is surrounding myself with the best people. This is a really odd thing to say even in my opinion but I really think I’m great at knowing who is right for me, and surrounding myself with people who not only love, care, trust, and are loyal to me, but also motivate, encourage, and push me. My sister, who never compliments me, told me how she admires how I can always see the good in people, and choose the right friends. She isn’t very social, and usually only hangs out with two, really close friends of hers. I’m very social and she thought that I had many friends but not really meaningful ones or “best” friends. I can see why she would think that, and some of the people I hang out with a lot are definitely are just “friends/acquaintances” but there are several that I don’t know what I’d do without.
This weekend, Nikki, JoAn, Joey and Daniel visited me at the marine lab. Obviously, I knew I was going to be happy and that we were going to have fun, but I saw that the weather was going to be terrible. I was worried that they weren’t going to have fun, and that they wouldn’t want to come. They said that they didn’t care, and that it’s only 50% chance of thunderstorming so they came. None of my friends at the marine lab were hanging out because they all had physics work the next day. It was just us, and I thought they were going to be so bored and regret coming down 7 hours to the island. However, just hanging out with just the 5 of us, we had the best time. We knew so much about each other already that “never have I ever” got predictable, we were so shameless and open about each other, and literally talked about the weirdest topics I never thought I would have with anybody. At first, I was just super happy and glad when they said “cindy, don’t worry if it rains, we came here to see you, not to go to the beach.” I thought yes, I know we all miss each other but the beach is a huge part of this trip too, the marine lab is on the island! But I saw their honesty when plans didn’t work out and we still had SO much fun together doing completely nothing. The beach was only an hour out of our whole weekend. Luck worked in our direction and it never rained when we were actually out doing activities.
What truly struck me was dinner time. We all wanted to go out to dinner. I haven’t eaten out off the island really so I didn’t know any places really. I was thinking of Panera or something but the guys and the girls all dressed up so nicely and classy. So I asked for a good seafood restaurant from a friend and off we went. When we arrived, we were completely overdressed, and the place looked like a tiny deli shop. I honestly was very disappointed, but the guys said, let’s just walk around, it’s beautiful outside. We walked around, and saw another restaurant called Aqua. It was a nice restaurant indeed, so we went inside, just to find out that without reservations, it was an hour and a half wait. Another frustrating moment for me, but the guys said, who cares,lets continue browsing around, I want to walk around more and see the town. Finally we came across this one place which looked very worn down from the outside. It was the end of the road so we were like oh well, let’s just go in here and eat. When we went in, this humble restaurant was actually a very fancy restaurant with an amazing view of the waterfront. The host said we might have to wait about 30 minutes, but then a table opened up and we got seated immediately. The food was overpriced, but so worth it. Even if it was vacation, we would usually go to Panera or something to save money. Now that our friends worked also, it was something worth spending money on good food. That made us bittersweet about being kids; we weren’t eating fastfood and we were talking about meaningful, relatively deep conversations. We talked about marriage/finding the one, life in general and friendship. I thought I was just a sentimental person, but we actually talked about how we would probably die for each other. This sounds very dramatic and not like us, but even the thought or admitting that not my parents, but my best friends would die for me, that it wasn’t just a one-way thing, was touching.
Thinking back, nothing really worked the first time and I got very frustrated for my friends. However, luck always turned and things worked out. I wasn’t a great host in terms of their stay really; Joey slept on the floor, we had to squeeze the girls three to a single bed. The accommodation I could offer was so limited, but they were just happy to be there…and just assuring me the whole time.
I feel like Duke has changed me (whether it is in a positive or negative way is debatable) to be a little less carefree, and more uptight. I honestly love the people at Duke, but they are sometimes very intimidating; these people all literally all-rounded and seems perfect.. very intelligent, poised, athletic, not to mention very well-off family wise, and usually get whatever they aim to get. When they don’t get what they want, it’s very frustrating for them, which I completely understand as I’m in that position. Just in academic terms, being “average” in class is so difficult, and I feel like that has sucked out my optimistic personality. I didn’t realize it, I thought I just wanted to hang out with them. But it turns out I needed them a lot more than I thought.
