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!
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