Winter wanderings

Outside of Southern California, it's actually winter. Berkeley was cold rain, dropped leaves still clouding the streets. Olympia was snow, snow that frosted every tree branch and made each building look edible. Vancouver Island is black and white. I've never seen such a monochrome world.

Most likely it hasn't made the news anywhere else, but over the past week Washington State has been deluged by snow storms. As people from outside the state (or my cousin who lives in the hills where such weather is normal) will tell you, it's not the amount of snow; it's that no one knows how to deal with it. To me, it sure looks like a lot. By the time I left, Olympia was under about two feet, at least. But a guy who used to live in Iowa used his tall frame and long arms to gesture, explaining how much is regular for his locale. One winter he saw two snow ploughs trying to attack a drift. One would ram up against it and get stuck, then the other one would pull it out of the snow, again and again.

While the midwest is cool with large dumps of frozen water, the Pacific northwest isn't dealing so well. Snow ploughs seem scarce and people don't seem to know how to use them properly. Olympia's downtown streets were full of ice and slush and snow and made for a bumpy bus ride out on Monday. Sea-Tac airport was canceling flights, trains stopped running and the Greyhound was a lost cause. Luckily, the local bus system was running so I was able to get up to Mt Vernon to visit my mysterious rural firefighting cousin by catching four of them one after the other. In Olympia, people stopped going to work and starting spending time roving in gangs down quiet streets, dragging sleds and looking for steep hills. Cars became more and more buried by the day. The liquor store did good business. I actually saw someone carrying a dead squirrel. I think he was going to eat it.

Ah, Olympia! A magical time of snowfall and fairy-dust frozen rain! I had to run out on Monday morning to catch said buses, so I feel I didn't give an appropriate goodbye to several people who had taken me, pretty much a random New Zealander fond of acoustic folk-pop, into their homes and their lives for nearly a week. The whole town made me seriously happy. Ability to walk places! Working bus system! Little bars and coffee shops! Sense of community! Friendly happy smart people! The number of exclamation marks in this paragraph already is a sign of how gosh-darn-exciting the place was. Maybe I won't go on my sub-culture analysing rant here, but you should know: I believe there is hope for the world. 

So what did I do for six days? Pretty little. Slept in past eleven every day, stayed up late. Saw 'Dreamgirls' of all things, and 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'. Cuddled Orson (a friendly cat with no tail), baked cookies, had long kitchen conversations, expressed amazement at the snow once every ten minutes. It was actually kind of great to be in a town where snowfall like that is unusual. I imagine if I'd been somewhere on the east coast, people would be all bitter and jaded.

I definitely feel like I'll back back in Olympia. For longer. The place sucks you in.

Getting out of there on the buses, I had an amazing run of luck. Every bus seemed to be running, I found every transferring stop, didn't have to wait in the cold too long. It's still one of the most nerve-racking things I find when I'm traveling, unfamiliar bus routes. I think this is due to a childhood incident that my mother will remember. My sister and I were coming back from an art class in Wellington, I must have been about eleven, and my dad put us on a bus to the train station where we would take the train back to our little seaside town. However, the final destination of the bus was not the train station, but a distant Wellington suburb called Eastbourne, about 45 minutes away. My poor little sister and I had never seen the train station stop from that side of the street before, and it was dark and unfamiliar and we were scared, so we stayed on the bus. By the time we passed the roundabout that said 'Petone' in flowers I knew we'd gone too far, so we had no choice but to stay on, all the way to the bus depot where the sympathetic bus driver let us use the phone to call Dad. We eventually arrived home to a very clucky mother. From memory there were hot water bottles. I am now painfully aware how easy it is to miss bus stops, and that in a foreign country it is unlikely that you will find hot water bottles when you eventually arrive at your destination.

Oh yes, I am now technically in another country. This morning I caught the ferry from Washington, where I was staying with a Cairns cousin named Craig. He lives in the country. There was a lot of snow there, and tall dark evergreens, and a grey lake. Cousin Craig kindly gave me some Marmite and pineapple lumps and Chelsea Golden Syrup. I also met his son, who's twelve, a pleasantly awkward age. It's funny, somewhere in recent years I've turned into the kind of older cousin who intimidates younger relatives, possibly the person that you always thought was old and big and you could never imagine turning into.

I'm now spending Christmas in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, with very very distant older relatives who are similar to grandparents. Speaking of which, I should go and give my sets a call; after all, it's already Christmas in some countries.

Taking new turns

The weeks since Veteran's Day have gone so fast. Here I am, happy to say that four out of five finals have been completed, and the doctor says the mole on my leg probably isn't cancerous. Less happy to see that the NZ dollar continues to remain about the 54 cent mark. Someone give that thing some coffee! I'm tired of seeing it lurking around down there with a hangdog expression and good words for no one!

The world here is turning greyer and colder and more difficult. This term has really worn down my reserves. The academic in me is turning up her toes and saying she wants to go to bed and sleep in tomorrow, when it's raining outside and so warm under the covers. If I'm here for two more quarters, we'll start back in January and only get a week for Spring Break until mid-June. Then it'll be back to school in New Zealand in mid-July. That route leads to a possible graduation in November, but it also leads to pain, and burnout, and confirmation of the feeling that I'm running through my undergrad degree as fast as I can because I want to get to the cool crisp air of the other side. I know there's no right way to go about school, and I love academics, but life shouldn't be about the next test, and the next and the next until freedom. All these young people I know work so hard, spending their years cooped up in boxes until they're opened up and let loose. To go to grad school where they continue to sacrifice themselves on the altar of academia. I'm not sure how long I can keep going, waiting until I start to enjoy it again. 

Don't listen to me, I'm just worn out and tired and need a holiday. But I did have this really cool idea for a college where you'd study sciences, like biopsychology, and then interpret what you learnt as works of art. Like large models of cells made out of crochet, or films that reflect on some of the ways our brains receive and process visual information, or symphonies based on action potentials in neurons. I saw a photography exhibit down in San Diego where someone had taken close up scientific images of parts of his body and printed them up large. I think he did chromosomes as well. That was pretty awesome.

Also at this school would be this class about dreaming. This idea was inspired by my professor in Human Memory, who is pretty awesome, and written papers on another type of conscious awareness called meta-awareness which relates to "repressed" memories of sexual abuse. Exciting stuff! Sorry, going all psychology nerd now. But this meta-awareness is basically the consciousness we have about being conscious. Like, when you're reading a very boring page of some ancient philosopher, and suddenly you realise that you've been day dreaming for half a page. But you continued to read while your mind was somewhere else! Even though you couldn't process it. So there's an attention that's paid to what it is that your mind is doing, and that's meta-awareness. I hope you know what I'm talking about; it's like a reality check. When my professor was explaining this to us, he told us about lucid dreaming. The idea is that when you're dreaming, your meta-awareness is off in the corner twiddling its thumbs. When you have a lucid dream, it wakes up and starts paying attention. If you want to have lucid dreams, you can help by getting in the habit of giving yourself frequent meta-awareness check-ups during the day. One way to do this is to look at your palm, and check the lines on it. If you get in the habit of this, you'll do it in your dream, and when you can't see the lines (I guess the dreaming mind isn't too great with details) it'll provide a cue to your meta-awareness. So it can wake up (hopefully you won't) and you can start having fun.

Anyhow, at my school, there would be classes about dreams. And for homework, you would have lucid dreams where you went to meet with your professor, and he would give classes. Or maybe not, because dreams about classes don't sound great. But you get the gist (speaking of gists, have you heard about the gist text effect? Oh no... I really need to stop studying...).

Going up to Berkeley again in two days! Food! And flannel sheets!

Denim shorts in November

I had a shock last week in Spanish class. Possibly it was induced by being in said class at 8am on a Monday morning. Over the weekend, we'd been asked to complete a photocopy sheet that depicted various scenes in Spanish speaking countries in different seasons (Spanish often reminds me of primary school). 'Chile', the third box said. 'Octubre'. It showed some happy people sitting in some mountains eating some food in the middle of some flowers (no sign of the violent revolutionaries that I thought were everywhere in South America). 'Es otoño, y hace buen,' I wrote. 'Los esposos quieren merendar'. (It's autumn and it's nice weather. The couple want to have a picnic.) A girl in my class put her hand up when we read them out. 'Es primavera [spring]', she said. 'The seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere.'

The seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere?!

I don't know when October became autumn for me. I don't know when the school year started beginning in September, or when the idea of fires and eggnog at Christmas started sounding good. I don't know when I started saying to people, 'It's so hot for November.' 

Admittedly, this November would be hot by New Zealand standards. When I talk to my mum, and she tells me about how 'warm' it's getting in Wellington, I never have the heart to tell her what the temperature is like here. About how most days, still, people walk around in short sleeves; and yes, it's a little chilly in the shade, but the skies are clear blue. I actually can't remember the last time it rained.

So at the moment, Santa Barbara is winding up to be a combination of a) things that I like right now and b) things that I think I'll end up liking in the future. The weather, the bicycles and the closeness of everything is in the first category. Or like today at the end of lecture, when we picked up our last test papers along the front of the hall; 'They're arranged alphabetically,' the professor said. 'A on the mountain side, Z on the ocean side.' 

Oddly enough, with five classes, I'm the only one I know not screamingly busy at the moment. It's kind of like the eye of the storm; last week was hell, and finals are coming up after Thanksgiving. Oh, Thanksgiving! How exciting! I give thanks for the enthusiasm Americans have for their holidays. I'm using my 'free' time to think about how the NZ dollar is now worth only 53 US cents, and worry about what I'm going to do. And also go out and hear music. I've been charmed to find a music scene that's what I'd term small but healthy. Thriving, even. Hidden in people's living rooms, there are things going on most nights a week. Maybe I've become less critical since I got to the US (my cynicism! No, where is it going? Help!) but I've been impressed by almost everything I've seen thus far. It makes me excited for the future.

Coming soon: three weeks on from the election of Barack Obama, I talk about politics. I avoid dying from finals and share some more information about UCSB. I then ramble about music scenes for a little bit. Watch this space.

More of Mexico, and Montecito burns.

Last weekend was a looong one, making this week short, which is a relief, but also not, because I have much schoolwork to do.  Five European girls and I seized the day given to us so kindly by the Veterans and went south.  I always thought of 'running to Mexico' as a very romantic concept.  It kind of is; there's nothing like an open grey freeway to make you feel like you're going somewhere.  But the actual border crossing with Tijuana is not nearly as windswept and barren as I would like.  I hoped you'd have to take some moth-eaten bus to a desk in the middle of a red sandy desert, with only huge cacti and a barbed wire fence for company.  There would be a little wooden shack with a little wooden desk and a little wooden man with a stamp, and a cardboard sign with an arrow saying 'Mexico'.  

But the largest border crossing in the world (I heard that somewhere, don't quote me) is an altar to sin and depravity, just like Tijuana itself.  It's covered in billboards advertising liquor and Viagra for the duty-free shopper, and fast food joints that have crept over the border.  The crossing itself is resembles the world's most confusing subway station, all grey concrete and inclining ramps.  I did see some dodgy looking men hanging around the overpass to the American side last time I was there, back in September.  Probably they didn't realise how awesomely stereotypical they were being, pursuing their strange ends in the shadows.

So, short summary of another country: ate a lot of food, tried and failed but hopefully improved my Spanish, rejoiced in the dirt and the noise.  Bought some fantastic boots with a lot of language confusion, had a haircut (happily the concept of a 'trim' is familiar to everyone).  Patronised a delicious establishment called Papas and Beer, a chain nightclub in Baja California Norte.  Huge overpriced drinks and the most enthusiastic bumping and grinding I've ever seen; and this whistling concept, where a male employee comes along with a whistle and points at some unsuspecting girl, who he then dances with inappropriately and takes photos with.  THEN he makes her drink this unknown substance, grabs her round the middle, puts his hand over her mouth and jerks her back violently; picks her up, spins her around over his shoulder, then jiggles her upside down.  I'm not sure what it's actually meant to do.  Possibly make the girl throw up.  Or just embarrass her.  Or both.  Although we did see one girl who seemed to enjoy it a lot.  They got Marissa just after we arrived, a beautiful, reserved and extremely cynical Dutch girl.  The look on her face will keep me laughing for weeks; but I'm worried it might have severely mentally damaged her, possibly for life.

We spent the Monday night back in San Diego, and on Tuesday I got to have a quick coffee with my friend Jesse who lives there.  I meet him in Egypt, and it feels so weird to be able to just have a normal coffee with a guy I haven't seen for so long.  San Diego officially has some of the world's best weather.  Caught the train back the same day, five hours of staring out as California rolls by.  Concrete, factories, parking lots and emptiness.  Near LA a group of young kids skating with blue hills and palm trees behind them.

It's started getting dark very early here, much earlier than at home.  It must be being closer to the equator, and daylight saving.  The sun sets at about five; I saw it from the eighth floor of the library today, an orange ball hanging above the sea, throwing last light on us.  The tree outside my window is still shedding its leaves - it must have so many!  Just like how the sky never runs out of rain.  I wonder if it will go quite bare for winter.

Winter seems to be taking its sweet time about it.  Today it was too hot to sit in the sun for long, and everyone's still in T-shirts.  Tonight is particularly balmy.  There's a fire out at Montecito, burning up the rich people's homes.  It's not that close to us, not close enough to worry, but if we get evacuated maybe I won't have to take my tests. 

Folk shows and schoolwork

Hello! So I can't log onto the blog I normally post music reviews on, Much Better Sundays.  It will have to go here instead.  Oh well, it's all the same Internet, right?  To provide a general update on my situation, I now think that five classes might not have been such a bright idea.  I feel like the schoolwork is gently melting my brain, and we're only half-way through the term!

Halloween is coming up this weekend.  I think the university is getting ready to go into crisis mode.  Thousands of people descend on Isla Vista with the intent of cramming as much of a good time as possible into two days.  I've had no prior experience of the chaos, but if all the fliers and warnings and community preparation meetings are anything to go by, this is going to be madness.  I think I might dress as the tooth fairy.  I have a white dress, and now I need some teeth.  At the moment, it'll be enough of a celebration if I don't have to do schoolwork for a day.  

The weekend following Halloween (and the US and NZ elections, eek!) is a long one; we get the Tuesday off, so I think we're stealing the Monday too.  I'm hoping to take a trip, to LA, San Diego or even Ensenada in Mexico.  Looking forward to that beacon of relaxation, and of course Thanksgiving!  Which I'll be back in Berkeley for.  Mmmm, composting, coffee and the Cheese Board...  But more on the culture shocks of SoCal some other time.

I spent a delightful Sunday night at the Biko Garage, a performance space attached to the student housing co-operative.  I love going there, because it's like going home among the ironed-perfect blond-tanned California sorority girls and the associated frat guys.  This place is filled with hippies and hipsters wearing vintage.  They all seem pretty nice, and I'm planning to infiltrate them like all those viruses I've been learning about in school.

The first (and last) band on Sunday was called Girl Band.  They sound like the kind of music I came to America for; three girls with charming voices, a harp, a guitar, a ukulele, occasionally a glockenspiel or cheap keyboard.  It was beautiful and the crowd obviously loved them.  I get the feeling they're IV natives (one of their members is in another indie pop band, Watercolor Paintings) and don't play all that often.  They were extremely lovely, although it would also be good to see them branch out a little more from the mold.  At the moment they sound like a cross between Joanna Newsom and Au Revoir Simone, and while that is a beautiful combination, no one wants to be a mixed drink.  Be a cocktail!

Desolation Wilderness, a four-piece (maybe?  I couldn't see properly) had psychedelic wafty indie-rock that it was nice to hear again.  They have that one great thing going for them: a very attractive lead singer, and it was good to jiggle along.  I feel like their music might benefit from repeated listening.  Maybe.  That's a maybe.

L.A.K.E. were the headliners of the night, if there can be headliners in a small garage packed to the gills.  It was like a pressure cooker in there.  I'll add "hot steamy gigs" to my list of outside-the-box energy solutions.  The other one so far is gyms.  I've started actually going to the rec centre here (!; yes) and thought about all the energy that people are burning up.  Literally.  If we could somehow mine this resource, turn the treadmills into mousewheels that power some kind of generator, then maybe our energy problems wouldn't be completely solved, but I for one would stop feeling like gyms are the most useless places on earth.

Anyway!  L.A.K.E.!  Releasing new album thingie!  They have actually have a track on the first Bicycle Records comp. for those people back in NZ who have acquired the above from the Polka Dots.  I bought their first album after the show which is very minimalist sweet indie pop and not fantastic.  But their live show was good.  They've started bringing funk and indie together, and I like what they're making, and you can dance to it, and people did, and it was awesome.  And they're cute.  The Biko garage crowd are very nice.  They are friendly and share their water.  I like it. 

One year older

As of today, I am legally allowed to drink in the United States of America.  This is a relief.  I can now also go into places to see music that I want to see.

I'm not doing much for my birthday here, at least, not what living in Isla Vista should demand of me; that is, to drink until I cannot drink no more.  I got an email to that effect generated by the office of the Vice Chancellor.  It had my name on it and wished me a happy birthday, reminded me that drinking myself into the gutter is not a good idea and informed me that everyone wants me to "have a great time but also live to see another day".  They're not kidding (by the way, I also want to live to see another day).  This is the university that has compulsory online alcohol education for every new student.  Kind of an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, given UCSB's reputation.  

So I'm going out to dinner tonight with a couple of friends, and to (finally!) see some bands play at the co-op, and look forward to tomorrow when my two mid-mid terms will be over.  And this weekend, when I'm going to pick myself up a guitar, and have a birthday picnic on the beach, and enjoy the fall sunshine and the beauty of being here.

Brown buildings and bicycles

There's not as much time for writing now that classes have started.  I'm not sure what it is, whether the long break since I was last at school or the new country or the different schooling system, but I'm actually doing my work for once.  And the reading, like, on time.  Could also be a strategic move considering I'm doing five classes, which is a high course load even for people not adjusting to a new place (and looking for work).  We'll see how this ends up; with me dying?  Possibly.  

I'm getting up at seven every morning now, for my Spanish class at eight.  The sun gets in my eyes as I cycle along the bike lanes that run through the university housing into campus.  The buildings here are all modern and brown, and the mountains to the north are blue, darker against the sky.  The view from the eighth floor of the library is a point of pride; you've got a panoramic view of the mountains and ocean and the whole of Isla Vista as you study, and at sunset the light strikes all the books and makes them golden.  

I can tell it's autumn, or what passes for autumn in California.  There are still days, like today, when it's too hot to sit in the sun for long.  Then you have to find a bench helpfully positioned under one of the many trees on campus, most likely close to a green collegiate lawn, and sit in the shade.  Then, unfortunately, you find it's slightly too cold and you have to move back, where you lose patience for reading and fall asleep.  Just me?  We had rain on Saturday morning, that was kind of exciting.  Apparently, if it rains on a school day, no one goes to class.  Also, no one attends the day before Thanksgiving, and certainly most seats will be empty on the Monday in November just before Veteran's Day on the Tuesday.  I've been following this schedule with care and wide eyes in case I should innocently go to school when I'm supposed to.  I've also heard that professors use these student-initiated holidays to give passwords to the students that do attend to use on the final exam.

Everything I heard about Santa Barbara being a party school has been confirmed.  Del Playa Drive, the street next to the ocean, packs out on Friday night.  Most of Isla Vista becomes unofficially pedestrianized.  The police hang around just waiting for someone to fall off, out of, into or over something.  I haven't attended any parties yet; I'm kind of biding my time, I guess.  Things at the moment are just kind of mellow (or 'chill') as they say.  Maybe for my 21st birthday next week I'll have a picnic out at the beach.

I think this place is changing me.  I now willingly exercise.  I will return to New Zealand all blond and tan and giggly.

 

     

In Santa Ynez

Whoever said it was always sunny in Southern California was lying.  We have been gifted with fog, hiding the mountains.  It's not summer here any more, and I should get some more jumpers.

Our apartment is regulation white, with regulation uncomfortable purple couch.  I'm looking forward to the day in a couple of months where I will wake up on Sunday morning, pad out of my bedroom into the living area, look around and feel at home.  I'm looking forward to the day I will be sad to leave and have to pack everything up.  We don't have enough stuff on the walls and the place feels unwelcoming, and slightly pissed off.  

I feel like I've free-fallen out of a plane into the middle of someone else's life.  This is called culture shock.  It's the shock part I'm really feeling, the bit where you hit the ground and realise that everything is new.  You don't understand these people.  They barely speak English.  They go to the gym.  They don't walk.  They told us about this in orientation, some kind of "cultural rollercoaster" or "cultural iceberg" or whatever, instead of telling us useful stuff, like how to get to Trader Joe's.  

Our part of the artificial village of Santa Ynez is inhabited by transfer students and internationals.  Maybe this makes us more likely to bond.  I don't know.  My two roommates are both transfers from community colleges in other parts of California.  We were meant to have a fourth but she didn't show and they haven't given us another.  We went out to dinner with the other families in our building, and got to know each other, possibly so now if someone is being loud we can tell them off nicely.  None of this sounds very interesting.  I'm scared out of my mind, for no reason.  Classes start day after tomorrow.  It'll be nice to feel useful.

I'm going to have to get myself a bike.  I've been convinced by the bike paths that are better maintained than the person paths, and the odd lack of pavements in Isla Vista.  They just suddenly disappear!  And you're walking on grass!  Or in the road!  People here ride big solid beach cruisers, like the SUV of the bicycle world, the girls in pastel shades of pink or yellow or green with baskets and flowers printed on the seat.  There seem to be a huge amount of sororities and fraternities, which I find endlessly fascinating, with their crazy Greek symbols and mysterious 'RUSH' signs.  Right now, I just feel lost.

Going north, new home

The last days in Ensenada seemed to pass like some kind of dream. No, I'm serious. Probably didn't help that I didn't want to eat (because my appetite was all wonky) and couldn't sleep all that well (probably due to apprehension about all the stuff that was going to happen in the next couple of days). But it seemed vaguely unreal, like the calm before the storm. Drinking beer at all kinds of day. Sitting in the common room with a motley bunch of people that didn't have anything in common except the room. Stef, my German traveling buddy and speaker of Spanish, depressed about returning home after a year of freedom in New Zealand. Peter, one of those American exports you find living in Mexico, middle aged, long hair, possible alcoholic, talks a lot and loudly. Teresa, from Florida, twice my age, pleasantly ignorant and slightly disapproving. Carlos, entrepreneur, great photographer, owner of African relics, takes me to the bus stop at 4.30am. Me, whoever I am, curious about the future, white girl, turning browner every day. Like God or whoever had picked a random bunch of people out of a hat and put them in a small Mexican city.

A Mexican city with the best fish tacos, like, ever.  I broke my six-year seafood drought for these things.  God, they were good.  Everything in Ensenada was located with relation to this fish taco stand.  As in: 'You go to the fish taco place, and turn to the right, and walk two blocks.' I think it was pretty much the centre of the universe for four days.   

We were in Mexico for Independence Day and the show of pride this induces. On the street corner there are pyramids of white, red and green flags for sale, along with horns and windmills and hats. The festivities had fireworks and traditional music and fudge. And horchata, better than in California by far (sorry, guys). And dancing, the women with huge white skirts and the men with knives and bottles of tequila on their heads.  

But all good things come to an end. So yesterday I got on a bus at 5am. Ironically, considering what you might think about Mexican time-keeping, that was the only bus I caught that day that wasn't late. Don't even talk to me about Greyhound anymore. I didn't get to where I am now, Santa Barbara, until 7pm, a journey that really is only about 6 or 7 hours direct. Crossing the border wasn't a nightmare, exactly, but certainly got my heart racing; I had to get to LA by a certain time to get a certain bus to SB, etc. The border guards were all friendly as hell, but fast, no. At the processing office one was playing on his computer with Microsoft Paint. I've no idea what he was trying to draw. They just seemed to be totally unconcerned with maintaining the reputation of US border control as hungry pitbulls with a license to search and detain. Oh, and for the record, no one searched my bags; I am content with my cheap Mexican mescal. In a plastic bottle. It's meant to taste like lighter fluid.

Strolling around trying to find buses with a pack that must be a third of my body weight wore me out big time. I think I have muscles on my legs that weren't there before; well, they hurt, so they must be there. I just passed out last night, with my clothes on; tried to wake up at 11pm to call my mum, and put the alarm on. I woke up when it went off, and I swear I got up a couple of minutes later; when I looked at the time it was 3am.

Soon I'll write properly about Santa Barbara and Isla Vista, the community where all the UCSB students live. After twenty-four hours, I'm reserving judgement, although right now it's living up to its raucous reputation with gusto. The parties are loud, and when I went downstairs to spy, I found the front fence being used as a backdrop for what looked like an impromptu photo shoot for an adult magazine. It is, however, as I heard, beautiful here. On the orientation today, I saw the swimming pools, and the bike lanes, and the monolithic light brown buildings that all look kind of the same. I think life as a student could be pretty perfect here, easy, relaxed. At this early stage I think it's the people I've yet to meet who will make the difference. Otherwise I'll be stuck in this perfect paradise with the characters from The Rules of Attraction.

[That's a book by Bret Easton Ellis which I read back in NZ. It's written a while ago but is a really good portrayal of the tedium of sin and the monotonous life of a modern indulgent college student. Depressing as hell. What I heard about UCSB put it back in my mind, and I've got to say, I haven't had any reason to forget it so far. Harsh first impressions? What I thrive on. So maybe I should say I'm attempting to reserve judgement.]

Palm trees and plastic bottles

I'm now starting to feel like I don't really want to leave Mexico. Mexico's great. It's dusty and dirty and loud. It's everything I'm expecting Santa Barbara not to be.

We spent two days in Santa Rosalia. As most Mexican people will tell you, two days is a long time to spend in Santa Rosalia. There's not much to really do. Mainly we hung out on the front porch of the Hotel Del Real, reading, playing ukulele. The ukulele seemed to impress passersby, including a policeman who was at work checking car registrations. He told Stefanie that most cars didn't have one, and there wasn't really a lot he could do to make them have one, except ask nicely. He was also upset that he didn't get to carry a gun.

One of the most exciting things we saw in S.R. was a plaque on the building housing the 'Thrifty' ice cream shop. It explained how, in some long ago year, the Police Chief of Santa Rosalia had arrested William Somebody, a U.S. citizen wanted on ten charges of murder. Maybe this was what our policeman had dreamed about when he signed up for the force. 

We took a night bus to Ensenada. Twice they stopped the bus at military checkpoints, and made everybody get off the bus and open their luggage. They have sun-faded photos up of some of the drug shipments they've found. I have to say, people say horrible things about the corruption in Mexican officials, but we've had nothing but friendliness. Maybe it's because we're female. Actually, Mexico is a lot less scary than I'd planned. Although men in Loreto had a weird habit of lurking down dark streets. They didn't rob us or anything. They just seemed to be hanging out, looking sketchy.

So we got to Ensenada about 7.30am. We were unsure where to stay; got to the only backpackers hostel and the door was opened by an Australian guy with no pants on, scratching his head and yawning at the hour of day. 'You've come to the right place,' he said. We're certainly having a nice time here, hanging around, drinking coffee, talking to the owner, Carlos, a soft-spoken dreamy Mexican guy who seems to know at least four languages. There aren't many others staying here (read any, apart from Peter, from North Carolina). In fact, Carlos is out at the moment. He left us in charge, with strict instructions not to open the door to anyone. Hopefully he'll be back before anyone wants to get a room.

Ensenada's an interesting place. Lots of cruise ships stop here, so along the waterfront is this touristy stretch of souvenirs and restaurants, and bars that were already getting started when we went down at 11am. But you go one street away from this, and the tourists just disappear. I'm immensely thankful to Stef for speaking Spanish; not only is it sometimes essential, it's allowed us to connect with Mexican people.

Last night, on our way back from wearing out our shoes all over the city, we heard the opening strains of John Lennon's 'Imagine', as sung by a young band of Mexican teenagers (you have not lived until you've sung 'do, do, do do do' as the sun sets over Ensenada). Intrigued, we returned, to find another band playing amidst food tents and dancing. We had a feeling this might be connected to Mexican Independence Day, coming up on Tuesday, but were still a bit confused. Even more so when I was given a free pina colada, and free food. Were these people religious? I started to think this was just the Mexican way, but my thoughts about the inherent goodness of all of humanity were interrupted when the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place: the speeches, the signs for something called PAN, the words action, national and political. We had walked in on a fiesta for the political party currently in government. We got out of there.

Today we finally got to a beach. The beach was sandy. Very sandy. There is still sand on me after a shower. Sand... Oh, sand...

Oh, the humidity!

So it´s definitely been raining. The last thing I expected. The clouds are still out there, hanging around... Oh no, please go away before we need to get to the bus stop! Please!

The temperature´s a little more bearable up here. Mulege is absolutely full of palm trees, and it´s by a river, and it´s quite cute but quite small. They had a flash flood a couple of weeks ago, so down by the river there are dead cars and fallen streetlights.

There´s not a heck of a lot to do. Our hotel room is beautiful, it has bright colours and carved wooden headrests. I took a 40min walk to the beach, and all I found was a lot of stones. It could have been a beach in England (then when I double-checked the guidebook, found that it was polluted and not recommended for swimming). I keep spying these gorgeous beaches from the bus, all white sand and turquoise water, but am realising that it takes a car to get to them. I was so unhappy at this thought that I wrote a song about it.

We did take a tour up to a cave painting site in the hills, a rare tourist luxury. The landscape was incredible, the hills all red and rocky with sunlight playing off them, the cacti huge and towering above the trees, all green from the recent rain. Hiking up to the cave (slash wall, there was minimal concave action going on there) there were frogs dancing all over the place. I guess they don´t get many feet tramping on them. We were shown a cave where the native people apparently used to live; I never really believed that anyone would want to settle down in a big dark hole in a rock, but this one looked quite comfortable and spacious. The painting itself was pretty exciting (although I´ve always thought they look like they´ve been done by a wayward child with a crayon). There were deer and turtles and stuff. Most interesting were the small white handprints; little signatures, marks from a long time ago, with the same mentality as graffiti. I was here, I existed, this is me, this is my mark.

Slowly cooking

So when I left Wellington in winter, damp, cold, windy and more cold, I promised never to complain about the heat, and wished it to be hot, hot, hot.

Now is when I break my word, and bring out the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for."

Loreto, about three quarters of the way down the peninsula of Baja California (that´s the big sticky-out bit on the side of Mexico), is currently thirty degrees celsius. It´s 9.15 am. It reaches thirty eight degrees during the day. My traveling companion (who, fortunately, speaks Spanish pretty well) and I have been huddling inside the air conditioned motel room (painted a bright shade of orange) too afraid to go outside. Today we´re catching the bus and going north, hoping to find a beach and cooler air.

It´s beautiful here, though. Distant mountains provide a backdrop for palm trees and low-slung buildings. The mission was built sometime in the 1600s or something. Too bad the most comfortable place is the supermarket. They´re having a fiesta to celebrate the town´s anniversary, which is pretty cool, and they´ve got a few flags up. The music doesn´t start til after 11pm, and oddly enough there doesn´t seem to be any dancing.

Finding my way across the border and to the bus station in Tijuana turned out to be pretty much as hard, and not harder, than I´d thought. On my way out of San Diego in the tram I felt like I had stage-fright. But when you get into those kind of chaotic situations, something innate kicks in and gets you into a bus with a guitar playing mistrel, into a taxi when you get off the bus too early. You kind of go on auto-pilot, and somehow welcome the fact that you don´t have to pretend anymore; I feel like I spend a lot of energy in the US pretending like I´m not a tourist, trying not to make mistakes. But backpacking is fueled on mistakes. You put a certain amount in one end, with a certain amount of money, and see where you get to.

The roads here are a shock after the four-lane freeways in the US. The main road down Baja is two lanes, both seem incredibly narrow, with no shoulder at all. Our driver on the (nineteen hour!) bus ride down here took the bends at quite a speed, and smoked out the window. The sun rose on rolling barren hills filled with scrub land and the most awesome cacti. Wow! The men wear Texas-like cowboy hats and have short legs. The signs on shops are hand-painted. Compared to Egypt, this is easy living; hardly any harrassment from shop-keepers, and if there is any from men I can´t understand it so it´s easy to ignore. I think we´re in a rich part of the country. There are no homeless people, in comparison to San Diego where there are three to a corner. All the children are really cute, I want to steal one, and the beer is cheap.

Wide streets and shadows

Is it getting hotter? I think it's been getting hotter. The midday sun is to be avoided at all costs and the heat beams up from the pavement, warming my feet from the inside out. No wonder people don't walk much here.

I'm still hanging out in San Diego and am staying with a friend I met in Egypt for a couple of nights. This is great. There is a dog named Norm and lots of stringed instruments. We watched The Daily Show and the speech of the Republican nominee for vice-president, Sarah Palin. We made nasty comments about her and felt slightly better.

It is nice to see the city outside of downtown. It makes me feel less like a tourist. San Diego is actually America's 6th largest city, or something, but it's spread out. So the center has big shiny buildings and impressive fountains but feels sleepy. They also have a park, Balboa Park, which is kind of like heaven, in that it is very pretty and has lots of plants and water features. I think when they coined the phrase 'a walk in the park' they were probably talking about Balboa Park, not somewhere like Golden Gate Park where you are enveloped by drug pushers and fog, or Central Park in NY where you risk your life and limbs (I hear). The Zoo is also in this most marvelous park (and they have a kauri tree - odd) but I have been too lazy to go. And if I went by myself I would just start talking to the animals and then people might look at me funny; actually, maybe not, this is America. Everybody talks to themselves.

Tomorrow I have to go to Mexico. One thing about San Diego that I did not pick up from Veronica Mars is that Tijuana is right next to it, kind of squashed up against the border like a rotten tomato. So all I have to do is catch a tram to the border, walk across, find the bus station and fight off anyone who tries to steal my kidneys. I read that Tijuana has become more dangerous recently because rival narcotics gangs keep shooting each other. Ha! Fun!

America is kind of great but a little hard to get used to. The paper is a different size. I'm not kidding! They don't have A4! And the light switches go the other way. But the hardest thing is the driving on the right side of the road. Everywhere I walk, I have to mutter, 'Left, then right. Left, then right.' It sort of feels like waking up one day where the world is almost normal, but just a little bit wrong. Maybe like being schizophrenic. Or having your brain tapped by aliens.

Slightly insane in San Diego

Where I'm waiting, waiting, for what feels like days. Nothing to do, lots to worry about. Trying to meet up with a friend who lives here and is currently on vacation. This city is sleepy. No one to really talk to, and I get very annoyed with my own company after a while. However, I can hardly complain; I'm on holiday...

We're not in Berkeley anymore.

Yesterday I woke up far too early with a little more tequila in me than I would have wanted. The fog had rolled into Berkeley and everything was grey. The Oakland Greyhound station is in a beautiful old building with a round atrium and two very friendly security guards. The sight of the hills disappearing in the grey morning made me want to cry. I would have wept buckets if I had known that the quality of coffee outside Berkeley just does not match up.

The little tin can bus we were traveling through the California plains in was also a little sub-par, and the AC was not quite up to scratch. As we toddled along I was reminded of lobsters in a pot, heat slowly rising until they are boiled alive. LA was oddly lovely. I guess they wrote the (metaphorical) book on urban beauty, right? The bus smashed into the back of a car in front as we were leaving LA, so we spent an hour and a half sitting, waiting, while police, ambulance, firemen came and went. Our names and addresses were taken by a very good looking poilceman. I finished my book, and spent the rest of the journey gazing out as dusk turned into night, watching the lights of the cars. I love California.

California Dreamt.

I've stopped writing the diary I've been keeping for five years.  To avoid feeling like a failure I'll write something other people can read.  I don't promise to be very interesting.

I've been in Berkeley for a month now, but I haven't noticed the weeks go past.  Considering how little I have to do I haven't been a very diligent correspondent.  Tomorrow I'll hopefully catch a bus to San Diego, eleven hours of thinking time away.  Then the real traveling will begin.  It's kind of a painful thought.  My bag is really heavy, filled with clothes from the $1 thrift store, and will be a literal drag through Mexico for two weeks.  Then I finally head to Santa Barbara, my surrogate home for nine months and apparently a haven for ironed-straight blond hair, rich kids and STIs.

Not to sound pessimistic.  I love California.  I love the grey freeway loops and the golden brown hills and American voices.  I intend to get good at swimming in Santa Barbara, since everyone here exercises except me.  And eat lots of fruit.