To most people, New York City is all about lights, tall skyscrapers and fancy shops. The tourists all seem to be interested in visiting the famous Empire State building, Time Square and Central Park. Real New Yorkers, by contrast, prefer Starbucks to give them that same feeling of joy tourists feel. While many argue about the city’s main attraction, my favorite place in this hectic city is Washington Square Park located in Greenwich Village. I have been visiting the park since I was ten, and it has become a part of me.
Read MoreWhen I was a high school junior in Woodland city, California, I lived with a host family that my school had found for me. Woodland Christian High School is two blocks away from Woodland downtown. My host father could not stop talking about how he disagreed with Obama’s policies, and he could argue politics with his friend for a whole afternoon. My host mother was Miss California in 1968, and she is now more than 300 pounds. She always tells everyone that ice cream is the reason she is this way.
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Although the show did not begin until 7:30 pm, my excitement kicked in during common hour. Instead of going home after school, I lingered around the ACES Center, counting down the minutes until 4:30 pm, when we grabbed some last minute snacks and departed for the city.
Read MoreAmerican inventor Thomas Edison said, “Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.” Although time is a precious treasure given to us for free, it is the one prize we tend to lose track of the most. We are often told to make wise use of our time, and to take full advantage of it; however, we seem to turn ourselves towards the opposite end of the spectrum, causing us to regularly misconceive its value.
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Like many immigrants, Emmanuel came to the U.S. in search of a better future and educational opportunities. He started college in 2010 and became part of the close-knit ACES community, where he learned early on to diversify his interests, instead of only focusing on the field of computer programming. He recalls his experience during his first year with ACES: “During the ACES program, we went through topics that dealt with the nature of food in the U.S, to the life of the Beatles and the pop scene of the time, to exploring post-apocalyptic stories. I have applied this eager and widespread approach towards learning.”
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Feeling a sense of peacefulness and inner calm is how I felt. This past summer, I attended a three-day Buddhism retreat at the Garrison Institute in New York, about an hour train ride north of Grand Central. The retreat was “for university students of Tibetan, Himalayan, and Mongolian descent.” It was my second year attending, and my experience there went beyond my expectations. Actually, I did not know what to expect other than the tentative three-day curriculum sent to participants before our arrival.
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The ACES program is known to organize a variety of trips for its students ranging from museums like MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to live performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and other theaters in the city. In addition to these trips, ACES also organizes a variety of events on campus in the form of lectures, highlighting ACES tutors’ academic fields of expertise, and panel discussions.
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I got a window seat. That, of course, could not fully compensate for the fact that I was about to spend nearly 10 hours in a tinier-than-usual economy class seat, but it was nice to be able to enjoy the view. With my seat located all the way in the back of the narrow plane, I was left with barely any room to move around, so pushing the chair back (even a little bit), stretching out my legs, or making myself comfortable in any other way was close to impossible. It was easily the worst designed seating arrangement ever, but I did not care. On the contrary, I considered myself lucky to get a fairly priced round-trip ticket on a transatlantic flight booked exactly 5 days before its departure.
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