A Hometown Adventure

Author: Jonathan Cousins, C’14

I spent this summer at home, in San Jose, CA. I was working part-time at a robotics company in Menlo Park and also volunteering part-time at Stanford University working in sports marketing.  Needless to say, I’m not really sure what I want to do with my life yet. But I’ll save that discussion for another post. Today, I want to tell the story of one specific weekend over the summer.

I got a text from Chris, one of my friends from the Red and Blue Crew at Penn, who said that he was going to be in San Francisco for the day and wanted to know if we could meet up. It sounded like fun, so I drove up to San Francisco and met both Chris and his friend. Now, the relationship between Chris and his friend is something that could only come from a place like Penn. Chris’ friend is from Australia, and they had met when they were both studying abroad in France, and now they were both vacationing together in San Francisco.  It was a cool opportunity to see how far Penn connections can really stretch.

What I thought was going to be an evening in the city turned into more as another friend Chris had planned to meet up with that night got stuck in the Madrid airport. Communication was few and far between, and eventually, I offered to have them stay in my guest room. The next day came, and without a definitive word from their friend, we needed something to do. We ended up at the boardwalk in Santa Cruz, and had a blast walking around and going on rides. That evening, I took them back to San Francisco, where they planned to meet their friend who had finally made it to the U.S.

All in all, it was a really fun, unexpected weekend with friends who I never expected to see in San Francisco. Who knows how many of those experiences I can expect as I enter life as a Penn alumnus next year?