picture in my mind

Finally! I've decided to sit down and blog. I only have a couple of photos to post but I have a bit more stuff to say.

Currently, am residing at YMCA Berkeley and rooming with Teresa. She's still snuggled under the covers cause it's not 7.30 yet. But I was up for subuh at 5.30 and then couldn't go back to sleep, so decided to heck it and stay up.

So okay. I don't know where to start. :p

Oh excuse the terrible typos from the previous post from Japan! The keyboard was freakily different. There were japanese characters interspersed with the english alphabet and it aggravated my blurness, I suppose.

I guess I'll just jump in with this.

That's the entire group of us at berkeley's clock tower. I think berkeley's much more exciting than stanford. Stanford has a much more academic environment but berkeley's more... I don't know, rugged? It feels real. But the streets do get a tad bit scary at night. Groups of loafers just stand on street corners and stare at passers-by and homeless dudes sitting along alleys. Did I mention I feel like I've shrunk being in the US? Everyone's like twice my size or something. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but damn, they're too tall. humph.

We went to People's Park in berkeley and it's the place where people generally exercise their freedom of speech and behaviour. People were sitting around on the grass and just doing whatever weird thing. And we went to this place near the campus called Oaks Grove (or something like that) where people live in the trees! Seriously. They're all about the living-with-nature thing and very hippie-like, peace-loving and crazily deluded in my opinion. There was this girl who shaved her head monk-style and dressed monkishly as well, who came to talk to us and went in an extremely... floaty manner, asking, "How are you?", and blinking away with innocent and glazed eyes. And Shafiqah was asking if it got cold sleeping outside with the trees at all, and she said, "Oh no, we bring blankets and you know, everyone's warmth staying together makes it all right..." And I think all of us were thinking, "UH......" I'm sorry, miss, I think you dropped your screws into the bushes. And she kept going, "It's all about the love, it's all about the love inside." I was trying not to go too much like this @_@. Wow, I tell you. There are such less-sane people in the world.

Later on we met her again and she offered to spray water from the Ganges River (did I spell that right :s?) on our heads to rid of bad karma. She also had this friend with her who was painting some cardboard and he warned us, "America is evil! It is destroying everything good. George Bush has no soul. Dick Cheney is worse." Wah. I was laughing my ass off ah. Right on, dude! But the monk girl was all, "No... The people inside are good. George Bush has goodness deep inside. We just need to bring it out." (the guy's like, "No. He is evil. Remember guys, America is evil.") Monk girl keeps telling us, "It's all about the love, it's all about the love."

Peace-loving dudes aside, we met very very very very nice people at the international house. There was this guy (extremely tall again -__-) who came up to me at the lunch buffet and asked, "Is there enough variety of food for you? Do you need anything?" I tell you, I was so pleasantly taken aback, I couldn't even give a proper response for a while. Nobody had ever bothered to ask me that before while I've been eating here in this country! And the guy was gorgeous to boot, I tell you. Like a ricky martin lookalike but ten times better and twice as tall, with light aqua blue eyes and a pretty pretty tan.

Later he gave us a tour of the international house and brought us to the hill behind berkeley campus and we hiked up. Waaaaah. When I say hike UP, I mean UUUUUPPPP. I was panting and huffing and grabbing at tree roots and sliding on slopes and stumbling over footholds and grabbing at thorny thistles. But it was gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous at the top and I shall remember that hike for the rest of my life. (:

So here's a photo of us and Jaime at Oaks Grove. And I shall end here.