Busy, busy, busy

When your friends start asking you for signs of life, you know you've been neglecting your blog. This time, it's not even that I don't have anything to tell, I have quite a bit to tell actually, but the truth is, I now understand why the standard amount of courses here is three. It's a very simple reason, really. Four is just too much *insert expletive here* work.

And I don't really want to drop any of them either. History of the American Motion Picture is so cool I didn't even mind working my ass of on the paper that was due yesterday, Cosmology and Particle astrokphysics is frustrating because I don't understand it one bit, but it's fascinating, Biophysics is a lot of work but it's not too hard, it's interesting, and it makes me practice my basic physics skills, and with francophone cinema we watch a lot of gripping movies (the last one was "La Haine", which seriously left me silent for ten minutes) and (probably because I haven't been doing the reading so far) it's not that much work.

Oh well, back to what I had to tell. Last Fridat night, Lisa was kind enough to give us (= James and I) a ride to San Diego when she went there with a friend. As you have maybe read on Sylvia's blog, she'd gone there last weekend, and loved it. Stefan was kind enough to let us crash on his (very comfortable) couches, en even to show us around town on Saturday. It was nice (and a little odd) to see him again, to talk with someone from UC again face to face. It'll probably be odd too when I come back, but I'm sure that'll pass.

On Saturday we took the bus and made a couple of stops, the first one at La Jolla coves. The weather was, luckily, much better than predicted, and we got to say all kind of animals, including:

Sunbathing Seals

The next stop was at Mission Beach, a very, very, very long and beautiful beach we walked along for a while, then walked back to go to IHop for a very late lunch. It was nice, but I still miss Dutch pannenkoeken.

The last stop was at Old Town. I didn't love it as much as Sylvia did, but it was one more example of the strange American esthetic based on the principle that fake things are somehow more true that real ones. Seriously, Stefan had a picture of the inside of a schoolbuilding there that had "85% original material" on the blackboard :-| The concept of Old Town is that that's the place where "California was born", where the first settllers lived, but if they did it certainly wasn't in the fake "authentic" building standing there. I'm glad I went though, it certainly is something special.

The bad thing about taking the bus is that it takes forever, but the good thing is you get to see a lot, and I think I got the "feel" of San Diego. It's a much more laid-back, relaxed city than LA, and I can imagine that living there could be great.

After the tour of San Diego we were invited to a Lacrosse game by a friend of James. She was on the girls' team, but the match we watched was the men's team. To my surprise, it was actually quite fun to see guys hitting each other with sticks, and in the last five minutes, when San Diego first lost the advantage they had so far, then came back and won the game with 13-11 (I think). People were very fanatic, girls screaming "kill him!", guys chanting, very annoyingly, "thri-ller, thri-ller", and all in all it was a fun experience.

Back at Stefan's, we watched Blade Runner (one more classic I can strike off the list of classic I still have to see) and went to bed. Lisa came to pick us up at ten the following morning as she had to be back in time for work, and around 1 we were back in Westwood.

That afternoon, we caught the last two hours of the huge "festival of books" that was taking place on campus. And...I found the McSweeney's booth, and got "The Polysyllabic Spree" by Nick Hornby and "How We Are Hungry" by Dave Eggers for 20 bucks! I was giddy like a five-year old, James was much amused.

Monday night we went to a free screening of "The Man Who Wasn't There", one of my favorite films. Not only did it look even more glorious on the big screen, but Roger Deakins, the cinematographer, was there, and asnwered some questions. Sometimes I wish I had four lives, even if there seem to be too few hours in a day to lead even one. I wish I could be a cinematographer, I mean, it has the perfect blend of artisticness and technical details. Oh well. I can dream.

The rest of the week was spent mostly on my paper, and on various physics homeworks (for my two physics classes, but also my weekly tutoring of Lisa). So: boring. But I still love it here, and the end of the quarter is much too nearby.

Cheers,

Hedwig