This week has been lots of work, but also lots of fun at the same time.
Sunday was another Soccer day, and I was like Renaldo in my fabulous skills. Ahem.
I know that everyone who reads this will be trying to remember the last time that I was good at sport, but I am not kidding this time! I scored heaps of goals against my Italian and German teammates – pity it was just a practice. I need to do now is the exact same thing in the game. I can even do this, because I am officially relived of goalkeeping duty and am on the actual team which runs around and does stuff!
I know! I'm not a goalkeeper for once!! How weird is that???

Anyway, all this was before I realised I had a huge assignment due the next day (Monday), so I pulled an all-nighter to finish it off. (I misread the syllabus so I thought I had already finished the entire thing, when I had only finished half! It gave me quite a fright.) Luckily It turned out it was due in on Tuesday, and not Monday, but by then I had already finished it, (I really should have read that syllabus) so I had a sweet day of fixing it up so that it made more sense before I gave it to my lecturer. Truthfully the essay was pretty bad... but it could have been worse.

On Monday I hung out with a friend for lunch (this same friend who organised the communist tea party) and was determined to sleep well that evening. I was pretty tired after the random sleeplessness caused by the whole 'assignments due the next day' thing. Un/fortunately for me I got sidetracked by one of my wonderful housemates, who started teaching me basic Hebrew phrases and thus I spent my sleep-time talking about very little long into the night. Shana Tova everyone! (Happy Jewish New Year!)

I also went to a military lab offered at Berkeley. They’re not very organised, but they’ve got big heart. They told me we were going to do a swim-test, but it turned out we were actually going to do a commemoration service for 9/11 and also a swearing in ceremony.

I felt a little out of place wearing my togs underneath my uniform. Luckily no one noticed.

All the parents kept taking photos of me though, because I was wearing bright green in the midst of all this urban grey, and had a green beret on. They must have thought I was awesome, or possibly just confused.

The drill commands are also very different, and I made a lot more noise with my boot stomping than the Americans, whose marching-style reminds me forcibly of power-walking. The weather was also very hot!

Today I did the weirdest test of my entire life. I did a reading of about a million pages, decisibing the ‘Life of Saint Bernard’ – this holy monk in France. He was a pretty intense mystic! Anyway, the assignment was a page about if you were a hollywood director, who would you cast to play Bernard in a movie about his life? This writing assignment was worth marks overall, so I fought down the urge to crack up, and just did it.

I love my lecturer for this class. She’s gold. This is the same lecturer that, on my second day at Berkeley, randomly started to laugh in the first lecture. She then told us what she found funny. No one else laughed, (it was pretty lame) so she has since stopped telling us why she laughs. Now she just stops in the middle of a sentence, cracks up, and then keeps going on like nothing happened. She rocks.

Anyway, I chose Sean Connary, because Bernard was both great at PR/had stage presence, and was apparently really emaciated. I can imagine SC being good at being a random mystic!

My sweet burglar skills have finally come in useful. I know that Mum, you especially, always worried about how good I was at breaking into peoples’ houses, but I finally have used these awesome skills for good and not simply to pop up behind people to give them a random fright. A friend of mine locked herself out, and I, with the sneakiness worthy of a sneaky thing, snuck around the edge of the outside of the house using a second story balcony and window ledges (the gaps between these things gave me a bit of a turn - nothing below but air and the hard ground). Finally I reached the outside window of this girls room. From there it was child’s play to get inside – not because I can pick locks or anything, but because this window was open and it's also the size of an average door. I was pleased that the young lady got inside, but I was slightly concerned by how easy it all was!

My friends at Westminster House are lovely. I hung out with two in particular today, and since I don’t have anything else to talk about, I’ll talk about them. (Creepy, aren’t I?)
Serena is dark-haired (kinda Portuguese looking, but she isn’t) who hails from northern California, and can speak Spanish. She occasionally does speak Spanish to me when she forgets that I can’t, so I have started a phrasebook which I hope will help me later. Several people in the house can speak Spanish, and they all laugh at my Kiwi accent because it severely interferes with the pronunciation of words, and which they say makes me sound like I am Italian. Apprently this isn't good.

The other girl I hung out with today, Bronwen, looks like a typical American LA actress, with long blonde hair and a habit of randomly singing on rooftops. She sings really well however, so life could be worse. Bronwen can’t speak Spanish, but compensates by saying inappropriate things in English entirely by accident. I won’t tell you some of the things she says, but think of Mum’s ‘Can you screw and talk at the same time?’ for an example of the type. It’s so funny!

Today I also had food from the ‘South’ which I have to say was much better than food from California, which apparently is ‘North.’ Mr. Whippy style ice-cream they call ‘Frozen Yoghurt’ over here, and so I also had some of that. It was delicious. The food is so rich over here though, and my poor body isn't used to it. I'm sure I am ruining my palate for things that aren't covered in litres of sauce!

I’m sorry for the randomness of the last part of the detail. I have had one of the best weeks of my life, and I will be sorry to leave Berkeley when my time is up.

Cheers everyone, again

Yours truly

Margie

written by  Crosswood on September 14, 2007 from Berkeley, United States
from the travel blog: New Zealand Student, American University.
Send a Compliment

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Meat pies! Apparently tats an NZ ting. Te butten between g and i is broken on my computer and i don't know wy. Wow tats annoying.

I sall ave to speak in text or someting 'Sudder'It was woking yesterday and i didn't knock it or anyting. GA!

So yea i'm glad your aving suc a great time, try not to overload yourself wit work or anyting!

written by  Rebecca on September 15, 2007

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