My avatar is a picture of the most distinguishing landmark of the other place I call home: San Francisco, CA. Although I hail from Virginia, where I have lived for the past 16 years, I spent the first few weeks of my life in The City. These few weeks were the end of three years in which my parents lived there, rent paid for by the US Army. The stories they told of it enthralled me, and, three years ago, they took me back to visit. I felt an instant kinship with the place, with its colors, unusual architecture and landscaping, and sheer sense that the inhabitants are whoever they want to be, no restrictions imposed.

Once, I caught myself remembering the beauty of San Francisco, and told myself that it was just my memory making it seem more beautiful than it actually was, as has happened with other places. I returned to my photo album, and discovered that no, in fact, my memory was actually dimming the beauty.

Without the help of the military, I will not be able to live in San Francisco again unless I find a very well-paying job--the cost of living there is greater than in London. However, I have not given up hope that I will find a way to return.

Hello ladies! My name is Samantha Plate and I'm excited to explore the wonderful city of Philadelphia with you.

My avatar is a picture of me and my friends on a train track. Not too exciting- but the day holds special memories for me.

After our last day of finals this year my friends and I spent the day together, creating memories that will last a lifetime. We had brunch together and then drove to a place called Carousel Gardens where we took tons of fun pictures. The grounds are picturesque and we played on an old tractor that was there. We then ventured to an abandoned train down the road. We took pictures and explored as much of the train as we were able to access.

For the most part, I would hardly call the people in my picture my friends.  I knew them for one or two years at most as they passed through the theatre program at my high school, but I rarely got to know more about them than their names and vague impressions of their personalities.  Still, for every back turned and face blurred in that picture, I could tell you a story about that five minutes in two years that I got the chance to talk to them.  That five minutes has left a lasting impression on my memory.  Moreover, I could tell you about this moment in the picture when the entire room was silent, and each of us closed our eyes while our fellow cast-members surrounded us.  The exercise was simple: match the breathing of the person next to you.  After it ended, I went backstage with the realization that I could trust the people around me.  In an existence marked by fleeting relationships and unknown people, this was a moment when everything stood still, and I did not have a single doubt in my mind about anyone in the room.

Although I've been posting writing on Serendip since at least 2001, I've never put a photo here before. I've always felt as if my writing here was for the people I already knew who were also posting. But since lots of us are meeting for the first time and our assignment gave me an invitation to choose an image, I did. (I also wanted to prove to me and you both that I could actually navigate the process...)

This is a photo that was taken of me on the "set" of a performance that I made in Philadelphia. It took place over ten or twelve square blocks, featured the Benjamin Franklin Bridge as a character, and had about 50 actors in it. That play, which was called ACROSS, constituted the deepest playing in the city that I'd done up to that point. So, it felt appropriate for the work we are doing in our esem. 

I chose this picture of a sunrise over water because I believe that, as a frosh, I am able to begin again. In college, we can re-write who we want to be and start again, just like a sunrise beginning again every day. When I was little, we would go visit my grandmother in Maine in the summer time. I would always get up early, come up the stairs, and find my grandmother sitting in her living room, or on the deck with a cup of tea for me, watching the sunrise. She watches the sunrise every morning with her tea and this sunrise reminds me how she takes her time in the morning to slow down and enjoy the beginning of each day. The sun and the water in this picture both play a part in calming down life for me. I love sitting on the rocks in Maine and watching the waves crash around me. The ocean is a powerful force, but it can also be very calming, reminding me how small I really am in the world, and yet, how big an impact I can make if I really try.

There are a few reasons I choose a profile picture of a perched hawk. The first is, simply, I don't tend to put my face on the internet. Most of the people who I would want to keep in the loop regarding my everyday life, can just as easily get an email with a picture than they can look it up on facebook. The second reason, similarly, is that I really like birds of prey, and hawks in particular; they are among my favorite animals. This particular hawk seemed to be paying rapt attention, which seemed fitting. Finally, although this is rather subconscious, there is something fun about having a representation of the self that has certain cultural assossiations; a reference to something or someone the person with that picture would like the person seeing it to remember and connect to. I generally think that when one has a profile picture with cultural associations, then whenever the person with that profile picture demonstrates some small amount of one of the qualities associated with their profile picture, then that quality becomes strengthened in the reader's memory.

As you can see my avatar is a pan full of dessert. But not just any dessert, they are monster magic cookie bars! I'm very proud of these, they are one of my most successful and most delicious baking adventure products of the summer. It's a joke amongst my friends that before last spring break I did not know what boiling water was. And like most rumors, there is some element of truth to that statement. I grew up in a single-parent household where my mum did everything she could so my sister and I could have a number of opportunities. As a result when she came home from work she did not cook a meal from scratch, even though she knew how; she simply did not have the time after working all day to pay the bills, then dedicating the evening to our education. Thus, I never learned how to cook. But this summer that all changed. I spent the summer at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center(SERC) on a research base in rural Maryland, where there was no dining hall, no parents feeding me, I had to provide for myself. So with the help of my housemates and the internet (of course), I learned how to cook and bake a large variety of items ranging from delicious desserts of every shape and size to more savory options like calzones, steak, rice pilaf, and cultural dishes from Nepal, Columbia, and my home state of Texas, just to name a few. And I must have learned something great because not only did I survive the summer, but now I have a newly ignited passion for cooking and baking!

Anne said that we must introduce ourselves, so I guess I'll do it here. My name is Tessa, and I'm almost nineteen years old. I have lived permanently in Geneva, Switzerland since 2004 (before Europe was Chicago). It's always been the plan for me to move back to attend college in the States. My avatar is, at face value, an overfed ginger tabby sprawled out on a pink blanket. Said overfed ginger is one of my cats. His name is Merlin. I swear we haven't been giving him more food than his brother, Rémy. Merlin just prefers the sedentary lifestyle. I chose him because I was known in high school as the Cat Whisperer. I could get any stray cat on campus to snuggle up and follow me around. I love my kitties so much, I wrote my application essay to Brown about my tabbies (didn't help me get in though). Merlin is my spirit animal. We genuinely enjoy each other's company and always seem to know when the other is in distress and act accordingly. 

I miss him a lot. I know this all sounds odd, like I don't enjoy human company. That is not the case. I love humans. Just on some days, I enjoy cats more. 

I am a city girl. I've lived in a city for almost my whole life, and was taking public transportation by the time I was in preschool. Where I'm from, our transport is run by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, known by locals to be called Muni. Most San Franciscans have a love-hate(mostly hate) relationship with Muni rooting from the changeable train schedule and the crowds that often come with riding a common route. One reason people love Muni is that is provides them with something to complain about. I chose this username because Muni is how I accessed all that my city had to offer, for which I'm very grateful. Despite this, I couldn't bear to put an image of one of those trains as my avatar (See the distaste shining through?) so my image is a combination of some other things I love. It's a small piece of a digital painting of mine, and shows my love of art and my love of horses at the same time. I'm looking forward to finding my way on some new public transportation!

Fun fact: The title of this post is similar to a line from a song by Journey, a band from SF.

My avatar is a picture of a bridge at a nature preserve near where I grew up. It's a very calming and happy thing for me. It was a place to think and not be disturbed by the anxieties in my life. I'm not a very "outdoorsy" person, but there's something about just walking around that I really enjoy. I love standing on the bridge and watching the water rush by. I love seeing what's on the other side and continuing my journey. That's how I view my changing ideas of gender and sexuality. I had a Catholic upbringing and grew up in a conservative community. Gender roles were very strict (even taught in school) and people were very closed-minded about sexual orientation and gender identity. As someone who did not completely fit these narrow roles, it was frustrating. I am now happy to be part of a community that is more welcoming to people of different sexual orientations and gender identities. I've crossed a bridge into a place where I can continue my journey of trying to understand others (as well as understand myself).