Half way through

Exactly four months after arriving at Berkeley, it was time to pack and go back home for Winter break.  These were the best months of my life so far, in every sense.  I've never learnt so much, grown up so much, worked so much and met so many interesting/intelligent/different people in any other experience.

Till Friday, the day of my last final exam, I didn't properly realize I was going home soon.  I was actually living a mixture of emotions by then.  I couldn't believe I was seeing my family, special Mom and Dad, and my friends in a few hours.  On the other hand, I couldn't believe I wouldn't see very close friends from my experience in Berkeley in a near future either.

I started to write this post on Friday evening.  However, suddenly, some of my friends from iHouse invaded my room to start partying.  We spent a few hours in ihouse enjoying each others' company, playing drinking games, making fun of each other and exchanging a few goodbye gifts.  We went to the bars for a while, where some of my friends probably danced hip-hop in a club for the last time in their lives, and went back to ihouse to continue the goodbyes.  We basically stood up all night long, laying on the couches, singing, hugging everyone and taking pictures together.  At 3:30 am, a shuttle arrived to take me to the airport.  Bye Mario, bye Ron, bye Guido, buy Safa, by Huw, by Mike, by Emre, bye, bye, bye.  See you soon Luisa (we still have a dinner together on January, 4th...).

My way back home was very long but perfectly feasible.  I slept in each of the three flights I caught.  And, as soon as I arrived in Portugal, I had Mom, Dad, Pedro, Ricardo, Tio Miguel and Mada waiting for me at the airport, and a surprise lunch with all my family and four of my best friends in Azeitão.  Thanks Mom and Dad.  It feels good to be back home.  Berkeley, see you soon!

Actually Dead Week

Today I arrived in the library at 8 am.  Now it's 11:45 pm and I only left it to have meals, go to the gym and go to the toilet.  Finals week coming up soon?  Challenge accepted!

All in all, I'm only a little bit over a week, 3 finals and 9125 km away from home...

(Not so) Dead Week

The week before finals week is called Dead Week.  It is supposed to be a stressful week in which everyone finishes projects and papers and prepares for the final exams.  However, from what I've seen, it is also a week full of social events organized so that students can release a little bit of their stress.

So far, my Dead Week has included the following activities:

- some beers with my indoor soccer team, after the final game of the tournament.

- a night out in SF with my best friends from i-House on Friday: Luisa, Yasmina, Ludo, Nico and Mario.  Luisa's brazilian friend Lara has been working in the city for 11 months but is now going back to Brazil.  Luisa invited us to go to her goodbye party, in the most trendy venue I've been lately.  The party was in part of the office where Lara worked.  It was some kind of bar, with some kind of loft with a huge table for meetings upstairs, and some kind of dance floor, stage and drinking area downstairs.  Both the decoration and the lights made it a special place to be.  I'm actually trying to find an excuse to organize a party there so let me know if you have any ideas.  Haha.

- the International House Holliday Reception on Sunday.  This event was first supposed to be a huge party for all the residents, with party buses to and from a club in San Francisco, booked just for us.  However, i-House council did not allow that event to happen. As an alternative, the Program Office suggested a reception in i-House's Great Hall with music and food, followed by a party in Berkeley's most popular bar - Pappy's - but this last part was not allowed either.  I guess i-House doesn't want to be associated with the students' failure in exams...  All in all, i-House provided a nice Holliday Reception in the Great Hall, with lots of food (more than a thousand dollars were spent on food for this event), Christmas songs and everyone dressed up.  Although the party at Pappy's was not allowed, one of the residents - my South African friend Safa - pretended it was his birthday and organized a party there.  Most people ended up going there anyway.

- lots of meals in the dinning hall with most of my friends, since everyone spends more time in i-House now that the classes are over.

- many, many hours spent studying in i-House's library.  I've been studying so much that, last Thursday, when I went to Professor Filippou's office hours, he said the following: "Marta, I think you have been studying too much for this class.  I'm concerned that you are leaving the other classes behind.  I don't think that you can keep up to the other classes if you study so much for this one."  Haha.  Once a nerd, always a nerd!

- some review sessions.

- daily gym sessions.

I have another social events scheduled for the following days, namely the following:

- a White Elefant Gift Exchange with my classmates.  Does anyone know what it consists of?  It's a game in which each participant supplies one wrapped gift.  Each person at a time chooses one gift.  The first person opens a gift and the turn ends.  The second and following people have two options: they can either steal any unwrapped item or choose a wrapped one.  Anyone who has its gift stolen has the chance to open another unwrapped one.  Steal-backs are not allowed.  We actually got some funding  for food for this event from the Structural Engineering department because we organized it as a event from our Social Club of SEMM Students and we are bringing a toy to donate to Toys for Tots besides the unwrapped gift.

- two birthday parties (I'm not sure if I'm attending both yet.  It depends on the amount of work I get done.)

- a lunch with my classmates at i-House's dinning hall on Friday.  Since I won't be able to spend all the meals I still have available on my meal plan this semester by myself, I invited my classmates to come have lunch with me on Friday.

This is it!  My final exams are Monday morning, Tuesday afternoon and Friday morning.  After that, it's time to go home see all the people I miss.

See you soon!

IM Tournament

Let me introduce you to the second place IM indoor soccer team - the Shear Studs!

I'm not sure if I told you before that I participated in an indoor soccer tournament throughout this semester, as part of the structural engineering team.  My classmates invited me to play because they were lacking in girls on the team.  In this kind of tournaments, there has to be an even number of males and females on the field.  I decided to accept and I'm glad I did it.  We played every Thursday at night.  We played with a bouncing ball, we could use the walls and we were allowed switch players as many times as we wanted.

We got better and better and we ended up qualifying for the final, which took place yesterday.  We didn't win but we played pretty well.  Baring in mind we played against a team that beat us 7-0 and made fun of us very badly in the first game we played against them and that this time they had to sweat a lot to win, we were happy with the final result.

Who would guess that a bunch of nerdy structural engineering students could make a good indoor soccer team?

Before I say goodbye, let me just clarify that I am not responsible for the team name.  Haha.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is an originally religious celebration, which marks the beginning of the holiday season.  It is only celebrated in the US and in Canada, but in different occasions: the fourth Thursday of November and the second Monday of October, respectively.

On Thanksgiving Day, families and friends gather for a large dinner.  They usually meet early in the afternoon to cook and organize the meal together.  That dinner, one of the most expected of the year,  consists of lots of food and traditionally starts with the host or hostess saying grace.

A Thanksgiving dinner would not be a Thanksgiving dinner if it didn't include baked or roasted turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet corn, some kind of vegetables and lots of desserts, namely pumpkin pie.

Another important part of Thanksgiving festivities is watching American football games.  From what I heard, teams like the Dallas Cowboys and the New England Patriots always play on this day.

My Thanksgiving experience this year matched exactly this general description.  Pedro and I went to the Cantlays' house, where he has spent this day in the past three years.  We got there at 3 pm.  I spent all afternoon cooking with the ladies, while him and Patrick watched football on television.  By 6 or 7 pm, we had prepared some appetizers, turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes with marshmallows (!!!), green beans with mushrooms, two different kinds of stuffing, and corn rolls, as well as two pumpkin pies, two apple pies, a raspberry pie, a custard tart, a chocolate cake, ginger bread, cookies and a cranberry crumble.  All of this for around 20 people, kids included.

In the meanwhile, when the Cantlays saw my camera, they thought I was some kind of photographer and thus made me take charge of the photo shooting for this year's Christmas cards.  I loved it.  It was another very American experience in that very American day.  Here is the result:

Because most people go home for this celebration, most companies and schools close on Friday, the famous Black Friday.  It's often the busiest shopping day of the season, with crazy sales starting very early in the morning.  I did some shopping in LA on Friday.  Could that count as another check in my American to-do list?  I guess so...

This little four-day break could not have been better.  I went to LA, got to spend some relaxing time with Pedro, caught up my studies, had this amazing American experience, played some tennis, went to an American Football game, ate nice food, did some shopping, and rested a lot.  I am now ready for my last week of classes and three more weeks of lots of studying before going home.

In this Thanksgiving season, I have two things to say.  Firstly, that I am very thankful for having the best family and friends in the world and for having the chance to spend this year in Berkeley.  Secondly, that, in my opinion, we should think about what we are thankful everyday and not only in this time of the year.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Birthday girl

Oh yeah!  For two days, I was the birthday girl here in Berkeley.  Is that a good enough excuse for spending so much time without writing a post?  I hope so.  If not, that's fine.  Last week, it was already an excuse for lots of other things, such as:

- having Pedro, Miguel and Rita visiting for a few days;

- receiving tons of messages, phone calls, skype calls and Facebook posts throughout the 30 hours that made my birthday, starting at 0:00 in Portugal and finishing at 12:00 pm here in California;

- being awarded with many hugs, kisses and even presents from my nice friends in Berkeley;

- having two relaxed days, Friday (after my 10 am midterm) and Saturday, without even touching any book;

- organizing a potluck dinner with my closest friends in I-House and a cocktail night with lots of other people;

- being surprised with a postcard from my dear classmates, a few letters in the mailbox, some roses from Pedro and kiwis (oh, how I missed kiwis!) from Mico and Rita;

- receiving money from Mom and Dad to buy an iPhone 5 as soon as the unlocked version is released, and from my aunts, uncles and grandparents to buy whatever I want;

- eating whatever I wanted;

- asking Miguel and Pedro to give me massages all the time;

- etc., etc., etc.

My potluck dinner was one of the best dinners I had here in Berkeley.  Luisa, Yasmina, Pedro and I went to the supermarket in the afternoon and we gathered with my other best friends around 6:30/7:00 pm. Everyone cooked or pretended to help organizing our dinner, some way or another.  Around 8:30 pm, we had the following dishes on the table: Coronation Chicken (cooked by Yas), Mushroom Risotto (cooked by Claudia), Mediterranean Salad (prepared by me), mini steaks (cooked by Mico and Rita) and sausages (bought by Pedro but cooked by them as well), a quiche (bought by Mike and Huw), nachos and tomato dip (bought by Mario), some bread and cheese (provided by Pedro), an Egyptian dish (brought by Nour) and a few Middle East dishes, such as warm pitta bread with olive oil and spices and a few typical dips (prepared by Nour, Nathalie and Taymour), and a selection of fresh fruit (bought by Emre).  Not to mention the sangria prepared by Nico, Coke and Ludo and the watermelon cocktail made by Taymour.  For the dessert, we had Rita's apple crumble and pear crumble and Luisa's pear in wine, accompanied with vanilla ice cream.  Does this sound yummy enough?  It was more than yummy!  Daniel was the only one who didn't bring anything but he has the excuse of working harder than anyone else for school.

Around 9:30 pm, other people started coming and our night was made of preparing and drinking cocktails, dancing a lot, playing pool, taking pictures, and singing happy birthday at midnight.  I even had a cake with candles!  It was a very nice party...

On Saturday, I just had a relaxed day.  The four of us - Rita, Mico, Pedro and me - had brunch together, and then Rita had to leave for the airport.  Before Pedro left for the airport as well, we spent some quality time with Mico and played tennis together.  After Pedro left, Miguel took good care of me.  We had dinner with some friends of mine in iHouse's dining hall and then watched a movie in Luisa's room.  It was a good relaxing day.  Everyone kept me so entertained that it was not as hard to be away from home as I thought it would be!