

A presto, 

- Fede 

Wednesdays

Today— like most Wednesdays— was another great day! Actually it’d be accurate to say “like most days,” because I really like my Tuesdays and Thursdays too, although they are very busy (on campus from 9am to 9pm), while on Monday and Wednesday I get much more time to rest. Wednesday is right in the middle of the week, and the free time gives me a chance to catch up, workout, and relax. 

I woke up later than usual, and went back to the Spartacus workout routine. It is so hard! 10 different full body exercises in a row, for 1 minute each, with 15 seconds rest in between each exercise. And you repeat the cycle three times. A 40-something minutes workout, it burns over 800 calories and boosts metabolism. Although it’s impossible to do from start to finish!— a lot of practice is needed for that! ;)

I also got a chance to call my parents on FaceTime, which reminded me of home. So I cooked myself some Italian pasta… Penne al pomodoro! (“Penne” pasta with tomato sauce). After that, I studied some Econ (test tomorrow) bounced a soccer ball with my roommates in the front yard, and then watched the clock… 

4:15 pm! Time to suit up, get my laptop, and catch the bus! One other reason why I love Wednesdays is that I get to see all my friends in the Phi Theta Kappa Honors Society Leadership. As you must know if you read my posts last semester, PTK is the best experience I had since I moved to
Santa Barbara, and I love the people in the leadership team so much. Unfortunately, two of our leaders from last semester left, but I am excited to work together with the new leadership members.

PTK leadership picture from last semester.

Sebastian

Sebastian, my dear friend since last semester, is the new Vice President of Service. We met in a Geography class that we took for general education purposes, and I immediately liked his ambitious personality and friendly attitude. Now, other than being PTK leaders, we also are the leaders and founders of the Economic Club of Santa Barbara (ECSB), which is about to be popping!!! Sebastian is the President of the club, and he is doing such an outstanding job. Stay tuned for more info, and check out our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/sbeconomic/?fref=ts (and don't forget to hit the Like button!)

Amber

Amber is the new Vice President of Fellowship. She is from Belgium, and although I don’t know her too well yet, I am excited to have her on board and get to become friends! She is nice, professional, and interesting.

Diana

In addition, Diana will be our Vice President of Membership. This is a new position, that the Beta Gamma Upsilon Chapter (that means SBCC’s chapter of PTK) has created this semester to solve the problems that arose after the Phi Theta Kappa headquarters changed the rules of what we can and cannot do in terms of signing up new members and contacting them. Diana was in my Public Speaking Honors class, which was my favorite class ever, and she is always smiley and friendly.

I am very excited about the adventure that awaits all of us this semester, and I will definitely keep you posted!

A Presto,

- Fede