Round 1

We registered for 3 classes today! One is only 1 unit and its online so maybe we registered for 2 1/2 classes. The important thing is we got that "introduction to psychological statistics" class, which you need to take most of the other psychology classes. Then i'm taking developmental psychology while at the same time angela is taking variations in human sexuality. Then once again we are taking "Psychology: the major and the profession" online.

Oh and also today i played disc golf with alex barker in golden gate park this morning. The course is so cool with a bunch of trees and wilderness. It was fun, but my arm got tired fast. I was doing pretty good, then as my arm got tired, my game went downhill.

This is the Conservatory of Flowers:

¡Frijoles!

dinner is cooking right now and we got beans rice and tortillas. Pat left to go down to mission viejo today and gave us his left over fruit and eggs and stuff. We ate most of his stuff for breakfast and lunch.

We had lunch at Zachary's, a pizza place in oakland that gets rave reviews. some have called it the "best chicago pizza on the west". A few weeks ago we had eaten at Little Star(San Francisco), which had really good chicago style pizza. And after having both, it was unanimous that Little Star was better.

Later that night after eating Latkas, instead of playing scattegories and other games, we took someone to the ER. Pat, Angela, and i went to our friend Mara's house in Berkeley and while we were there her boyfriend, Pablo, crashed his bike on his way to class and knocked out his teeth. None one else had a car but pat so we took him to the ER. i don't know how he is doing now, but think i he is okay, he was handling it pretty well when we dropped him off.

Spanish

Yesterday we went to school to talk to the spanish department about minoring in spanish. From what they told us at orientation, basically with budget cuts, they don't want you to minor and not allowing double majors. At 120 units, which is the graduation requirement is, they want you out the door. I'm not sure how serious they are about this. I don't really care so much about the title of the minor, it just want to be able to speak spanish. Are they going to boot me out the door when i get to 120 units graduated or not!? I want to take spanish, but i don't want it to somehow hurt me in this stupid school world.
Anyways, the lady at the foreign languages department gave me a web address to a test i can take online to help to place me in the appropriate spanish class. She said that unfortunately i cannot meet with a spanish faculty advisor until the semester has begun.

I checked the class schedule online today, all the classes are filling up!
I'm not going to stress about it too much, i've been here before, and it is what it is.

Laundry day

Believe it or not, this is the first time i'm doing laundry up here! at $1.75 a wash and $1.25 a dry, i wait until i have absolutely no clean underwear left to do the laundry.
Also, due to budget cuts in such, there's been a lot going on with school. Nothing I have any say in, but nonetheless a lot of things have been changed. First school tuition has gone up. Second, they have cut down the number of classes pretty significantly. I'm sure there has been many more but those are the main ones. So, because they were cutting classes, they just released the fall 2009 class schedule today, so we can now finally look at the schedule and try to figure out our classes for next semester. As of now, it looks like this is going to be frustrating because there are a lot fewer classes, with no fewer students.

Cookies

Tonight we made cookies from scratch. They came out looking delicious. The only thing is, we don't think they were sweet enough (sorry gregg). Earlier today we saw the movie "(500) days of summer". It was a really good movie, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Yesterday we job searched on the internet, sent our resumes and cover letters to a few places. It's really weird nowadays. I feel like you just send in your resume and hope for the best. They specifically ask you not to call them to follow up, and that they will contact you if you qualify. It's a pretty hopeless feeling.
In a completely unrelated topic, i was surfin the web earlier today, and i came accross a blog by a guy who lives without money. He hasn't spent or recieved a single cent. His name is Daniel Suelo. He lives in caves, picks berries, hikes around, travels through towns, all without money. He's been doing this close to 10 years. Sounds a little crazy, or a little hippie-ish, but the reasons behind it make sense. His life with money was filled with stress and unhappiness, and rewards outside of monetary compensation meant a lot more. I totally am with this guy in theory, I just don't have the guts to hop ship.

Baking!

Our first attempt at baking came out a success (at least to us, i don't know if it would to anyone else's standards). The item we baked was a vegetarian tamale cornbread casserole. It's basically a lot of corn, a lot of beans, a lot of cheese, and a lot of cornbread (with some other ingredients). Our baking future just got a little brighter!



Maybe it doesn't look so appetizing...oh well.

Past Few Days

We've been spending a lot of time at the park just enjoying the good weather. Pat and hollyn came over from berkeley and we had a picnic and tried to fly a kite. The next night we went over to berkeley and hung out with pat and his hockey friends, kevin and charles. Oh! and we got Fenton's ice cream (the best ice cream in the world) too. I got cream caramel almond crunch, a.k.a heaven in a cup. Angela got a close runner up with Banana Nut, which tastes like a banana nut muffin! Pat got coffee cookie crunch, which is also amazing. Then, Hollyn, oh boy hollyn, bless her heart, decided to go with half bubblegum and half rocky road.




Then today, we went to the Renegade Craft Fair, which is a bunch of crafts, apparel, jewelry, posters, and all kinds of other stuff made by artists all around the world. The stuff was super cool and unique. I think we are gonna go back tomorrow.

Sac Town

Yesterday, Pat, Hollyn, Angela, and I went to Sacramento to eat at Pat's uncle's restaurant, Sala Thai. This place is pure quality. beautiful interior and unbelievable food. I don't want to turn this into a restaurant review, so i will leave it at that. While we were in Sac-town, we decided we should pay a visit to the capital building. When we got there it was already pretty late but the dome was lit up bright and it was a real warm evening with no jackets necessary.

Good food. Good friends. Good night.

Meaning Behind the Title

My mother asked me what the meaning of the title was referring to so explained it to her. It then occurred to me that i should probably explain it to everyone else (all 2 of you, if i'm lucky), so here it is. I picked up this book called "Going to See the Elephant" by Rodes Fishburne, and the opening note explains where the phrase came from.
"In 1858, if the reader had lived in New York City, or any other large or small town in the United States, and a friend had stopped by one afternoon to inquire into your whereabouts, your mother would might has said 'He's going to see the elephant.' This meant you had headed west to participate in the gold rush. The elephant was fame, fortune, and with a little luck, luck itself...For our purposes this nearly forgotten expression is meant to identify those rare souls interested in making contact with the story of a lifetime." - Rodes Fishburne


And i'll end with the golden gate bridge at sunset.

Sleeping In

Okay, so for the past few days i've been telling myself i am going to wake up at a fairly decent hour (8-9ish). Not for any reason, i don't have anything i need to be doing, but i just feel so unproductive and like a bum when i sleep in late. But anyways, so i've been trying to wake up early and my efforts have gone to no avail. It's just too hard to wake up when there is no real reason to. I have no problem getting up early if i have something to do, but i haven't been able to trick myself into thinking i need to get up for something. So as usual, i will try again tomorrow. Wow, that's enough ranting about sleeping in.

In other news, our new friend Sheena took us to a place called "the 6th street aquarium" (but its really just a fish store, but a super cool one). It had sooo many fish. Bright colored exotic fish, sharks, sting rays, eels, and everything in between. One fish was $1,200! I wish i would have brought my camera to take pictures to show how neat some of the fish were.

Exploratorium

Okay, two posts in and i am already a terrible blogger. My lack of posts has been for a few reasons, but i won't get into that. So far, our days have been filled with just about nothing. At first it was a trigger for anxiety, but now i am enjoying it for i know i will be wishing i had nothing to do at times during the next semester.
We are getting to know the bus lines better and already finding the abnormal to be more and more normal.
The other day we had orientation for school and they threw out a lot of information about classes and graduation that is complicated at first, but i'm sure will become clearer with time. There are new changes to graduation requirements in such that staff and faculty aren't really familiar with either.
So today was very nice and clear, so we decided to make good use of the weather and go visit the exploratorium. It was beautiful as the pictures hopefully show.