Introducing Joyce Thrift and The Columbians Ft. Fish Tacos

Can I just say how lucky I am? One, I get to travel this summer to the greatest city in the world, New York City. Two, I have the opportunity to be apart of a summer program in an Ivy League school, Columbia University. Three, I am blessed to be given a scholarship by the Ivy League Connection so all expenses of my trip will be paid for. Last, but certainly not least, I will be experiencing all of this with an amazing group of people, my Columbia cohort.

For the past couple weeks my cohort and I have been trying to plan a day for a meet up to get to know each other. I was really excited to get to hangout with my cohort but it was hard to find a day where we were all available. Finally we settled on Thursday June 4 at Chevys in Hilltop as our meet up joint.

We were to meet up at 7:00 PM, but I arrived late at about 7:07 PM, which I felt really bad about. I found my cohort at Chevys already seated with drinks and made comfortable in a seat next to our chaperone, Ms. Thrift aka Joyce. Although I arrived in the middle of a seemingly interesting conversation I quickly joined in on the talk. I was shocked to already feel so comfortable with everyone and not feel any type of awkwardness that was well expected.

Feasting

It took us a while to order our food because we were too busy talking, but once we did get our food we dug right in. I ordered some delicious fish tacos and felt quite unhealthy since I was the only one who ordered a soda.

As we talked Joyce brought up if we had made our Top Ten List she asked us to make previously about where we would like to go in New York. Unfortunately I did not write it down so I could not remember at the time, but here it is in no particular order:

1)         1) The Statue of Liberty

2)         2) Times Square

3)         3) Central Park

4)         4) The Metropolitan Museum of Art

5)         5) Coney Island

6)         6) Harlem

7)         7) Empire State Building

8)         8) The Brooklyn Bridge

9)         9) Grand Central Station

10)      10) The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

I have to say that before we had our meet up I hadn’t even finished my list, but hearing everyone else’s great ideas helped out. Joyce was the one who mentioned The Daily Show, which I have to say I got really excited about. Joyce told us that most of our trips will happen during the weekend and we will also go on trips with our classes as well. 

Our group photos always turn out so nice.

Our talk about New York was surprisingly the shortest out of all that we talked about. We went on to talk about things that are happening at our schools since Deborah, Izabel, Mark, Alyanna, and I all attend different schools. Since Joyce is a Drama Teacher at Hercules High School and Middle School and Alyanna goes to Hercules High School they talked about the Drama program at Hercules which I was quite envious about since Middle College does not have a Drama program of its own. Deborah talked about her classes and the block schedule of El Cerrito High School, which is very similar to my school’s. At one point everyone talked about AP classes they are taking which I could not relate to because my school does not offer AP classes, but nonetheless found quite interesting.

Although I had an awesome time talking with my cohort members, I have to say that Joyce was the most entertaining. I heard stories about the Columbia Cohort of 2014 and got her to talk about her rather interesting experience being their chaperone last year. I loved how her stories evolved into others until somehow we started to talk about how her husband is apart of this elusive and exclusive all-male club at the Bohemian Grove.

At the end of our meal we ordered two deep fried ice creams to share and Joyce pointed out to us that this is one of the many meals we will be having together which made me very happy.

YUM

Even after we finished our food and Joyce paid the bill, we stayed and talked for another half an hour. At about 9:00 PM we all called our parents for our rides and soon after parted ways. Honestly I do not know how many times I am going to say this, but I feel so blessed and honored to be a part of this program and now to have an amazing group of people to experience it with.