Rowing: Winter Training

5am. My alarm goes off. Did I set it for the wrong time and I actually have to be up at 7? Nope! I wish. I look out my window and everything looks frozen. Too bad! Practice starts in 30 minutes. Rowing isn't an easy sport. The 5am winter practices in the freezing weather don't make it any easier. 6 days a week, 12 weeks straight. No days off, no breaks. Because champions train everyday. The erg is the most hated of them all. Actually it's a love hate relationship. The pain makes you dislike it so much, but the reward is so great that you forget the pain and you get back on it the next day. 2500m pieces, 6000 pieces, 1000m sprint pieces, and the deathly 500m all out sprints can transform a boy into a man. You really do discover a lot about yourself when you are on the erg.

Considering the toughness of the erg workouts along with the multiple weight training sessions during the week, water days may seem like a break from the craziness. If only that was the case. Water workouts are 90% the same intensity but now add in the -10 degree Fahrenheit windchill. Your oar gets wet from the splash... the water freezes. The sides of the boat and the rigors collect ice.
Definitely not a fun experience.

One could ask... why do I go through this? Wouldn't it be so much nicer to be able to sleep in everyday till 8am and not have to practice for 3 hours at the crack of dawn? Wouldn't it be easier to not have to push my body through so many grueling sessions?

Maybe, but I'm not about the easy life. Good things in life don't come to those who chose the easy path, they come to those who worked their ass off and achieved greatness.

You may think I'm crazy, but in reality I'm just a rower.

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Rowing

So, I decided to join the rowing team at UC Davis. Kinda a radical choice for me, you might say. Let me explain. I met my friend George at a core group meting on campus and he told me about crew and what its all about. I decided to come out and try it out. So far it has been a blast... Not going to lie, getting up at 4:55 every day for practice isnt very fun. Doing intense crazy workouts every morning while most people are still asleep isnt very fun. But if would I ever quit? Not a chance. This has to be the best part about college so far. The guys on the team are pretty awesome, and most of them are my closest friends. We are truly one huge family. We practice together, eat together, study together, party together. All the good stuff. The best part by far tho, is racing together. In the fall racing season our team has participated in 3 regattas (boat races, for those not familiar with boats). Our first race was in Sacramento, CA where we raced Berkeley, Stanford, Washington State, Arizona State.  That was our first race and it was a blast.

Our second major race of the season was in San Diego, CA at Mission Bay. The trip there and our 3 night stay was crazy, and we bonded as a team so much. Mission Bay was a really amazing course as well. This is a picture from our practice at Mission Bay the day before the actual race. In San Diego my 4-person boat actually got 1st place in our event which was awesome.

Our last regatta of the fall season was BIAC (Bair Island Aquatic Center). This was in San Mateo near San Francisco. It was a very challenging course with many difficult turns, but UC Davis managed to win the top 4 spots in the race. We practically destroyed every other team in the race with us.

Thats a picture of my 4 boat that got 3rd place in the race. I am bow seat (the last guy).

Now we head into winter training, meaning there are no races, just training on the ergs(rowing machines) and on water training to get ready for spring. I will try to keep this updated with more photos and whatever happens.

Till next time guys.

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Midterms: The Rude Awakening

Well, I had my first real awakening in college so far. Midterms. Not so much midterms as the score I received on my Calculus midterm. Taking the test I felt pretty weird about the whole thing. I skipped 2 questions because I didn't know how to do them. I ended up getting a 53 out of 102 points on the midterm. Yeah... not my proudest moment in life. When I told my mom she basically went pretty crazy saying she wasnt paying 15 thousand a year for me to fail my classes and such. Honestly before I didnt stress so much in college. I would have movie nights with friends all the time, would always go hang out with people, and as long as I knew the basic idea of what was going on I thought i was fine. Well.... I wasnt..

Now I dug myself into a pretty big hole I would say. The midterm was worth 20% of my grade, so basically if I want to get an A- in the class I have to get 98-100% on the other three midterms and the final. If I want to get a B or a C i still have to average at least a B or a B+ on every test from now on. This is definitely doable for me, as I have the capability, I just lack the structure, organization, and discipline.

I hope I can pull off a B in this class, because the engineering program at UC Davis is really tough, and I need to keep my GPA afloat, meaning no C's. At least not in any lower division classes.

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UC Davis: Bikes

So I have been at Davis for almost three weeks now, and it has been a blast so far, to be honest. The people here are all super chill and super friendly. My room mates turned out to be really cool guys as well. My classes have been alright, so its all gucci for the most part.

One crazy thing most people don't know about Davis is the bikes. And by bikes I mean close to 40,000 bikes. Yup, pretty much every student at UC Davis gets around campus by bike, as there are no car access on campus. It is really cool because there is no traffic and its really quick to get from one side of campus to another. Even though I live off campus, it takes me approximately 5-10 minutes to get to any class, and if you ever been to Davis you know its a pretty big campus, with all the buildings spread out. To make the flow of traffic easier around campus there is a bike circle at pretty much every major intersection to direct the bikes so there are no accidents.

On the first day of classes all the non-freshmen sit on the quad near the most congested bike circle to watch freshmen navigate through the hundreds of bikes there. It is actually pretty funny, and is an UC Davis tradition, to watch freshmen fall on their bikes during the first week of school.

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Apartment

So I finally got my apartment at Davis! About time I know. Moving in this Saturday. I am really excited to be honest. Finally moving out, and living on my own. I honestly do not even know how I'm going to handle it. My biggest fear is starving and failing all my classes because I spend too much time just trying to survive... Then I would have to drop out and live at home and go to a junior college. Just a random thought for the night. I would appreciate it if I could get some feedback from you guys who read this. Just drop a comment, telling me how Im doing, are my post too far apart, should they be longer, shorter, more photos? dont be shy haha.

-Peace

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San Diego Trip Part 2

So my trip to San Diego was pretty cool I would say. We had a lot of fun. My best friend went with me, along with some of my cousins and some friends from Los Angeles. I made a pretty cool road-trip playlist for the car ride. Macklemore, The Neighbourhood, Kid Cudi, J Cole, were some of the artist on it, and it was really cool. (sneak peek into my music tastes) My parents found this really cool hotel right on the water. Our room had an ocean view and you could go down to the water in like 2 minutes. We went to the beach a lot, visited the random parts of San Diego and Oceanside. Met a lot of new people, some pretty weird ones at that. Ate at some interesting places. One day we went to a night market type of thing, with a bunch of live music, and food vendors. The food was really good, and the music was good as well. There was one band which was made up of a high school science teacher and his 10 yr old son who played drums. The father sang and played guitar. At night I went out and took a bunch of sunset pics just for fun, and some of them turned out pretty good, so I put them down below. It was a really great time, and I cannot wait to go back next year.

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San Diego Trip

So, all of next week, Im going down to San Diego with some friends and family. Just gonna hit up some beaches, probably go to Sea World. It should be fun, meeting new people down there. Some pretty close acquaintances of ours are meeting up with us there. They're pretty chill, somewhat typical Southern California people, really laid back, and pretty much live on the beach. The day after we come back from San Diego, I have my freshman orientation at Davis, so that should be interesting as well. Gonna meet my room mates for the first time, plus get to meet alot of new people. we pick our classes on that day too, so we will see how that goes.

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Camping

So last week I went camping with my family at Sugarpine Reservoir. Its a lake about 10 miles from Foresthill. The lake is pretty cool, really clean, and very quiet. They do not allow jet skis, or other 2 or 4 stroke engines on the lake, so there is no pollution or noise. There is a lot of fish in the lake, both trout, and bass. We arrived Monday morning and set up our campsite, and went swimming at the lake. It was really warm. At night we had a campfire with our friends who also went with us. We went fishing 4 times during the span of 3 days we were at the lake, but I didn't catch anything, unfortunately. We also found a legit rope swing at the lake. There were actually 3 rope swings at the lake. One was really small, and even though it had a huge drop it wasn't exciting, because the swing was really small. There was another one that had both a huge drop and a large swing. It was pretty extreme and really scary. I only went off one time from it. The third one we found by accident, but it was the best one. It was both exciting and within the comfort zone of everyone. The next day my abs and arms were shot, because the rope swing uses your core and arms. It was a really fun half week at Sugarpine, and I cannot wait to go back year.

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Camp

So this last week, I was a counselor at my church's annual kid's camp. I had a blast and it was a really good experience. The counselors came 2 days early to prepare the campground for the arrival of the kids. We literally spend like 10% of the time actually preparing though. The rest of the time we just hung out at the lake, barbequed, and did a bunch of dumb stuff while the kids were gone.
The kids arrived Sunday night. I was the counselor with my best friend for the smallest boys cabin. I was both scared and excited at the same time, because dealing with little kids is pretty difficult. Boy was I in for a surprise. My kids turned out to be amazing. They were all really well behaved and really easy to work with. Also there were a lot of cute female counselors so that was a blast as well. One truly amazing thing was being able to teach these kids about God, and what he did for them. I had to leave 2 days early because I had work, which was a bust. But I'm not too mad, because at least I had a chance to attend the majority of camp.

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Job

So after like 2 months of intense job hunting I finally got a call for an interview. I totally wasn't even expecting it. I applied to Grocery Outlet just because, and didn't give much thought to it. Then last Thursday while I was driving to Stinson Beach with my friends the manager called me and invited me for an interview. My interview was on Friday and apparently it went well, because on Monday I got a call that I got the job, and I start Tuesday. So after my first day I can say that work is pretty hard. I came home after my 8 hour shift with a monster headache and extremely tired in general. I was put to work stocking shelves, and making all the product on the shelves look good, and appealing to the customer. I work from 8am to 4:30 pm every day this week so I get pretty good hours. So I'm making pretty good money, not complaining at all about that though.

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Apartment

So, recently, I was contacted through a mutual friend to rent an apartment at Davis instead of staying in the dorms. I have decided that i will live in an apartment for multiple reason. One, is that I will save a lot of money. The apartment will cost me almost a third of what the dorm will. Also I will begin college already knowing a couple of people instead of being a noob on campus. Actually I already know multiple people who go to Davis, most of them are going to be juniors or sophomores. The only downfall I think is that I would now have to learn how to cook, and I would have to take care of bills, and maintain the apartment. This will be a lot more responsibility and stress, and I'm worried it could affect my grades. My parents are really over protective, so I feel that with them gone, I wont be able to make the right choices, because they hve made every decision for me so far. Im just really confused, but hopefully it will turn out for the best.

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Baptism part 2

So, on Saturday, the day of my baptism, it was about 112 degrees outside, which was extremely hot. It was probably the hottest day we had so far here in Sacramento. I had to get up at 6am because I had to be at the river at 7am. The baptism went well and I was really happy because my girlfriend showed up. Afterward we had a semi after party at my church with food and we played soccer and volleyball. It was really fun, but it was hot for days, so we diet last long. After ward my friend Serge had a pool party at his house so that was pretty legit. Only problem was that it was 112 degrees outside so we were kinda dying out there. After a while the pool wasn't even refreshing anymore because the water heated up so much. We tried to correct it by throwing in 5 huge bags of ice. But it didn't help, and we couldn't even feel the difference. We had a barbecue at his house too so that was also really cool. People just showed up and at one time there was over 60 people at his house. We stayed out there till about 12 ish.

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Baptism

Baptism

So, I haven't really mentioned it previously, but I am Christian. And in my church, when one gets to be around 16-19 years old, if they feel they are ready to make a commitment to serve God their whole life, the get baptized. I feel like I am ready to make that commitment, so tomorrow (June 8th) I'm getting baptized. Honestly, I had a lot of doubts going into it. Originally I felt I wasn't ready, and I wanted to wait until next summer to do it. But then my pastor said, that if you feel that you aren't completely ready this year, how do you know you will be ready next year? This got me thinking that I didn't know, so I decided to get baptized. This is a really big step for me, in my personal life. When I get baptized, I am making a promise to God to serve him my whole life, and I am making a public statement, telling others about my decision. This means that whatever bad stuff, whatever sins I committed before, I will no longer do, because I have given my life to serve God. This wasn't an easy decision, to be honest. I had a lot of things holding me back. Different things that I did, that I could no longer do after baptism. But I believe that if I serve God, and give my life to him, I will receive eternal life with him, in heaven. Instead of burning in hell, for doing all the "fun" stuff. I will give a follow up afterward :)

If you would like to learn more about baptism, and what it means to Christians visit the link bellow.

http://christianity.about.com/od/faqhelpdesk/f/whatisbaptism.htm

-Vitaliy

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Parents/ Girlfriend

So, at my graduation, my mom finally saw my girlfriend, Julia (not her real name). Her reaction, was probably the last thing that I expected to be honest. Apparently she saw her with another guy about 3 years ago. So now she is thinks that this girl is a player and Im another one of her victims. Its really frustrating for both me ans Julia, because we both think this relationship is something special, not just an everyday fling. We both think we have a future together, and the fact that my parents dont like her is kinda huge. They havent been letting me see her for about 3 days now, which kinda blows. I have no idea what to do either, because Im not really close to my parents and I dont know how to talk to them about this.

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Graduation Part Two

 Graduation

Today was graduation and I'm not gonna lie, it was a really crazy day. When I came home from rehearsal, I had to iron my gown and my sash and wash my shirt, etc. The trouble with the gown is that it's made from polyester and it is extremely difficult to iron. For starters you cannot use a regular iron, because it can melt the fabric and you will be left with a sticky mess. To over come this, you either have to use a steamer, or using and iron on it but having the gown between two sheets to protect the fabric. The wrinkles in the gown are caused by the folds, so they're really deep and really hard to iron out. It took about 1.5 hours of work to get the gown to look presentable. And then about 30 minutes to make it look somewhat good. Since it took so long to get my gown all fixed, I was running late to get to graduation, and in the process forgot my cap and tassel at home. So when I got to Memorial Auditorium, I had to wait until my mom came an brought my cap for me. All this was extremely stressful and wore me out so much. The graduation went fine though. Afterwards when I exited the building my friends ambushed me and started jumping around me. Then they picked me up and started tossing me in the air. We then took at least 300 pictures, and then we went to this hipster ish cafe downtown to celebrate. It was pretty cool but we didn't stay for long, so we went to my girlfriend's house to have a some what party. It was really fun and I ended up getting home around midnight. I had a lot of fun at graduation. Although I do not feel that much different to be honest.

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Girlfriend

 So, there was a girl in my AP Economics class, lets call her Julia. I have been pretty good friends with her for quite some time now. Maybe 3-4 months. We really grew closer when I broke up with my girlfriend about 2 months ago. She really helped get through it all, and since then we have been pretty close. About a month ago, I started noticing that she seemed to like me as more than just a friend. At first I was hesitant to respond, because she had a slightly messed up relationship history. But about 2 weeks ago, I told her that I liked her too. We then hung out at lunch everyday for about a week and half. I noticed that I liked being around her a lot, and it made me happy. I asked her to be my girlfriend last Friday. It didn't change much tho, we are still acting the same way towards each other. I haven't kissed her yet, because I dont want to rush anything. We went on out first official date on Monday, Memorial Day. We went to see Fast and Furious 6. The movie was really good, and being with Julia was really fun too. We cuddled for about half the movie, and even though she was squishing me, I enjoyed it a lot.I had tons of fun, and just being with her made my day a lot better. On Tuesday she had school, but I didnt, so she ditched her second period class and we went to Starbucks. It was really fun, we just talked for about 1 hour and 20 minutes. We discussed some pretty deep topics, so it was some really valuable time spent together in my opinion.

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Graduation

So graduation is in 6 days, and Im pretty nervous, which is a huge understatement. The work leading up to graduation is so stressful that its not even funny. I had to order my cap and gown online and the total was $61.97. I think that its an outrage to have to pay so much for a gown and a cap that Im only going to wear on one night for about two hours. Thing is my school requires everyone to have identical gowns so I had no choice but to get this one. The supplier can literally charge any price, and we have to buy it. It pretty horrible. Talk about monopoly. And then we had to complete our senior  check out forms, but the teachers at my school do not want to work with us at all to complete them, They wait until the very last minute to sign off the fact that I completed the class. Talk about stress.

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Last Week of High School

Today was the first day of the last week of high school. I have waited so long for this moment to arrive, and it feels somewhat surreal. I guess I expected it to be different. It felt like any other Monday. Really hard to get out of bed, took forever to get ready. The usual. During first period the coffee I had in the morning was still having its effect, but during second I was literally passing out. I stayed up till 2am watching a show on Netflix and talking to a girl. So during lunch, after second period, I made a Starbucks run. During third period the coffee kept me going, but during 4th I was dying again. Pretty much a typical Monday for me.

We don't do a lot in my classes anymore. Most of my classes are AP, so there is no point of doing any learning after the AP test. We just do random stuff and screw around pretty much. In AP Econ, we had a two square tournament. It was pretty fun. In Calculus we did money management activities. I guess I should make the last week of school count, but that would require me going to sleep earlier.

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Job Search

I have been for a while looking for a job. And have found little luck in doing so. Everywhere I apply, I do not even get a call back, or an email that they received my application. Nothing. The other day however my cousin promised to hook me up with a job at Pizza Guys. So she set up an informal interview with a manager, and the day I was supposed to go , my printer gave out, so I couldn't print my resume. So now I have no idea if I will get a call back or anything. I kinda need a job pretty bad. Gas, insurance, and a possible ticket in the past month cost A LOT of money. I also applied to Little Caesar's so I will see how that works out. Only downside of the job is that it is 7 miles from my house, and in traffic it can take almost 30 minutes to commute the distance. Hopefully everything works out tho.

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AP Tests

I finished my last AP test today.I expected it to be alot harder, just to throw tat out there. Alot harder. The test was surprisingly pretty easy, considering this was the test I thought I had no chance at passing. Another step to college now. I get my scores in July, and the tests that I passed, I wont have to take those classes in college. I could enter my freshman year with 24 college credits. Not bad, in my opinion. I got a letter from UC Davis today, informing me of all my deadlines. I have to send in all my high school records, along with all my test scores. Such a pain, but its worth it I guess.

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