Halloween

According to Wikipedia, Halloween in America includes:
     - trick-or-treating
     - costume partys
     - carving pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns
     - watching horror movies
     - and so on.

I had it all.  Festivities started last week and they will go through the end of next weekend.  In the meantime, I show you some pictures of what's been going on.

Friendz - Amigos

Ready for another friends report?  Today I'm going to introduce you to some of my Spanish speaking friends: Nico, Ludo and Mario.

Nico (Nicolas Escribano) was, as far as I can remember, the first person I met in I-House.  I recall getting inside the dining hall on August 17th, looking around and deciding to sit next to him because he looked the same way my friends look in Portugal.  It made total sense when he told me he was one of "nuestros hermanos".  He is a very nice guy: polite, extremely caring and relaxed.  Being Spanish, he knows how to party although he is a responsible little man.

Nico made me realize how similar we (Portuguese) are similar to them (Spanish).  The way we are raised, the way we talk, the kind of stuff that entertains us and the things we don't like about the US are basically the same.  I know that there are lots of Portuguese people that don't really like Spanish but I don't understand why that happens.  From my experience, I can tell they are fun, polite and much the same as us.  I like Nico and I like Spanish!

Let's move on to Ludo.  Ludo, Ludo, Ludo...  Ludovic Holderbeke is his name.  I know it doesn't sound like a Spanish name.  He's Belgium!  However, he decided to go to university in Madrid and he's been living there for 5 years now.  It is very easy to describe him.  He reminds me of my brother Miguel.  He's kind of a naughty little brother to me (and to many other girls in I-House).  He asks me or Yasmina to wake him up everyday because he cannot wake up with his alarm clock.  He asks us to iron his shirts whenever he as an interview.  He asks Caitlin to help him folding his clothes every time he does laundry.  He asks me to help him studying consulting cases because he wants to apply to Mckinsie, BCG and Bain.  He actually also asked me to go through his CV and his cover letter.  Basically, he asks everyone to help him doing everything and the truth is that everyone ends up lending him a hand. It's probably all about his posture.  He is very friendly and funny and makes us laugh all the time.  We just don't say no to him.

Ludo is 24 years old and thus very focused on getting a job.  He is so nervous about that that he makes everyone anxious too.  He is either very concentrated on studying and finding a job or desperate to party and flirt some girls.

Ludo and I have an interesting friendship.  He is usually very laid back and speaks his mind out but, with me, he feels he has to act proper.  And he makes other people act proper towards me too.  Haha.

Let's talk about Mario now.  Mario is an easygoing Chilean guy.  People can tell he belongs to a well-spoken family although he doesn't try to show off or anything.  He has five siblings and they are all coming with his parents to visit him next week!  I'm actually quite jealous.  Mom, Dad, Mico, don't you want to come too??  Belonging to such a big family makes him sociable, outgoing and good.  He is a gentleman.  Unlike Ludo, he is very proper to everyone.

Something I really like about Mario is how curious he is.  He makes me explain what I'm studying all the time, and has always interesting questions to make.  Everyone is so interesting and smart here in Berkeley...  I love it here.

The Bridge School Benefit Concert and much more

"Organized by musician Neil Young and his wife, the Bridge School Benefit Concert is an annual, all acoustic, non-profit charity event held every October at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Montain View, California."  It's basically an event where families and groups of friends gather to have a relaxed time, listen to some good music and enjoy a pleasant picnic, with the added bonus of helping a charity association.

This year's line up was: 

- Neil Young & Crazy Horse

- Guns N' Roses

- Jack White

- The Flaming Lips

- Sarah McLachlan

- Foster the People

- Lucinda Williams

- Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers

- k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang

- Gary Clark Jr.

- Ray LaMontagne

Not bad, uh?  Yup, that's how I spent my day yesterday.  It was probably one of the best days of my exchange year so far.  I went on a trip organized by iHouse's Program Office, which included transportation and tickets to the festival for $30.  Not only did some of the people I love here went with me (and that includes Pedro, Yasmina, Luisa, Emre and more), but the experience itself was very enriching too.  I would say I definitely learnt how Americans live festivals.  The average age was above 40 years old.  Everyone took huge blankets, chairs and lots of food to spend the day at Shoreline Amphiteatre.  I saw people laying, sitting, dancing, eating, laughing, clapping, singing, sleeping, smoking, drinking, flirting and dating.  It was a happy Sunday, that felt specially good after the busy week I had.

There's something that inspired me particularly.  One of the girls who went with us uses a wheelchair.  She had a ticket for the disable people area but we managed to convince her that we could help her coming to the grass with us.  That's how I had the chance to learn a little bit more about her.  She's a Norwegian sociology student and, although she uses a wheelchair, she decided to do an exchange year too.  She's been living in iHouse since January and couldn't be more independent.  She says it's been fine to be away from home.  Before meeting her, I thought I was brave to come to the other side of the world by myself.  Everything is relative, uh?

Moving on to other nice things that happened this weekend...  Pedro visited me!  Actually it was a great adventure for him to get here.  Haha.  The flights were way to expensive so I suggested he used a car sharing website called zimride.com.  He found a girl who was driving from Downtown LA to SF and nicely accepted to pick him up in UCLA and leave him in UCBerkeley.  She was supposed to pick him up at 2 pm, so that he could be here before bedtime.  Unfortunately, nothing went as planned. She picked him up around 8 pm and still had to pick more people up before leaving to San Francisco.  She was hippie, so was one of the girls that came with them.  They smoke weed all the way from LA to SF and managed to stop in 6 gas stations to put a little bit of gas every time.  As a result,  Pedro arrived in Berkeley at 6:15, without having slept at all.  He looked sick and tired, quite zombie too, but it was very nice to welcome him anyway.  Now, we have a story to tell!

What did we do during the weekend?  We studied a lot (Pedro thinks I'm even more addicted to studying now that I go to Berkeley) and had very nice meals out.  We listened to a Bob Dylan's live concert on Friday night.  Have I told you before that my dorm faces Berkeley's Greek Theater and that every time there is a concert I can listen to it perfectly?  We also went up the hill to watch part of the Big Game (Stanford vs. Cal) on Saturday.  That's something every student in Berkeley does at least once.  More, we had Alex, Pedro's ex-roommate and one of his best friends here in the US, visiting us on Saturday night and paying us dinner in a cool brewery called Jupiter.  And, on Sunday, we went to the concert with some nice friends.

Dear family and friends, enough of blogging for today...  I have some study to do, since I'm now addicted to it.  Talk to you soon,

Marta

Two, deux, due, dos, dois

Update of the post published a month ago:

2 months in Cal = a new home + a new bank account + a new cell phone number

2 months in Cal = a failed attempt to buy an iPhone 5, which is sold out all over the country

2 months 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)

2 months in Cal = some specially close friends, among all the people I met: Yasmina, Luisa, Nathalie, Daniel, Nicolas, Ludovic, Mario

2 months in Cal = even more lectures and discussion sessions

2 months in Cal = (way too) many homework assignments: 22 in total and most of them take more than a day to be solved

2 month in Cal = 2 (tough) midterms done

2 months in Cal = even more hours in the civil engineering computer lab

2 months in Cal = many, many, many hours in the i-House library too

2 months in Cal = very smart and friendly classmates

2 months in Cal = many gatherings with my classmates, such as meals together, a potluck dinner, a grad students party, homework sessions and so on

2 months in Cal = a nice and helpful advisor

2 months in Cal = a thesis supervisor, who I'm going to meet tomorrow to schedule my future work

2 months in Cal = some housework and laundry done (and a lot to be done soon)

2 months in Cal = 3 weekends with Pedro

2 months in Cal = 1 trip to Monterey

2 months in Cal = 1 trip to Los Angeles

2 months in Cal = 4 trips to San Francisco

2 months in Cal = 1 trip to Santa Cruz

2 months in Cal = 2 American football games + some pre-game without going to the game (pre-gaming is the best part of American football.  The game itself is waaaaay too boring)

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

2 months in Cal = many miles walked

2 months in Cal = (only) two days at the beach

2 months in Cal = lots of parties (the best ones in SF)

2 months in Cal = some fraternity experience (although I still need to go to a coop party)

2 months in Cal = way to much food

2 months in Cal = great breakfasts and brunches

2 months in Cal = tons of cookies (my resolution for next month is to reduce the amount of cookies I eat per week)

2 months in Cal = almost no fish

2 months in Cal = almost no cooking

2 month in Cal = many restaurants in Berkeley explored (I have to prepare Mico's visit next month.  All my dear brother thinks about is food.  Hehe)

2 month in Cal = different gourmet cultural experiences

2 months in Cal = lots of crazy people on the streets (people laughing loud, talking to themselves, talking to other people, wearing crazy stuff, etc., etc.)

2 months in Cal = many homeless people

2 months in Cal = 22 posts on my blog

2 months in Cal = some photos

2 months in Cal = many hours in Skype. As my Dad said, a lot of emailing, messaging, Skyping, Vibering, blogging, etc. (Mummy is the champion of Whatsapp, Skype and Viber!)

2 months in Cal = 4 familiar events (that felt so good, specially the one with Villas-Boas' family...)

2 month in Cal = 2 events with Portuguese people: dinner with some Portuguese PhD students and dinner at Villas-Boas'

2 months in Cal = no visits so far (except Pedro); no visits in the last month

2 month in Cal = so much knowledge learnt, not only in classes, but mainly in the daily life

2 month in Cal = lots of contact with different cultures

2 month in Cal = a very united family living this experience with me

2 month in Cal = a lot of strong feelings

2 month in Cal = many "saudades" too

2 months in Cal = still a lot to do

Friendz - Yasniel

Did I promise to post something about some of my new friends a few days ago?  Yeah...  I did...  What if I start writing a post every once in a while describing only few people each time?  Sounds good to me!  I hope it sounds good to you too.

It's very easy to decide who to start with:  Yasmina.  Yasmina Yusuf.  Can you tell where she's from by her name?  Hmmmm...  I don't think so!  Her dad is from Bangladesh and her mom is German but she was raised in England and she's been going to college in Berlin for the last few years.  She never knows how to answer when someone asks her where she's from.  The most obvious answer would be Germany, but her British accent is way too strong for people to believe that she's actually German.

Belonging to an incredibly multicultural family and having spent the last few years in Berlin, she is very friendly, hearty and relaxed.  She is very, very sociable too.  I keep telling her that she is (along with our Namibian friend Daniel) the most popular person in i-House.

She studies History, mainly the Cold War and Colonization, which makes lots of sense baring in mind her family's experience.  We study together quite often although our academic interests are totally opposite.  In fact, we do many things together.  Besides studying with each other sometimes, we usually have early breakfasts and work out together nearly every day.  We're neighbors too.  We both live on the calm 6th floor of i-House so we also get to see each other around the place all the time.

Yas is a very interesting person.  I'm finding it very hard to describe her though.  There are so many things about her which I'm not being able to express...  She's much better than what I'm transmitting to you, ok?

Probably, the reason why we starting hanging out has to do with our similarities.  We've been realizing that we basically like the same stuff.  Though we're both responsible, we really want to take the most from this year in Berkeley.  And both of us love meeting people and find it easier to deal with guys than girls.

One of the guys we're close friends with is Daniel.  Daniel Komen.  Daniel also has a multicultural family.  Both is parents' families are originally from Europe (Eastern Europe and the Netherlands, I guess) but moved to Africa some decades ago.  His parents are hippies.  They moved to South Africa to study animals, and they ended up settling in Namibia, a country I've never thought about going before meeting him but where I really want to go now.

Daniel is a very... (I'm missing the word) guy.  He's... Special...   Different... Unique!  Yas is definitely a special girl too but he is unusual!  He studies architecture, which makes him an artist; he was raised in a farm in Africa, which makes him wild; and his parents are hippies, which makes him pure.  He literally talks to everyone he sees.  He has actually already seated next to some homeless people for a while, pretending to be one of them and discovering what they had to tell.  It's funny how he actually could be a homeless guy, in terms of his appearance.  He's not bad looking, he just doesn't care about the way he looks and he walks with his shoulders down.

I've just realize it would be much simpler to film my friends instead of trying to describe them in words.   Dan's posture is so, so characteristic!  Haha.

Being an architecture student, he hasn't been able to spend much time with us.  Isn't it crazy how, all over the world, architecture students have so much work to do?  Do you know any architect-to-be that doesn't stay up till late all the time?  Poor Dan!  All of us study hard, but he's been way busier than us.  His projects have turned out to be amazing though.  I'm probably gonna take some pictures of his work assignments soon.  I'll post a few photos here whenever I do that.

I could write much more about Yas and Daniel, but I guess I'll save some words for the rest of my friends too.  More descriptions of friends coming up soon...

Busy week!

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MIDTERMS + HOMEWORK

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A little bit of home

Most of you probably don’t know that there is a Portuguese Professor here in Berkeley.  He’s Miguel Villas-Boas and he works at the Haas School of Business.  Both my Dad and my Uncle Tó know him and thus encouraged me to go introduce myself and ask for his contact, in case I had any kind of emergency.  That’s what I did this week.

After a few attempts to find him at his office, I finally met him last Wednesday.  It was kind of awkward in the beginning.  He cheered me in English and I answered in English too and then I couldn’t find a normal way to start speaking Portuguese.  When I did, I wanted to explain that I am an exchange student here and that my Dad and my Uncle had suggested me to come introduce myself, but words didn’t want to come out fluently.  Haha.  After a while (probably just a few seconds that seemed like an eternity to me), I ended up making myself clear and he was very nice.  He invited me to have dinner with his family right away.  That’s what I did today.

I went to their place, a nice house in a calm neighborhood here in Berkeley, and had a typically Portuguese dinner.  Not only was the food very healthy and simple, as we (Portuguese people) are used to, but we sat at the table for hours, just chilling and speaking.  They invited me to come back whenever I wanted and I think I’ll do it many times.

It’s time to go to bed.  I have a very busy week ahead.  Today I just wanted to tell you that it felt really good to experience some familiar environment.  It’s something someone living abroad values a lot.

10/05 - day off

Isn’t October 5th a national holiday in Portugal?  Yes, it is.  Am I not Portuguese?  Yes, I am.  Had I not been studying like crazy in the past few weeks?  Yes, I had.  I guess it’s not a big deal that I took the day off on Friday, then.

Yesterday was Luisa’s birthday and that sounded like a good excuse to relax for a while.  Luisa is a really nice Brazilian friend of mine.  I met her as soon as I got to Cal.  She came talk to me in one of the first days because, like most people here, she thought I looked Brazilian, not Portuguese.  Since then, we’ve been hanging out a lot.  Along with Yasmina, she’s one of the girls I like the most here in Berkeley.  I promise to write a post describing some of my new  friends soon.  Now I wanna talk about the wonderful relaxing day I had yesterday.

As every morning here in Berkeley, I woke up early, had a nice breakfast in the dining hall with my friends from i-House and went to classes.  Classes meaning one class.  That’s all the academic responsibilities I have on Fridays.  After that, I did some shopping with the excuse of buying a birthday present to Lu and then the celebrations started.  We had lunch in a nice American bar on campus, called Free House, we went to the supermarket driving a convertible Mustang to get stuff for her party and we explored one of the nicest streets in Berkeley: College Av.  There, we tried the most famous icecream on Campus, from Icy!  Putting it to words, we went to Berkeley’s Santini.  That was so, so, so good…  Mmmmmmmm. After that, we had a girly gym session (yeah, I’ve been going to the gym every single day) and then dressed up to party, party, party!

Luisa’s birthday was on the fourth floor (the party floor) hallway here in Berkeley.  There were two or three rooms opened to everyone, there was music, food and drinks.  That’s how people party here in the dorms.  There was another birthday person, Carlos, and I decided to go to his party too.  Do you wanna know what it consisted of?  Are you ready to read about a very American birthday celebration?  We rented a hammer limousine and went to a nightclub in San Francisco in it.  It’s basically a two-way taxi that can take 20 people instead of 5 and where one can drink, dance and listen to very load music.  Yeah, I know it’s a very corny thing to do but it was actually lots of fun.  And the nightclub was really good too.  If the nightclub didn’t open before 10 pm and close at 2 am, it could perfectly be an European one.

Of course that today I spent the whole day studying.  That’s ok.  Yesterday’s day off made me recharge my batteries anyway.