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