This week has been another one of those exciting Berkeley weeks that just make me really happy.

Firstly I had another massive assignment due which I put off due to other things – but I got it done again. I did a lot of hanging out with my friends, which may not be really exciting to read about, and it may not help me do my assignments, but I do it anyway.
I watched a very boring movie for ‘Russia to the 1700s’ called ‘Aundri Rublov’. It was really depressing, but it was banned by Stalin for years and years so it was worth watching just to spite ‘em. It was about a famous Russian painter, and his angst over the violence and bleakness of the country in which he lives.

Tuesday was interesting – I did another Army Training day thingy, but without all the water this time. It was land-nav, and I think they’ve finally figured out that I don’t need to do it, because they stuck me with the Cadet (who used to be a Sergeant in Iraq) who didn’t need to do the land Nav test. We taught another guy (who had joined that morning) how to read a map. It was mildly entertaining. Another thing that was mildly entertaining was an American Officer Cadet who was trying to show off his skills by claiming that he had perfectly calculated his position with only two resection angles. This wasn’t just on the map you understand – he was trying to tell me that he did this feat in the field. For those of you who don’t know, this is obviously ridiculous. It’s like claiming that you’ve shot down a helicopter using a rock.

Wednesday I was supposed to have a supply appointment with a Mr Perry. Mr Perry was sick that day, but it was cool because I got out of Army class early. This army class was being taken by another officer cadet who had, as they say, gone mad with power. He said things like ‘You listen to me when I take this class!!’ and ‘Popdoski – give me twenty for insolence!’ I just sat there and smiled at him. Yes, ok, I basically dared him to do it – I hate bullies. He didn’t though – he obviously has some small sense of self-preservation left. Maybe next time...

I tried to have the supply appointment today, but it didn’t happen. Mr Perry was confused as to what he should give me (obviously they don’t want to give me the new expensive equipment) and so it was decided that they were going to bring out some old stuff so I still look very different from the rest of the Officer Cadets. The Lt Col is also going to introduce me to a Brig, and I will be perfect and salute a lot and put on a good show. That’s what I’m here for. Maybe I can weasel an invitation to visit Westpoint out of it, which is the next goal. The entire plan is to not disgrace my uniform in front of the brass though – so that’s the focus. I’ll use up the last of my boot-polish on Monday just before I go in. I want to go to Westpoint and Annapolis eventually though, and take some notes for when I write a paper on comparative training institutions.

Also yesterday I had a study group. I got invited to join these girls randomly as I was walking around campus. It turns out my accent is very distinctive and so these girls realised I was in their class right away, even though they had never met me and I had never seen them before. It’s pretty gold – I’m not that great at this particular class, and so I am pleased that they asked. A burned shared is a burden halved, as they say.
Today was another class, that supply appointment with Mr Perry, and this house dinner. I ate WAY to much, cleaned up a lot and had a great time. The people here is this house are amazing.

More random friends then: Sitting next to me right now is Noa, a girl is who is just so nice that it is hard to credit it. She has brown hair so dark and shiny that it is almost black, is about 5’7” and has really great taste in clothes. Noa can suggest things to do so successfully you generally end up thinking it was your own idea in the first place, and if you do realise that is wasn’t your idea, it’s generally such a great idea (and she’s such a nice person) that you don’t mind doing it for her. And she’s really funny. She also has a sweet last name, which I’m not going to tell you, because then you’d be able to find her, which isn’t cool. Just trust me that it’s wicked, and spelt in a really funky way.

Anita is the youngster in our house – only 17. She’s Indian, is quite tall and is just a really calm person to be around. She has dark blue/black hair as well, and when she smiles you really can’t help but smile back, even if you’ve had a rubbish day. You know those people who are just really nice to sit and talk too? Trust me, sometimes after the weirdness that is our house, calm is so nice! She’s really proud to be at Berkeley, which I think is the best way to be. Some people here don’t realise how lucky they are. It’s the Promised Land, I’m sure of it.

Tonight I have a sweet game of soccer at 10pm (early tonight!) but I am not looking forward to it because I ate way to much, and running may be a problem. On the other hand I am looking forward to another chance to get a goal. I’m going to get a goal if it kills me!

Edited Note: We drew our football game! YAY! I didn't get a goal though, I did get close a couple of times.

I know tonight’s post wasn’t very funny, but I’m not in a funny mood. I’m full, calm and pretty much content. I’ve been invited to about six things tonight, so I feel very included, and I’m just typing away surrounded by people who I admire. It’s gold.
Tomorrow I shall finish off my EAP lunch speech (I am talking to a group about EAP and how important it is. I shall tell you how that goes.) and on Sunday I have that sweet study group thing. I shall tell you how that goes as well.

Again, sorry for how boringly unfunny this post was. I shall try harder next time. Until then I still,
Wish you were here

Margie

written by  Crosswood on October 11, 2007 from Berkeley, United States
from the travel blog: New Zealand Student, American University.
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OK – I’m going to describe it. Firstly, I was still awake at midnight, and then had a sweet conversation with Sarenna and Stephen in the Kitchen. There are very few people in the world who are as nice, or cool as Sarenna and Stephen, and pretty much all of these rare people also live in North House. I went to bed at two and got up at six. This may not sound that great, until you realise that I felt amazing when I got up (you know that feeling when you’ve hit on just the right combination of food and sleep?) and then I sat down and cranked out a speech which had been bothering me all week.
I presented it to some millionaires on Saturday! Nope, I’m not joking. I went to an EAP fundraising function, and gave this speech. American audiances are very involved with the speaker; I had people clapping and cheering while I was giving it! I think it went well.

Anyway, then Sarenna, who had asked to be woken at 7am, come into the picture. Goodness gracious me, she’s hilarious in the mornings! Firstly I crept into her room trying not to wake Noa (which was a high priority for me, but I needn’t have worried, because Noa apparently can take care of herself) and gave S. a shake. She let out this random high pitched whine, rolled over and tucked up the coverlet. Her cellphone alarm then went off, and without a pause, S rolled over and gave it a practiced smack. I was a bit surprised by all of this kurfufle, and was a bit bemused, when finally her alarm clock went off. Say what you want about S, she knows herself really well, and wasn’t going to let herself stand in the way of... herself I suppose. I mumbled to her ‘It looks like you’re going to get up if you want to or not.’ To which she replied ‘MumblemumbleI’llbedownstairsintenmintuesmumblemumble’ and I left. 20 minutes later a very tired and grumpy looking S wandered into the kitchen and demanded we eat Tuna. Yep – this was pretty random to me also. And then when she got going with the can opener, she couldn’t seem to stop, and she opened two Tuna cans and a can of soup. She mucked around with the soup on auto-pilot for about ten minutes, pouring it into a bowl and adding water and doing all sorts of things before she looked at her hands, got really confused and said to me ‘Why am I holding soup?’ It was so funny, but I didn’t laugh because I would have suffered swift death.
We got going eventually however, and S looked so tired that I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

Next I went to an Army class, which was pretty boring, but I got to get out early because I was supposed to have a supply meeting. In this class it turned out I knew what I was talking about, and the other guys didn’t, which always makes me happy. Enemy intent is not ‘resist strongly’ like the other cadets suggested – that’s what their morale PRIOR to battle is going to make them want to do. When they realise I’ve attacked their four men with an entire 30 man platoon plus mortars they’re going to want to get the hell away from there. Duh!
I was very good – I didn’t say a thing as the Sergeant explained I was very, very right. Dad, you’d be proud of me.

And the supply appointment? I’d mixed up the dates and it is next Tuesday. This is so gold – I didn’t have to waste an hour and a half of my life and I STILL got out of boring class.

I then applied for a scholarship, for which I have just enough time to apply before the deadline. I’m so pleased I got onto it yesterday because that means I can still apply today! And I wrote a cover letter in an hour and so it’s done, and I’ve sent it off. Wish me luck team!

I got a mid-term back and got another A. I thought I was going to be a bit slow in comparison to all the smart people here, but the serious amount of extra work they make us do really drags up your average. Possibly doing no work in New Zealand was a mistake?

I love medieval history full stop. That’s an awesome class. I’m going to see what else that lecturer teaches because she is awesome. It’s not that she’s a great teacher (except she is) it’s just that she loves her topic so much that you can’t help but love it as well. It’s like positive illness – it’s infectious, and makes you happy.

I also got a public library card, which was so easy as to be silly. I just had to give them my passport and proof of my address, and I walked out of there with four books. I love books.

On Saturday after that speech I also walked from the Bay bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge. For those of you that don’t know, that’s a seriously long walk. It was gold – 7 hours of walking made me feel a little less cooped up. And spending time with some of my favourite American people? Priceless. The pictures of us on the Golden Gate are magic (well not of me obviously – I don’t photo well) and I had lots of interesting experiences. Like cheap and wonderful bread! Like Reeces Cups (peanut butter covered with chocolate... Nope, I’m not kidding – it’s incredibly rich and probably so bad for you as to be stupid. Tastes GREAT!) and ‘In-and-Out’ which is a burger place which sells amazing food. The highlight was the walk though – I travelled the whole length of the San Fran waterfront. Next stop, the interior!

Today I again played soccer with my team. I like them – they’re all really cool. And we’re getting HEAPS better – we’re definitely going to win this time, I can feel it! After that I bought soap, which was interesting. I decided I was going to get something American, and bought soap called ‘Ivory’. Apparently this floats in the bath. Since I don’t have a bath, I’m probably not going to be able to test this theory, but it smells really nice. American soap is a lot more crumbly than New Zealand soap, as an aside.
I also went to a study group thingy, and met some really great people there as well. We studied for ages (I was useful because I had actually studied British history at school, and they were helpful for me because they knew the history of America like the back of their hands. The best type of study.) and got quite a bit done, which was unusual for me. And then we went for dinner, and I had some Mexican do-it-yourself food. The food here is SO good, but I think you got that picture four or five posts ago.

Cheers team, wish you were here

Margie

written by  Crosswood on October 14, 2007 from Berkeley, United States
from the travel blog: New Zealand Student, American University.
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This week was pretty blank really – I have an awful lot of work to do and very little time to do it in. Nethertheless I had a mid-term on Wednesday that went quite badly, scored a goal in soccer on Thursday, and hardly slept at all over my weekend.

The mid-term was on British Social History, which I did study for. The things he wanted us to study were quite broad, so I had to read my entire note-book to get everything, but in nothing like the depth I wanted, so when I got in there and started to write my exam I was little disappointed with how little I could actually write about. Such is life I suppose

My soccer game on Thursday we lost again, mostly because our best player wrenched his knee really badly while we were playing. I scored a goal after that, and was so happy! It was a little cross in front of the goal, which I tapped in, and all the work was done by this blonde German guy called Matti, but still. I got a goal!

It’s the weekends that I live for – on Saturday I was supposed to go to Alcatraz, but I was silly and made a mistake with the dates. I showed up all fat and happy wondering where the heck everyone was, but it turns out that it’s next Saturday. I can’t go that means, because I am going to Palo Alto to carve pumpkins. You know my life is just awesome when I get randomly invited to carve pumpkins! Anyway, because that fell through I went to San Francisco and wandered around again. I ended up in the hippy district, and an anarchist bookstore. I really wanted to buy some of the stuff there – I’ll take you, Mum and Dad, if you get here. It was classic.

I also love donuts.

Friday night I was up very late – Noa suggested we make cookies, but we had no ingredients. By the time we’d walked to the all night supermarket, got a movie and done various things like that, it was 0130. By the time the cookies were one it was 0330. I thought of you Kippies, with someone stuck out in the field this late at night on sentry. Obviously I was having a better time than you though. HA! Suckers.
Saturday night I was up very late as well, because I watched the movies that we chose the night before. Freda (about this Mexican painter) and the Boondock Saints. Both were good in different ways – Auntie Donna, maybe you’ve seen Freda? It was both wonderful and horrible, which is a little like her paintings really.

I can’t really remember much about Sunday, except I watched a good football match which one of my friends was playing in, and then went to Catholic church because the protestant churches are useless and don’t have services at night. It was nice. We sang Slane, which is one of my all-time favourite hymns. And then we had donuts.

Don’t be surprised if I don’t update this for a wee while – I have so much work to do it is not even funny anymore. Cheers team,

Margie

written by  Crosswood on October 22, 2007 from Berkeley, United States
from the travel blog: New Zealand Student, American University.
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As you might have heard, I can’t stay for an extra semester here, although I spun the army an excellent yarn. If anything was going to convince them it would have been that, so obviously it was not meant to be.

I’ve had a brilliant week though – after being stressed out about the vast amounts of homework due in this two week period, I got two out of the most pressing ones out of the way, just in time to be handed two more. Yay! At least the deadlines are far away now.

Really the week at university was very average – I sat in class, I did a couple of exams (‘mid-terms’) and generally worked my brain a little harder than it would have liked. Life is like that however, and the result will be worth it.

The weekend was the awesome bit. On Friday Westminster House North had a Karaoke party, which was surprisingly fun. Me and my friends ripped out ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’ which is a great Karaoke song because it’s so easy, you can get everyone singing along with you. I also had a pre-made costume with my beret and a few other items of uniform. Yes I know it’s not strictly allowed, but I’m on a very tight budget, so I’m sure the Army has bigger issues to worry about.

After this we went out for dinner and I had a great time talking about nothing. I love talking with these Westminster House guys – the people that were with me at dinner are amazing people (you seem to have to be randomly talented to actually get into Berkeley, as opposed to just visiting) and dinner with them is a real treat. Dinner anywhere is a real treat – American food (even if it’s disguised as another cultures food) has really grown on me. I have a terrible sweet tooth though (you all know that) so this place is paradise.

On Saturday I got to go to Palo Alto. This was very exciting – we took a great train right the way down the bay, and I finally got out of the city of ‘Frisco (as much as you can.) Palo Alto is a suburb of ‘Frisco which felt a lot like Lower Hutt, except it was MASSIVE, and it never ended. I was relying on people telling me ‘and now we’re in Freemont’ to figure out where we were, because it was all one massive development. Americans don’t just build stuff – they engineer it. Noa’s father (who kindly picked us up from the BART station) drove us past this slightly disgusting mud-flat (which had nice Ibis though) across this beautiful bridge to the other side of the estuary. The Americans didn’t even notice, but I was mesmerised. Why don’t we get things so wonderful in New Zealand? Money I suppose – it’s easier to build something blocky and horrible than curving and with flawless lines.

After messing around town for a little bit (the best English Breakfast tea I’ve had in America was in Palo Alto) we went to watch a friend play rugby at Stanford University. Unfortunately we missed most of her games, but we caught the tail end of one and I got admiring glances from the coach of the Cal Rugby team for actually knowing all the rules, even the obscure one about travelling (lots of the players don’t, yet alone Americans.) The one time hanging out with all those boys is useful.
While at Stanford we also saw this statue garden with lots of famous cast-iron sculptures in it. Some people have problems – I admire his art, but couldn’t he have made it less angsty?

We then went to this super Halloween store, which was just strange. I know this is a little vulgar, but you could get everything there up to and including a giant penis suit. I’m not joking. It was the strangest place I’ve been in a long time, and I’d post the pictures of us in the big blonde wigs, except I know you’d laugh and then I’d have trouble living it down. So I won’t. But you can imagine.

After decorating the yard (I knew I was tall for a reason! For hanging Halloween lights.) and going to a random supermarket (kids push a button and the puppets do a song and dance routine about how you should just say no to drugs.), we went out for tea.
Dinner – Oliver Garden. The waiter I thought was nice – when he heard I was foreign and didn’t know what the soups tasted like, he bought me them all in little sampler bowls. The others were slightly snippy because he should have kept them liberally doused in bread-sticks. I wasn’t adverse to this plan either to tell you the truth – the bread-sticks were pretty good.

We also made Halloween cookies, which were huge because the cutters were massive. Some of them were undercooked, but that was OK because the stuff was so sweet you couldn’t tell the difference. We iced them all pretty, and I drew a really excellent lobster on a pumpkin shaped one. Hey – a lobster is scary.

We carved pumpkins with what seemed at one point like the entire street plus friends and family, and I did OK. Not bad, but OK. I carved a dragon, and have it in my basement right now. I know I’m not artistic or anything, but pumpkin seems to be my medium (so long as I have a stencil!)

We came back, and today I also had a great day. I had a (for want of a better word) jam session with a girl in my house (who is lovely) and who taught me a new song about how that person (ie myself) isn’t the one you want/need. Then we tried to film it, and succeed a couple of times. She sounds amazing – I tried to sing quietly so she’d be more in the recording, but my voice is annoyingly loud. Why did no one mention this before? Actually, I think you might all have mentioned it a few times... I forget. And so do you.

Cheers Team, and have a good day

Margie

written by  Crosswood on October 29, 2007 from Palo Alto, United States
from the travel blog: New Zealand Student, American University.
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I have lots of work, and am struggling a little bit with it, but I'm pushing through. Yesterday was Halloween, which was fun. It's a very big holiday here in the states, and some of my friend's costumes were amazing! I'm pleased it's over though - it's not really my cup of tea. I don't like horror films.
I got heaps of chocolate though, which was gold.

Not much happening, except for me helping innocent firstyears become less studious.
Cheating is always wrong team, and that's why I don't participate in it.
No, I'm serious.

written by  Crosswood on November 1, 2007 from Berkeley, United States
from the travel blog: New Zealand Student, American University.
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This week when I was at military science class we were taught pepper-potting, which I've done before. Everyone who was in the army knows what pepper-potting is, but if you haven’t had that privilege then just remember that it’s the most basic training any army can provide. It’s one foot on the ground while the other is moving.

Anyway, it’s all about speed and aggression and throwing your body onto the ground to avoid getting shot. It’s very fun, but the Americans weren’t very good. Traditionally I haven’t been very good at this either, but since I’d done it before I was good by default. It was cool! I did the mean potting – everyone thought I either was hard-core or crazy.

Everything else has been pretty boring. Work, work and more work. I’ll talk to you guys when I’ve got something to talk about.

Cheers

Margie

written by  Crosswood on November 6, 2007 from Berkeley, United States
from the travel blog: New Zealand Student, American University.
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A couple of international students from my soccer team looked like they were flying down to LA for the weekend – they were asking if anyone else wanted to come. I was vaguely interested – I’ve been to LA before, but not on this trip. I sent an email reply saying that it would be cool to go. Those friends said there weren’t any seats, but some people might want to organise a car to drive down there. About three minutes later, I got a call on my cell phone and I was going to LA for two days, spontaneously.

Two magic words – Road Trip. It was great – I woke up at six am, walked down to Telegraph Ave and was picked up by this German guy named Adrian and a Canadian called Joanna. Us three were the only ones going down by car, and I couldn’t drive because I was under the age for insurance, so those two were the only drivers, and they quickly showed their worth. In two days they ran four red lights (none of them on purpose, but one in front of three lanes of oncoming traffic), went the wrong way down two one way streets, got a speeding ticket for going 92 miles an hour in Merced (60 mile per hour zone) and generally swerved back and forth over as many lanes of the freeway as possible to take up. Never let anyone tell you that New Zealander’s are inconsiderate drivers again!

Needless to say I was the fun-Nazi voice of reason in all of this – but what in New Zealand would be broad hints aren’t at all hints in the more direct American culture. For example, five minutes before the speeding ticket I spotted how fast we were going and said to Jo ‘If we get a speeding ticket, who is going to pay it?’ Pretty obvious right? Apparently not.
‘Margaret! Why didn’t you say anything about me going too fast?’

The crossing in front of the three lanes of traffic thing was done by the German guy, Adrian. He saw the green light for going ahead, but not the red light for turning, and so just turned. It was pretty frightening for me, and I still can’t help but laugh as I talk about it now, because Adrian didn’t even notice until after we were safely through the intersection. He was then so horrified that he lost concentration and almost took out two pedestrians on a zebra crossing. All in all, not one of the more successful driving experiences of my life.

We drive 350 miles down the central valley from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which was a nice drive but quite boring. The landscape is very flat, devoid of all vegetation aside from a very short brown scrub, and occasionally farms. Every 30 or 40 miles, so regular you could set your clock to it, there was a ‘town’ that consisted of three or four fast-food joints and a motel. I suspect they cater for the truck-drivers that come up and down this route, but it was amazing how none of these ‘towns’ had a supermarket or anything. It was literally just some fast-food places and a place to stay.

Our first stop on this road trip was at one of these places, called Wasco, where we had Denny’s. Denny’s is an American fast food chain which is somewhere between Cobb and Co and McDonalds – very unhealthy, huge portions. It was very crowded when we went in, and every single person there was overweight – it was like the America you see in those bad movies about the ’hollowness of life’. We quickly worked out the reason for everyone being overweight – I took one look at the menu and ordered a side-order of toast for my meal. (A side note: everything in America is about choice. When I ordered my toast is wasn’t just ‘white or brown’ it was ‘do you want rye, sour dough, white wheat flour, corn flour, ect. And this was at a fast food place!) I scraped a lot of the butter off and it was quite nice. The other two picked the mega-breakfast and it was massive and covered with grease. They enjoyed it!

Then it was back on the road, and I had to work very hard to prevent us stopping within the hour at the International House of Pancakes, better known as iHop. This decision to not go to IHop right then and there was a mistake which later came back to haunt me – but that’s a story for later.

After about 4 hours a line of hills appeared up from the horizon. These hills are pretty random, because there is nothing but plains before them, and nothing but hills after. Through these hills more and more green began to appear, until we entered into LA county and from there to LA proper.

Driving along the freeways is a hassle – and although I kept telling the driver which exit we were to take we missed it anyway. Honestly – this is the last time I take a trip with fully spontaneous people! No... it wasn’t that bad – they’re brilliant people. They’re just a little flighty. Anyway, we ended up in Venice Beach, which isn’t very nice. We got all the way down there to go and stay with these other two people from our soccer team, but they’re a couple, and they weren’t that keen to have us around. They ‘suggested’ we’d find more accommodation in Hollywood than in Venice Beach. They’re funny people. Anyway, we drove for another hour to get to Sunset blvd, which was very dodgy. My car-mates told me ‘the first place we find to stop and stay the night we’ll take’ and so I delighted in pointing out all the tumble-down, paint-flecked ‘hotels’ with hookers standing out the front. Eventually to my disappointment we found a motel 6, which was pretty much fully booked except for a double room in a smoking section, and a single room in a non-smoking section. We went for the double first, but it stunk so badly we moved into the single room. I slept on the floor in my army sleeping-bag while Jo and Adrian slept in the bed. Perhaps this sounds a little odd – why would one girl sleep on the floor while another girl and a guy who don’t date or anything sleep in the bed? By this stage I had come a-cropper of the dreaded lurgy, and was sick with the flu. I didn’t want to give them it, so I stayed away from them. We met up with our friends and strolled down Hollywood Blvd, which was nice. The stars on the walk were fun to watch, the stores were all very cool (if a little touristy) and the Chinese Theatre especially was worth a visit. All those hand-prints were excellent! My favourite was the harry potter actors’ handprints. The whole courtyard with all the handprints was smaller than I expected though - What happens when they run out of space?

We had hamburgers for dinner, and then I went home to bed (because I felt like rubbish) whilst my friends wandered off and visited famous nightspots, and Sushi restaurants. My University American Football team also lost (which was a big disappointment), but the floor was surprisingly comfy. The next morning, well rested, we went to see the Hollywood sign. We followed the directions given to us by Adrian’s iPhone (which is amazing by the way), but the directions that it imported had a large flaw. It didn’t realise that some of the routes were ‘authorized’ vehicles only, so in the end we had a great tikki-tour of the Hollywood hills, but saw no Hollywood sign. We did see it in the end, but only from a great distance away. Such is life.

We then swung by Muscle beach and the Santa Monica pier. It was Veteran’s Day in the USA and they’d placed thousands of crosses out on the beach to commemorate Iraqi war soldiers who’ve died, and they were holding a ceremony on the beach. We watched them until a protest group showed up with ‘9/11 was a fake made up by the govt!!!’ signs. There were quite a few of them, and the memorial service didn’t acknowledge that they were there, but I still thought it was in poor taste. We didn’t go on any of the rides on Santa Monica pier, but it was interesting to watch other people do it.

After this we went to see UCLA, which was very nice (but it looked like someone had designed it using a huge ruler) It was conveniently right next to the Bel Air gates, so I got a photo of that as well. Jo was trying to find the UCLA store so she could buy stuff, and I pointed to some blue parasols in the distance and said ‘that looks like food, and so the commercial area. It’ll be over there in the commercial area, surely.’ Jo and Ad decided to check the map and settled on the Student Activates Centre as being the most likely place, even though I said it was likely to be the gym. So we walked over the campus to the gym, discovered it was a gym, and then walked down to the memorial fountain. Jo went and asked someone where the store was, but she didn’t speak English. I pointed out to Jo that the lady had a UCLA store bag, so we just had to walk in the direction from which the lady came to find it. Jo’s response? – ‘This is why we keep you around Margaret.’ So we followed the trail of people carrying UCLA bags to the courtyard with the blue parasols in it. It turns out the blue parasols was the student store. There Jo spent money and I wandered around looking for something that I could give to Annabel. Eventually the money ran out on the parking metre, so we went back and headed out of town.

We didn’t go back the same way we drive in – we went up the coast towards Santa Barbara and stopped there. The scenery was much nicer on this leg, but I wasn’t impressed by SB. It was like I thought America was going to be like all over the place when I arrived – very two dimensional. American flags lined the recently brick-laid streets, pseudo-Spanish architecture dominated the area, and the main street was like an outdoor mall for chain stores. The food we had was very good though, and it was interesting to visit three University of California towns in a couple of days.

From here we drove to Santa Monica. Remember how I said I regretted not going to iHop on the first day? Well, the other two got obsessed with the idea of going there, so I pulled up Adrian’s iPhone and we went on a mighty hunt for them. We probably went an hour out of our way, and 100 miles further, to find one, and only then by heroic efforts on the part of the iPhone. We did find one however, and the food was good – massive MASSIVE portions of pancakes which made me VERY full.

I was pleased to get home to Berkeley but I had a great time. I hope everyone else had a great weekend, and I’ll talk to you guys about everything going on later.

Again, if you’ve got questions it’d be good, because then I’d have something to write about.

written by  Crosswood on November 10, 2007 from Los Angeles, United States
from the travel blog: New Zealand Student, American University.
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