UBRIH

"Hey guys!

Everything I’m about to say, would be much appreciated if you kept it on the DL (that’s downlow).
Basically I’m planning on setting up a sister branch to a society at my home university called UBRUB: Urban Beverage Racing University of Bristol.
How is works back there is you have set teams, typically 2 boys and 2 girls and you are all tied together.
Then you essentially complete a pub crawl, where you down a drink and run to the next bar. Maximum 8 drinks, and include anything from a jagerbomb to a strawpedo… It sounds messy but it’s incredibly fun and the winner gets a patch, to show how cool they are.
Have a similar idea for I-House but instead of bars we use the rooms and different floors for the race. People who don’t want to race can help monitor that the drinks are finished ONLY in the rooms.

ALL GOOD?

Thanks, Courtney xoxoxoxoxo"

And because getting to know other cultures also involves getting to know how they party, today I decided to experience the UBRIH: Urban Beverage Racing International House.  Courtney, the girl who wrote and published the above message, is a british very cool chick that is my neighbor.  She ordered some official t-shirts, picked 8 different stations all over i-House, bought lots of drinks, invited people and the result was... a crazy Friday evening.  As you would all expect, I was part of the monitoring crew, not a real participant.  I was responsible for the 8th floor drinking station and for taking as many pictures as possible.

Attached to this post, there are several photos of what happened tonight here in the dorms.  Enjoy!

Weekending in Berkeley

After a few weeks here, I feel ready to describe a random weekend here in Berkeley.

Most people are not very busy on Fridays so that's when the weekend begins.  Friday's late afternoons wouldn't be Friday's late afternoons if we wouldn't play some kind of group sport, particularly touch rugby.  Likewise,  Friday's nights wouldn't be Friday's nights if we didn't party hard.  Parties usually start in i-House's 4th floor (aka party floor) and move on either to the i-House's games room, a fraternity party or a bar.  The good thing about doing an exchange year in the US is that you can party and still study in the following day because nightlife finishes around 2 am.  It is not legal do sell alcoholic drinks after 2 am here.  All bars and nightclubs close by then...

On Saturdays, most people have to study and just a few of us dare to go traveling.  If traveling is the choice, San Francisco and Santa Cruz have been the most popular destinations so far.  If there's no way of escaping from a big study session, there are plenty of places to go: tons of library's (including i-House's one), loads of very nice caffes, each other's dorms, etc.  Everyone is very busy with school here and it feels good not to be the only one who has to study hard.

On Saturdays' evenings, everyone is so tired from the previous night and the study session that we end up just watching a movie or playing some board games all together.  As you can see, it's nice to live here.

Another (important) feature of weekends in Berkeley is the gastronomic experience.  I-House offers only two meals per day during the weekends: a huge brunch and dinner.  What most people do is having a nice meal in another place too.  This week's personal gastronomic experience was Dim Sum: a Chinese brunch.  I saved a swipe for a meal here in i-House and went to a Asian Restaurant for brunch today with my classmates.  I really liked it!  Somewhere in the bottom of this post, there's a picture of some of the dishes we ate.

Weekends wouldn't be weekends if I didn't post something on my blog, right?  Take a look at some pictures taken in the past three days.  Talk to you soon!  :)

Random stuff

Every time I walk on campus, on my way to classes, to the gym or back to i-House, I dream up what else I can publish on my blog.  In the past few days, I've been putting together a list of typical things of American college life in general and of Berkeley in particular.  That's what I am going to talk about today.

Everyone, I mean EVERYONE, rushes around campus everyday.  If they are not exchange students, there are a bunch of things that they for sure do (or do not do).

- In the morning, they carry a backpack and/or a cup of coffee on their hands.

- At lunchtime (I mean, American lunch time, from 11 am to 12:30 pm), they eat while walking.  Salads, sandwiches, burritos...  Whatever.  They carry a big beverage cup in one hand, the food in the other, and they rush in every direction possible.

- Late in the afternoon, all around campus, there are groups of people playing ultimate frisbee or dancing hip-hop.  I go to the gym everyday after finishing my homework and I'm almost sure that I've seen people doing both those sports every single day.  Most of the times, the guys dancing hip-hop are asians, but they know very well how to shake their butts!

- Also, everybody wears Cal clothes.  Cal or whatever college they go to.  It's nice to realize how they are proud of what they are.  But it's not so nice to see that they don't really care about fashion.

- No one dresses up for the daily life.  It's very, very common for people to go to classes in sportive clothes.  That's why European girls are so successful on Uncle Sam's land.  Haha.

- Everyone eats sweets all the time.  Going out for a desert, either a frozen yogurt, a donut, or an ice cream cookie sandwich is an excuse to hang out with other people.  Going out for a desert here is like going out for a coffee in Portugal.

- No one smokes.  Not only is it actually forbidden to smoke closer than 20 feet to any building, but there are even a few streets where no one is allowed to smoke.  Cheers to the USA on that!

- Everyone goes to every single class.  All my international friends find that very weird.  In Portugal and, as they say, in most countries around the world, college students are lazy and don't attend most theoretical classes.  Here, no one misses a lecture.  The academic rhythm is seriously different from everywhere else.

Talking about Berkeley in particular now, this is a very peculiar place.  People who live here are mostly college students, hippies and homeless people.  I truly believe that a great amount of the homeless people here are street people because they chose to be.  It's a way of living.  Walking at night next to the People Park, for instance, one can see couples sleeping side by side on the walk way.  Berkeley has always been related to the hippies movement in the 1960's.  Maybe that's why they all come here.  They are not scary at all, they don't bother anyone, they just live...  In fact, I'm perfectly used to them.

I'm pretty sure that tomorrow, on my way to classes, while thinking about life and about what to write  next on my blog, I'll remember many interesting things I forgot to mention now.  No worries, I will have many more opportunities to keep you up-to-date.

P.S. Squirrels are Berkeley's pigeons. Hahaha.

One down, many more to go

1 month in Cal = a new home

1 month in Cal = a new bank account

1 month in Cal = a new cell phone number

1 month in Cal = tons of new friends from all over the world (Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Turkey, Cyprus, Greece, Lebanon, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Serbia, Russia, UK, Ireland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Morocco, Iran, Egypt, India, China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia, South Africa, Namibia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, USA, Canada and so on)

1 month in Cal = many orientation events

1 month in Cal = 3 new classes

1 month in Cal = many lectures and discussion sessions

1 month in Cal = (way too) many homework assignments

1 month in Cal = many, many, many hours in the civil engineering computer lab

1 month in Cal = very smart classmates

1 month in Cal = a nice and helpful advisor

1 month in Cal = a thesis supervisor

1 month in Cal = some housework and laundry

1 month in Cal = 3 weekends with Pedro

1 month in Cal = 1 trip to Monterey

1 month in Cal = 1 trip to Los Angeles

1 month in Cal = 2 trips to San Francisco

1 month in Cal = 2 American football games

1 month in Cal = lots of workout (yoga, pilates, spinning, jogging, conditioning, touch rugby)

1 month in Cal = many miles walked

1 month in Cal = (only) one day at the beach

1 month in Cal = lots of parties

1 month in Cal = some fraternity experience

1 month in Cal = lots of food

1 month in Cal = great breakfasts and brunches

1 month in Cal = tons of cookies

1 month in Cal = too little fish

1 month in Cal = almost no cooking

1 month in Cal = lots of crazy people on the streets

1 month in Cal = many homeless people

1 month in Cal = 13 posts on my blog

1 month in Cal = some photos

1 month in Cal = many hours in Skype

1 month in Cal = 3 familiar events (that felt so good...)

1 month in Cal = no visits so far (except Pedro)

1 month in Cal = still a lot to do

Marta, the butcher

"Marta, the butcher!" Are you curious about this title?

Last Tuesday, the day after my arrival back from LA, a classmate of mine told me she was gonna drive down to Santa Barbara the following weekend and she asked me if I wanted to go with her and ask Pedro to pick me up there.  It sounded like a great plan.  Pedro was supposed to have a team meeting on Sunday afternoon but it was canceled.  So, it seemed that Pedro and I had managed to find a way to spend another weekend together.

On Friday, I woke up early as usual and packed before going to the only class I had.  That class is taught by Professor Moehle, who I have already mentioned before as the concrete buildings superstar.  Are you wondering why am I talking about concrete buildings and the title of this post is "Marta, the butcher"?  Haha.  After class, Professor Moehle told me he accepted being my thesis supervisor here in Berkeley.  Oh yeah!  That's really, really good news.

The bad news about the good news was that, when I was outside of I-House waiting for my friend to pick me up around 12:30 pm, I realized I had received an e-mail from Professor Moehle.  His e-mail said that now that we were going to work together, it would be good for me to meet most of the people who do research with him.  They were all going to his house on Saturday (the following day) for a barbecue and he wanted to invite me as well.

After getting really nervous, talking to my parents and Pedro and crying a lot, I decided to stay in Berkeley for the weekend.  It was a really tough decision, specially after spending the week dreaming about another romantic weekend in LA.  It was worth it though.  As my parents said, a few years from now, the first good impression Professor Moehle had of me will have a bigger impact in my life than not spending one weekend with Pedro.  We'll have tons of them to spend together throughout our life.  And if I were Professor Moehle and my brand new advisee would refuse my invitation to my house because she was going to spend the weekend in LA, I would think she was more a party girl than a hard worker.

The barbecue was today and it was actually lots of fun!  The invitation said:

Please join us for a barbecue featuring goat and other fare. We plan to get the festivities started around 3pm with main meal around 5pm, but we will provide beer to anyone who shows up extra early to help rotate the spit.

If you would like to bring something, let us know. Otherwise, we will provide all.

How many cultural disparities can we find in this invitation?  Festivities starting at 3 pm but not for lunch, for dinner!!!  "If you would like to bring something, let us know."  How was I supposed to know what to take?  At exactly what time should I arrive?  I ended up arriving at 3:20 and I brought some chocolates with me, which means I behaved as the Portuguese girl I am.

Dinner consisted of many, many appetizers, goat barbecue, many salads and nice deserts.  It was the first time that everyone saw or heard of a goat barbecue.  No one really knew how to check if the goat was already cooked so a greek guy that also works with Professor Moehle had to call his mom.  When we decided it was cooked, no one knew how to carve it.  And this is how I became "Marta, the butcher!"  I volunteered to start cutting it and everyone thanked me for that.

It was nice to get to spend some informal time with my future supervisor and to meet many people I'm going to deal with in the following year.  Professor Moehle works with such a multicultural group of people!  Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Vietnam, Chile, Columbia, the USA, Serbia, Portugal and a few more countries were (very well) represented in the barbecue.

Bruin for the weekend

I can't help being a Bruin, I admit.  My friends in Cal would probably get mad if they read this post.  It doesn't make sense to be both a Cal Bear and a UCLA Bruin.  However, my Mom supports Sporting and Benfica at the same time...  Maybe this incompatible supportiveness is in my genes...

After spending four nights and three days in LA, this is how I feel: a little bit Bruin.

It had been exactly a year since the last time I went to LA.  Before coming to Berkeley, doing summer school in UCLA last year had been the best experience in my life.  This three-days weekend I've just spent there brought back very good memories.

It's funny how I don't feel like a tourist when I go to LA anymore.  In fact, all I did this weekend was spend some quality time with Pedro and our friends, go to nice restaurants and stores and enjoy the good weather.

We went to some friends' house two nights in a row and played typical American drinking games with them.  We practiced golf at TPC Valencia.  We had lunch at Urth Caffe. Mmmmmmm.  We spent one afternoon at the beach, in Venice.  We went to an UCLA American Football game with many friends and Pedro's coach.  UCLA played really well and we had lots of fun at the students' section.  We had a delicious brunch at one of the best breakfast restaurants in LA: Blu Jam.  We went shopping in one of my favorite streets there (I couldn't go to LA without shopping at LF Stores!!!).  We had two triple dates with some friends.  We dated a lot.  Oh yeah, we had a very nice weekend.

I came back to Berkeley today early in the morning and now it's time to focus on my studies again. It's worth working so hard in school to have the chance to spend weekends like this.