Look at me, kind of living by myself

Go to 2719 Stuart, Berkeley.  Instead of walking up the four steps that take you to the front door of the main house, turn right, walk past the Honda SUV that is parked there and turn left.  As soon as you pass through the wooden gate, you can see a little cottage in the right corner of the backyard.  That's were I live now.  It is a tiny two-floors wooden house, very cute.  Downstairs, it has a small toilet with shower, a kitchen with a table and two chairs where I have breakfast everyday, and a small individual couch that I don't think I will ever use.  Upstairs, there is a cute, cute, cute big bedroom, with a queen size bed, a closet, a wardrobe, a couch and a desk.  There are windows all around and the furniture is very feminine.  All in all, I live in a little dolls house at the moment.

How did this happen?  How did I get this lucky?  As I told you before, a few weeks after arriving in Berkeley, I decided to go introduce myself to Professor Miguel Villas-Boas, as my uncle Tó suggested. I found him at his office in Haas Business School, introduced myself and he invited me to have dinner with his family at their place right away.  From then on, Sofia - his lovely and energetic wife - kept inviting me to have dinner with them every once in a while.  They even met Pedro, Mom and Dad, whenever they came visit me in Berkeley.  They have been super nice to me.  Do you know that feeling of friendship and confidence you feel with people with your nationality when you are living abroad?  As soon as I got to know them, it seemed that we had known each other for a long time.

Miguel and Sofia have three kids, Vasco, Diogo and Zé Maria, who are now kind of young siblings to me.  They are all very different but all great kids.  Vasco is a mature and responsible kid, quite shy, just like his dad.  He's the perfect son.  Diogo and Zé Maria are the funniest kids on earth.  I once took Diogo to have an ice cream after dinner.  When I took Pedro to their place for dinner for the first time, Diogo said to Pedro "Marta took me to have an ice cream the other day but don't worry, nothing happened!"  He is 12 or 13 years old!!!!!  Hahaha.

Going back to how I got so lucky and ended up having an entire little house for me...  Every time I went to their place to have dinner with them, Sofia told me that I could sleep over anytime I was feeling homesick and that any friend or family member visiting me could stay there too.  As soon as I realized I would be kicked out of ihouse on May 22nd, I asked her if they would mind that I spent four weeks with them before going back home.  She said that I would be more than welcome.  I thought I would be sleeping in an extra room they have downstairs but, since they are not renting the cottage to anyone in May and June, they let me stay there.

I don't live with 589 international people anymore, but now I have family meals, I receive good morning and good night kisses everyday and I can speak Portuguese all the time.  Not bad, uh?  It is actually very good.  Mom, Dad and me are going to be eternally thankful to the great Villas-Boas family.

Memorial Day Weekend

Did I mention on the last post (Bipolar Sunday) that the following post would be about my new house and my new host family?  I lied!  This post is actually going to be about the nice busy three-day weekend that is about to finish.

There were some special things about this weekend.  First and most importantly, I had my first Portuguese friend visiting me here in Berkeley: Ed, of course.  And he brought another friend of ours with him: Inês da Cunha.  After a few years with no (or very little) vacations, Ed decided that my year abroad in California was a good excuse to take a few days off work.  He planned a very exciting trip throughout the state, in which I cannot go since I am stuck in Berkeley working on my thesis.  Inês was going to do that trip in the same period so they decided to do it together, stoping here and there to see some friends.  Knowing them, it is not a surprise that they decided to do the trip in style, driving a convertible mustang.

These three days that they spent in San Francisco, we did some sightseeing in the city; we drove Lombard Street; we saw Pier 39's sea lions; we had some American meals, such as Saturday brunch in the Mission District and dinner at a sports bar on Sunday; we went to a Giants game in AT&T Park; we drove to Sausalito through Golden Gate in a very cloudy day and had a nice lunch there; we listened to really loud music in our convertible car; and more, much more.  Meanwhile, Ed had a meeting in Silicon Valley that might have changed his life and the life of his company.  Way to go Ed!

It was great to spend some time with some friends from back home, especially now that most of my Berkeley friends are gone.  Talking about friends being gone, Saturday night was Nico's goodbye party.  All of our friends who are still around showed up at Ludo's and Alex's apartment in San Francisco to have a drink with him, probably the most friendly guy who lived in ihouse these two semesters.  It was not very tough to say goodbye to him for three reasons.  1) If there's someone who I will be easily able to see, that's my Madrileño friend Nico.  2) There's the possibility of a reunion with Luisa in Madrid in late July this summer, and that would mean all of us staying at his place there.  3) If he was one of my best friends during an entire year, he is not going to disappear from my life very easily.

Last but not least, there's another great thing that happened this weekend.  My model is finally spiting reasonable results.  The hard work of the last weeks has been worthwhile.  I'm quite sad I decided not to go to Yosemite with Ed and Inês but, believe it or not, I only have three weeks left in Berkeley and I need to use them to do as much research as possible.

Thanks Eddie for coming.

See you soon Nico.

Love,

Marta

P.S.  Oh, maybe I should also explain that the reason why this weekend was a three-day weekend is because today is Memorial Day.  That's a national holiday in the US, in which everyone who died in the American army is remembered.  I didn't experience the day very much but, from what I heard, it is considered the beginning of summer, and it is marked by many barbecues all over the place.

Bipolar Sunday

So much stuff happened between my last post and this one that I don't even know where to start.

It's graduation week in UC Berkeley and that means that campus is packed with students wearing caps and gowns, and their proud happy families.  There are commencement flower booths and receptions with food and drinks everywhere, and the good restaurants in town are all packed.  It's one of the happiest weeks on campus, and the weather has made its job in making these days even more special for the graduating students and their beloved ones.

On Sunday, I attended the College of Engineering Graduate Commencement Ceremony, not as a graduating UC Berkeley student (since I am a mere exchange student), but as my classmates' and Middle Eastern buddies' friend.  It was a lovely day, as you can see from the pictures shown below.  I felt very proud of all of my friends, in such an extent that I got very emotional several times that day.  It was very interesting to experience a graduation ceremony for the first time in my life - it's just like the movies -, and it was even more interesting to get to know most of my friends' families.  Don't you agree that, by knowing someone's family, you got to know that person better too?  The only not-so-good part of the day was that I missed my family like crazy, and kind of envied that my friends got to have theirs here for these days.

Sunday was not just graduation day for me, it was also packing and moving day.  Although I didn't really feel like leaving my "home" during the best months of my life so far, it was time to do so.  Ihouse is very pricy and most of my friends, if not all of them, are leaving this week, so I decided it was time for me to leave too.  The initial plans were to stay in a room inside the dear Villas-Boas family house, but they actually surprised me with the opportunity to live in a little cottage they have in their backyard.  Basically, I now live in a little dolls wooden house, and have my own kitchen, toilet and room.  It is so, so cute and I am so, so happy with it that my next post on the blog will be about it.

Moving to this cute place and starting to live with an awesome Portuguese family kind of helped me go through this awful goodbye season.  My friends and I have been crying everyday, anytime one of us leaves.  I make an effort to remind them and me that this is not a definitive goodbye and that now we have friends all over the world and more excuses to travel, but it is seriously tough to realize we won't live together anymore and that we probably won't reunite all at the same place and time again.  I guess this is how real life works...  Some people come, some people go, and we get particularly connected to the special ones.  The thing is that, this year, I met way too many special people.

Love,

Martinha

Goodbyes and more goodbyes

Yesterday was the last day of finals week.  All of my friends are done with school and it's time for them either to travel or to go back home.  I did the last written exam of my masters degree last wednesday but restarted working on my thesis on the following day, so I am not even close to be done. However, I've been trying to conciliate work with social events.

My favorite social event among all of the ones I've attended lately was Claudia'a End of Term Goodbye Party, which happened yesterday at her family place in Lafayette, really close to Berkeley.  Claudia turned 21 last week and is one of the few of us who is staying in Berkeley one more year.  Those two facts more than justified a big party at her place.

The official plans consisted on arriving around 6 pm, having some (or many) drinks and eating a lot, and moving to a bar later that night, always enjoying each others company.  Dan and me decided to go earlier to help her out, and arrived there one or two hours in advance.  We helped organizing everything and I cooked pãezinhos com chouriço, known as chorizo potato puffs among my Cal friends, an appetizer that I knew Claudia likes.

The food was delicious and the drinks were free so everyone was happy.  Almost everyone knew each other pretty well and that helped making the party a success too.  I would say that the best moments of the evening were Claudia's perfect speech, and her performance with Takako and Egenem.  Takako, Egenem and Claudia - also known as Potato, Eggs and Clouds - performed together in a few ihouse events and we begged them to sing for us yesterday too.  They rocked and made everyone get specially emotional and nostalgic about the upcoming end of our year together in Berkeley.  Following their performance, everyone was hugging each other and many of the girls cried.  If you check the movie that I made of their performance, you might be able to understand how cool it was...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vykQ789tqxc&feature=player_detailpage

Oh maaaaaaaaan, I don't want to say goodbye to everyone...  Tough week ahead...!  Thanks Clouds for one of the best parties we had in Berkeley so far.

My Middle Eastern Friends

I can't believe I haven't described my Middle Eastern friends on my blog yet!  It's time to tell you about my dearest Lebanese, Nathalie and Yasmine, and Egyptian friends, Nour and Taymour.

Before coming to Berkeley, I would never imagine that those cultures had so much in common with mine.  Guess what?  They do!  Middle Easterns are very laid back, and know how to party and enjoy their lives.  They value family, community living and a good meal as much as we do.  Also, they are never on time - such a mediterranean characteristic...!

The main difference between them and us is that they have much more money to spend and they make sure to spend it excessively.  Taymour keeps saying that an Egyptian wedding is more of a competition between families on who gets the most important celebrities to come to their children's weddings than  just exchanging the wedding vows.  Of course that many Arabic countries other than Egypt and Lebanon have many more differences to Portugal than those two, but these are the ones I am focusing on today.

Let's start by describing the girls.  I thought that no girl in ihouse was as close to their moms as I am to mine till I started hanging out with my Middle Eastern girlfriends.  Probably because of the distinct role women and men have in those societies (or maybe not), they are all specially connected to their moms and they don't think I am a weirdo for speaking to mine all the time.

Nathalie and Yasmine are both civil engineers, taking their masters degree here in Berkeley.  They are not on my program, since I study structural engineering and they study transportation, but we still had the same undergrad education.  They are both hard workers, good students and some of the prettiest girls in ihouse.  Yasmine is very athletic and does sports every day.  She's very self conscious in terms of what she eats.  She likes going to bed early and studying in the morning, and she cries every time she is sad or anything didn't go as she had planned.  We have so much in common...  Nathalie is more laid back.  She loves going to bed late, after spending the whole night studying, and she can spend the entire morning in bed.  She's always smiling and makes everyone happy.  And, man, she really knows how to dance!  That's pretty much the only exercise she does but, if I knew how to dance like she does, I would only do it too.

Talking about my dear Nourzita now, I would say she is the greatest.  She's always smiling (actually, always laughing), always singing, always calling everyone sweet names, always hugging, always snapchatting...  How not to love her?  She studies economics, and she is slightly younger than us but no one would say so.  She looks like a lady, a pretty determined lady.  She's totally unreachable by any boy.  Because she is muslim, she cannot drink alcohol.  However, when we go clubbing, she looks like the drunkest because she dances nonstop and has tons of energy.  Oh man, if someone like clubbing, it's the people from the Middle East!  Nour is genuinely sweet and one of the few girls I have never seen competing or being girl-mean to other girls.

Taymour, the only boy who has the honor to be referred in this post, is on the same masters program as Nathalie and Yasmine.  He did his undergrad in civil engineering in EPFL in Lausanne, since he has swiss ancestry, and then came to Cal to study transportation.  People can tell he belongs to a really wealthy Egyptian family.  He wears all the good brands and it is not uncommon to see him pulling off some Louis Vuitton shoes and stuff like that.  It annoys him that we make fun of him because of that though, and he is right about that.  He's much more than all the expensive stuff he owns.  He's  a especially friendly and he loves making other people feel good.  Did you know he is our Insanity Workouts mentor?  Haha.  He lost many pounds in Switzerland doing it and introduced us to those workout sessions in the beginning of this semester.  Since then, we work out together more than once a week.  His dad works for Fifa and is close friends with the Portuguese soccer coach Manuel José, so he might be coming to Portugal soon!

My computer just told me it is running on reserve battery power.  It's time to finish this post.

أتحدث إليكم قريبا (talk to you soon).

Nightlife at the Academy

Every Thursday night, the California Academy of Sciences, located in the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, is open to the general public.  The target audience is young laid back people, who are willing to watch expositions and explore different topics inside a huge museum, while holding a cocktail in their hands.  There's a weekly topic that is never repeated and some temporary booths related to it, and the permanent expositions, planetarium and aquarium.  There's also a few food carts and bars, and at least a DJ too.

Last Thursday, I decided to go check out the event with some friends and I'm glad I didn't miss doing it before going back home.  It's a very creative and interesting initiative, definitively San-Francisco-style, and it was a great study break during Dead Week.

The topic could have been more interesting (earthquakes are not my passion, although I study seismic engineering) but the permanent expositions where very, very cool.  I specially liked the aquarium and the Animal Attraction exposition.

I leave you with a few pictures.  Talk to you soon.

Happy May!

May couldn't have started in a better way.

On May 1st, I spent the day cheering for Pedro and the bruins in one of the most exclusive golf courses in LA - LACC - and we went out for dinner together, in a cute date.

On May 2nd, Pedro had a midterm that went really well, I had lunch with my friend Kezia, Benfica won its game and qualified for UEFA Europa League final (and this means having Pedro, Dad and Mico really happy), we had an easier-than-usual drive to Berkeley, and finished the day having dinner at Zachary's Chicago Pizza, a Berkeley classic.

May 3rd was a special day.  It was our 5th anniversary and thus we decided to treat ourselves with a day off.  We bought some snacks, drove to Marin County and went on a cool hike near the coast.  The weather was amazing and the scenery very pretty, with deep blue ocean and green bushes views, and eagles flying over our heads.  To finished the day well, we had drinks at Sliver's, dinner at fancy Comal, and partied with some Cal athletes from the men's golf, women's lacrosse and men's rugby teams.  All I have to tell after partying with them is that athletes are extremely good drinkers.

On May 4th, we had the best ihouse party ever (and the last one, unfortunately): a boat party!  Over 300 people dressed up, looked good and spend the late afternoon and early evening eating, drinking and dancing on a 3-story boat that went around the San Francisco Bay Area.  Most of my best friends from ihouse and Pedro were there (Ludo included), so the company could have not been better.

          

 

On May 5th, the day was dedicated to studying, but at least I had my favorite study buddy with me: Pedro.  He left to LA in the afternoon, and I almost went with him.  I would have gone if I didn't have an important review session on Wednesday for my one and only (awful) CE221 final...

May 5th was also a day to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a holiday that remembers the Mexican's Army victory over the powerful French Army in the battle of Puebla.  It is an event that is only celebrated in the USA and not in Mexico.  Basically, it is an excuse for Americans to have delicious Mexican food and drinks, listen to Latin music and have fun.  Thanks to ihouse, we had some great celebrations in the patio, for free!

The fact that I missed the Portuguese Mother's Day was alleviated by the fact that Mom spent an apparently happy day with Mico, Tio Tó and my grandpas.  It's always tough to meet special days away from home and from the people we would like to spend them with but, fortunately, this was the last special day I missed till I go back to Portugal.

Today, the study session proceeded but was interrupted for the SEMM Graduating Students Luncheon.   SEMM and CSI Berkeley sponsored a really pleasant lunch in the Faculty Club.  Not only the food was good (I had fish, and that's so rare here that it made my day), but the event itself was a success.  There was at least a professor seated in each table, and there were two speeches, one from the SEAONC (Structural Engineers Association of Northern California) president, and another one from the peculiar president of CSI Structures.  The latter offered us a book that he says that will help us create computer programs used in over 160 countries, just like he did.  Haha.

Can't complain about these days, uh?  I hope May keeps treating me as well as it has so far...

Love,

Marta

It's time to be cheesy!

Today is time for a small (or not so small) reflection about how coming to California made my relationship with Pedro even better.

At the moment, we're driving up to Berkeley, after spending two great days in LA together.  He had the PAC-12 Championship this week in one of LA's best courses - LACC - and insisted that I should go watch him.  I couldn't go for the entire tournament because that would mean missing three days of the last week of classes of my Masters program.  But missing two days instead of three would not be such a big deal.  Haha.  Pedro got me a plane ticket for Tuesday evening and we're driving up together now, so that I can make it to the last day of classes tomorrow.

Neither him or his team played incredibly well and Cal (my own university) took both the individual and the team trophies home.  However, I had an amazing day at the tournament.  It feels so good to be with him, follow him and realize how everyone looks up to him so much.  It's great to be in love with a person who is loved by everyone who surrounds them.  And it's great to know that we'll leave California but we'll have tons of great connections to this place.

This was the last college tournament and probably the last amateur tournament I saw Pedro play.  Exciting times are about to come!

I know this post is way too cheesy, but I can't help showing the world how happy I am right now. Also, I would like to thank Mom and Dad again for the opportunity to come here and, not only come to a great university and  have the best experience of my life, but also feel better and better about my relationship with my golfer.