Thanksgiving was amazing – on Wednesday last week (although it wasn’t a public holiday) we all got time off university to travel up. Well – time off might be stretching the point a little – it was more like we held the lecturers to ransom and they didn’t hold classes because no one was going to arrive.

The mother of my friend Sarenna, whom I stayed with, travelled down an awful long way to pick us up (our hat’s are off to you, Mrs S!). While we waited a wee while for Sarenna to pack (Sarenna is famous for taking a long time to get ready), myself and another friend went out for coffee. After this we were off!

Traffic is absolutely APPALLING on and around Thanksgiving, with everyone trying to get back to their family for the holiday, so Mrs S. Drove off to the other side of Berkeley first to get Mexican food. I love Mexican food, but I wasn’t so thrilled with the rice drink that is traditionally drunk with it, because it tickled the back of my throat and made me want to sputter. Still – it was a really nice evening, and after a small diversion to a cheese store we hit the road again and (after a frankly amusing couple of tries at getting back onto the ‘freeway’) we were on our way to Chico!

The coastal route is beautiful at night, so as my friend dozed off in the front seat I chatted away to Mrs S, who is a lovely person and who knew a lot about the area we were driving through. This was useful; I knew nothing about what or where we were driving through, and was only mildly interested in how flat it was before Mrs S started to elaborate on the history of it. Petrol is really cheap over here, but it’s all ’87, ’89, and ‘91! No ’98 at all, and diesel is more expensive than Petrol.

After about 2 hours we reached Chico, which is an agricultural/university town that specialises in crops like nuts and fruits. The friend I stayed with lived outside of Chico in the middle of an area of cropland, which was gorgeous by night (the first night we took the dogs out for a walk around the place) and was simply stunning by day. Rank upon rank of almond trees! I’m actually sitting in my basement now eating almonds from that area (they’ve been roasted with orange peel and honey and taste amazing). It was all a little overwhelming at first, but the place is fantastic.

The second day was Thursday – Thanksgiving day. We had dinner at about 1 o clock because if we ate earlier then we’d pop when we tried to go for a traditional walk afterwards. Turkey was abundant (those birds must be massive!) and doesn’t taste anything at all like chicken – but the real treat was the vegetables. Yes – I know. This is me, talking about liking veggies more than meat, but if you ate at the dining commons every day you’d realise why I desperately desired those peas and yams. I ate so many veggies I didn’t even want to THINK about dessert – lots of pie. Americans love pie – Pumpkin Pie, Coconut Pie, Pecan Pie (that’s REALLY good), Marionberry Pie (kindof like Blackberry – my friend sitting next to me tells me it IS a blackberry that’s a weird mutant and that comes from a state in America called ‘Oregon’) and, of course, Apple pie. Why so much pie? The family is WAY too nice for their own good, knew I hadn’t eaten most of these pies before and got them for me. Americans are THE NICEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD. The walk was really nice as well – we went to a different area that we wandered around in the night before. My friends’ sister disturbed me mightily – we went in a car to the general area and I didn’t realise that she didn’t drive very well until she exclaimed ‘Oh – A corner! Lets see how this goes!’ I was more than slightly concerned after that. She also couldn’t get the keys out of the car because she put it in neutral instead of park (snigger). After our walk (we saw hawks, lots of trees and had a great time) I drove back. I laughed at that girl too soon. I actually thought – ‘gosh. Putting the steering wheel on this side of the car makes it a lot easier to align yourself to the left hand side of the... uh oh.’ Luckily the road was a farm road and there were no other cars!

Chico proper, which we visited the next day, is really great. It is a ‘small’ town – 100 000 people is small in the states – and has literally everything. The Farmers Market is very much like the Lower Hutt market, except the stuff was heaps more professional – there was a nut stand with all sorts of types of almonds – honey roasted, orange roasted, chocolate covered, ect - and various fruit stalls. I love mandarins!!

We also went to the gym, not once but TWICE. Dad – you’d be proud. The second time was very fun – a man named Mika taught me how to use Kettle Bells and we violently swung them around, and also attacked random tractor tires. My friend is very strong and fit, so I had to work hard to keep up for the honour of the New Zealand army. It wasn’t pretty.

We came back, and then I went off to ANOTHER thanksgiving dinner, this time in Los Altos. The family is a family of engineers, who proudly showed off their awesome robot like other families show off a prize dog. It was a fricken’ awesome robot. We also did Tie Dye, ate lots of good food, and headed home tired and full. I slept through my alarm the next day.

Today I also did a Military Lab in preparation for the formal Military Ball next week. I showed up in my Patrol Reds, which are very red, and tried to learn how to dance. I was mildly successful at this! The boys were less successful, but they tried very hard.

Tomorrow I have a formal house dinner, which should be fun as well.

That’s pretty much everything that happened over the last week – I had a great time in Chico - wish me luck for getting a friend to go with me to the ball!

Cheers everyone, sorry for how unfunny this post was

Margie

written by  Crosswood on November 27, 2007 from Chico, United States
from the travel blog: New Zealand Student, American University.
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Yes getting the right side of the road is hard... all those headlights facing us...

mmmm pie

written by  Rebecca Harris on November 28, 2007

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