Thanksgiving, Part One

As promised, here is the text. I've decided to write this in sections, otherwise I'd be here writing too much at once.

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Thanksgiving, Part one
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The plan for thanksgiving was to head down to San Clemente, Orange County (south of LA) on the Wednesday evening. Sam, Rachel (a fellow co-opper), Matt (Rachel's brother) I had arranged, months before, to catch a ride down with some random ride-share. We were going to have a traditional American holiday with Rachel's family. It was a good plan. It was all looking good.

Wednesday morning we get an e-mail informing us that the "plan had changed" and the ride-share could only take three instead of four. As you can imagine, this was a slight problem, as there were, indeed, four of us.

After much consideration, it was decided by the powers that be that Sam and I would have to find our own way down. Now this was all worked out at about 3.30 Wednesday. The ride share came at 4, picked up Rachel and Matt. Sam and I decided to catch a bus down south, so rang the company and were assured that there were plenty of tickets. So we packed in a hurry and rushed down to the Oakland Greyhound bus station, about 20 minutes away. We were there by five. The idea was to catch a six o'clock bus down south (it should be mentioned that San Clemente is about 7 hours away). We would arrive in San Clemente sometime in the middle of the night, get a few hours sleep and be nice and happy the next day. It was a good plan. It was all looking good.

Of course, when we arrived at the station, a full hour before the bus was supposed to leave, we discovered that there were in fact no tickets left. Another slight problem.

Now what? Find an alternate way down or languish in Berkeley for the holiday...?

We decided to drive down. We had hired a car before (to get Down to Santa Barbara) rather cheaply, so this was thought to be a plausible option.

Only one slight problem, It was now five. The traditional car hire store closing time. So, after talking to a friendly policeman, we decided that the best bet was to go to Oakland International Airport, where there was bound to be a 24-hour car rental.

So now we had a new mission, make it the International Airport.

And this was no easy task.

For a start, the Oakland Airport isn't too near the bus station. To get there we needed to catch a train. We caught the train. Only to discover that the car rental place wasn't actually near the Airport. To get there we needed to catch a shuttle. We caught the shuttle.

By this stage we were getting just a bit tired.

After standing at the Hertz desk for 10 minutes, discussing things such as car insurance, drop off times. We decided to hire a car for one night; drive down to San Clemente and drop off the car. We would only need the car overnight. It was a good plan. It was all looking good.

Except for one slight problem. It was going to cost us over TWO HUNDRED dollars. American dollars... so that's, what?, around THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY New Zealand dollars.

We stood. We thought. We were perplexed.

Obviously this wasn't the great idea we had first thought.

So back to the Greyhound station it was, to catch the 11pm bus, so it was onto the shuttle and onto the train as we retraced our steps.

As we were rather early, we managed to get tickets. And we had a plan. And this time there were no slight problems.

Of course, the bus was two and a half hours late.

The Big Game

On Friday evening I went to a rally for the big Cal vs. Stanford foot ball game. A big fire was lit to symbolise the burning of Stanford under our might footballing prowess. The cheerleaders cheered. The dancers danced. The band banded. The axe axed (the axe is the trophy). The fire burned with such intensity we could feel it from the back of the stadium. 30 foot high flames licked the sky. It was hot.

The I came home and went to a midnight showing of 'The Never-ending Story'. Very entertaining, very fun

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Then on Saturday came the Big Game. I was woken early and we made our way out to Palo Alto, where there was a pre-game BBQ. We drove out to the game. We sat in the student section. We shouted 'GO BEARS!!"

It was definitely an American cultural experience.

First off, American Football games are long. The actual game is 4 quarters of 15 min each. Only an hour you say? No, you would be wrong. There are essentially two sets of players for each team. The offensive and the defensive. Every-time the ball changes teams the ~nsive players swap with the ~nsive players.

One game, including half-time, lasts approximately three and a half hours.

Standing up.

Pain.

But aside for sore feet, ankles and legs, I had a good time. Not to make a gross generalisation about a culture (a couple of guys at the rally got on stage and tried to do a haka. I felt culturally violated), I won't comment how the Americans are insanely passionate about the teams. I know we get some pretty fierce support for the Highlanders [edit- Shows how much attention I pay to sport, Katherine!! :-)]]down in Otago, but nothing like this. The stadium was divided into two halves, Red for Stanford (Booooooo!!) and Blue for Cal (GO BEARS!). And once I learnt some of the rules for their crazy, crazy game I got into it, doing the cheers and everything. I'm not sure if I would go to a game again, perhaps if it was in Berkeley and tickets were free I could be tempted, but without a doubt it was well worth the cultural experience.

GO BEARS!

Then I came back to the house and joined in the festivities- we were celebrating Christmas with a Christmas dinner. It was good.


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Today I woke up and headed into the city- attempting a third time to make it to Alcatraz.

Unfortunity we didn't make it.

So I once again spent a Sunday walking aimlessly around the city, looking a bookstores, eating at cafes and breathing in the ambience.

I love the city.

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And now I will go and wash dishes for an hour

I do not love workshift.

NZ GDP

NZ has alot of catchinng up to do...

Marin County

On Sunday I went into Marin County for a bit of a change of scene... here is a view of the city from there

Santa Barbara

So this past weekend I escaped from Berkeley for a couple of days, making my way down south for a couple of days.

Overall, despite one incident I might blog about later, I had a very good time.

We hired a car, got on the 101 and 5 hours later arrived in Santa Barbara.

Souther California has such a different feel from up here in Berkeley- it was nice seeing a bit more of this state and made me want to travel in the country a bit more...

The beaches were beautuful, the weather was good and I think I'll go back (at least before the end of the year anyway).

As I said earlier, all the photos I took I put on my flickr account (they're also on facebook), but here are the best ones...

A beautiful example of a Californian beach,
Chilln' on the beach...
and the Santa Barbara sunset.

Beautiful, no?

Santa Barbara

I'll write about my weekend in the next few days... ,but you can see the pictures on my flickr account in the meanwhile (the link is in the side). It's been a long, long, weekend, some things good, other things not so good. But all in good time...

No computer?

I'm not going to have a computer for a week :-(, I sent into the shop to get fixed (the three key was possessed and the network card wasn't working).

This weekend was good. There was something on at the house of Friday night, and that was fun. Then on Saturday I went to something on at one of the other Co-Ops. There was a band called 'Von Iva' playing, and they were awesome. During the encore no one wanted to leave and security was trying to kick us out.

Good times.

Costume

As requested, here is my costume :-)

Halloween

The Halloween weekend started on friday, where there was a party on at on of the other co-ops.

The music was way to loud and i didn't have a good time. After being there for about 5min my ears hurt, so we went and had a lookl at a soroity party, but that was also boring, so we were going to go to another one but then decided to just go back to the house.It was raining, so that didn't help matters.

On Saturday I I went into the city to go to alcatraz, but missed the ferry by about half and hour, so wandered around instead. Although I had a nice lunch at a restaurant in North Beach, the Italian part of town. I then came back to Berkeley, where, for the first time ever, I carved a jack-o-lantern. it was fun. Saturday night I decided not to go out and ened up watching some Buffy the Vampire slayer- Halloween episodes,

And Sunday I lay on memorial glade and read my novel and drank bad coffee, a rather carefree way to spend a day, even if I do say so myself.


On actual Halloween (Monday) I went to Castro street in SF with a whole bunch of people from the house. There would have been thousands of people there, but i didn't have a very good time. It was too crowded and I wished that I'd gone trick-or-treating instead.


And finally on Wednesday, I went to a day of the dead celebration in the city once again, which was great fun. It had so much atmosphere and everyone there was having such a good time. Definitely the highlight of my American Halloween experience!

I'll endevour to make decent post in the next few days, all about Halloween and things.