Berk Berk
I wrote this message to Juan and just thought I'd post it here. =)
"Berkeley's great.
There's a TON of great organizations and want to be a part of the ALL! UGH. THEY ALL MAKE ME WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD! I can't seem to find a good balance as to what I want to get involved with. So far, I've already got the Student California Teachers Association, I'm pledging for a gay frat, I'm doing round robin tournaments for intramural tennis, and I'm planning to volunteer at a middle school program that Anne Songdej's interning for. I think that's more than enough but I really want to find a community service oriented organization I could get involved with. I've also attended a Pilipino meeting with Jessica Fabro but I'm not too sure if that's a club I specifically want to get involved with.
But anyway, there's a lot of protesters. Every morning, I walk through the main entrance gate, there's someone preaching something. I've learned to tune it out. One day, I was waiting in line to get my ID card and there was a group of Christians praising the word of the Lord to the line while wearing shirts that said, "Turn to Jesus or BURN IN HELL."
As far as classes go, my Culture Wars class is amazing. My professor has a PhD in American Studies from Yale and he's a crazy motherfucker when he lectures. I do feel that classes are a lot harder here than at Mt. SAC. The Honors program comes close to the difficulty of Berkeley's classes but still not quite as hard. The foreign language classes however are a whole another story. I've taken French 4 and got an A without a problem at Mt. SAC. I placed into upper division French so I took one week of upper division and could not hang. It's just so intense here for foreign languages. So I dropped down to lower division French 4 and I'm still hella struggling. I'm also taking Tagalog 1A (Introductory) and I feel like I'm working hella hard even though I understand everything. Oh yeah. There's a ton of reading. For the Culture Wars class, I had to buy 9 books plus a reader (a collection of articles photocopied by the professor). For another American Studies class, I had to buy 8 books.
My roommates are cool. One of them is a total Filipino fob and the other is from Tijuana. They're real cool even though I feel like I'm the annoying roommate most of the time because they sleep at like midnight and there's a lot of nights where I don't get home until 2 or 3. Floormates are tight as well. We all leave our dorm doors open and we just chill in each others' rooms all the time. I'm pretty happy to say though that out of all the guys on our floor, we have the cleanest room. There's some grody dorms up in this joint. Bin's on the ground floor of our building, I'm on the fourth, and Vijay Suzuki is on the fifth. Austin's a building over and Warren's two blocks away. There are a few mornings where Vijay and I have walked to class together. Bin is usually chillin' and studying on my floor cause my floormates are cooler and his roommate is always having sex!
There's a lot Ma and Pa restaurants around here that make really good food. The dorm food isn't too great but eh, you adjust with what you've got. I always thought that it would be pretty difficult to screw up breakfast but alas, our dining hall has accomplished in doing so.
I've gone to San Francisco six times within the past three weeks using the BART (Bay Area R? Transit). Twice for meetings. Four times to hang out with the gay frat. Three of those times I've returned drunk. It's actually pretty expensive compared to other public transportation systems (a good 6.50 for a round trip from SF and back), but I love the feeling of not driving.
On game days, Berkeley becomes a whole different place wiith visitors from out of state and all. Two weeks ago, it was Cal v. Tennessee. Some dude was like "Cal sucks!" and I responded, "White power!" and held my fist in the air like a Black Panther. Additionally, around the stadium, there's tree protesters ... living in the trees. I guess a while back the administration ordered that the trees be chopped off, but in protest, people went up and lived in them. It's quite a sight and kind of scary.
There's been about three armed robberies around the Berkeley campus within the past week. They're discouraging us from talking on the phone or listening to our iPods while we're walking about on campus because it makes us more of target.
But I've gotta get back to work on my French essay so I'll ttyl. Say hi to the family + Matt for me! =) I was watching your videos on your facebook the other day and Marco (my roommate) called me a pedifile (sp?). Let me know what's been up with you as well. I plan to call back Kat within the next week! =)"
I'm going shopping in SF today with my girls. Hope everyone's doing well. =)
"Berkeley's great.
There's a TON of great organizations and want to be a part of the ALL! UGH. THEY ALL MAKE ME WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD! I can't seem to find a good balance as to what I want to get involved with. So far, I've already got the Student California Teachers Association, I'm pledging for a gay frat, I'm doing round robin tournaments for intramural tennis, and I'm planning to volunteer at a middle school program that Anne Songdej's interning for. I think that's more than enough but I really want to find a community service oriented organization I could get involved with. I've also attended a Pilipino meeting with Jessica Fabro but I'm not too sure if that's a club I specifically want to get involved with.
But anyway, there's a lot of protesters. Every morning, I walk through the main entrance gate, there's someone preaching something. I've learned to tune it out. One day, I was waiting in line to get my ID card and there was a group of Christians praising the word of the Lord to the line while wearing shirts that said, "Turn to Jesus or BURN IN HELL."
As far as classes go, my Culture Wars class is amazing. My professor has a PhD in American Studies from Yale and he's a crazy motherfucker when he lectures. I do feel that classes are a lot harder here than at Mt. SAC. The Honors program comes close to the difficulty of Berkeley's classes but still not quite as hard. The foreign language classes however are a whole another story. I've taken French 4 and got an A without a problem at Mt. SAC. I placed into upper division French so I took one week of upper division and could not hang. It's just so intense here for foreign languages. So I dropped down to lower division French 4 and I'm still hella struggling. I'm also taking Tagalog 1A (Introductory) and I feel like I'm working hella hard even though I understand everything. Oh yeah. There's a ton of reading. For the Culture Wars class, I had to buy 9 books plus a reader (a collection of articles photocopied by the professor). For another American Studies class, I had to buy 8 books.
My roommates are cool. One of them is a total Filipino fob and the other is from Tijuana. They're real cool even though I feel like I'm the annoying roommate most of the time because they sleep at like midnight and there's a lot of nights where I don't get home until 2 or 3. Floormates are tight as well. We all leave our dorm doors open and we just chill in each others' rooms all the time. I'm pretty happy to say though that out of all the guys on our floor, we have the cleanest room. There's some grody dorms up in this joint. Bin's on the ground floor of our building, I'm on the fourth, and Vijay Suzuki is on the fifth. Austin's a building over and Warren's two blocks away. There are a few mornings where Vijay and I have walked to class together. Bin is usually chillin' and studying on my floor cause my floormates are cooler and his roommate is always having sex!
There's a lot Ma and Pa restaurants around here that make really good food. The dorm food isn't too great but eh, you adjust with what you've got. I always thought that it would be pretty difficult to screw up breakfast but alas, our dining hall has accomplished in doing so.
I've gone to San Francisco six times within the past three weeks using the BART (Bay Area R? Transit). Twice for meetings. Four times to hang out with the gay frat. Three of those times I've returned drunk. It's actually pretty expensive compared to other public transportation systems (a good 6.50 for a round trip from SF and back), but I love the feeling of not driving.
On game days, Berkeley becomes a whole different place wiith visitors from out of state and all. Two weeks ago, it was Cal v. Tennessee. Some dude was like "Cal sucks!" and I responded, "White power!" and held my fist in the air like a Black Panther. Additionally, around the stadium, there's tree protesters ... living in the trees. I guess a while back the administration ordered that the trees be chopped off, but in protest, people went up and lived in them. It's quite a sight and kind of scary.
There's been about three armed robberies around the Berkeley campus within the past week. They're discouraging us from talking on the phone or listening to our iPods while we're walking about on campus because it makes us more of target.
But I've gotta get back to work on my French essay so I'll ttyl. Say hi to the family + Matt for me! =) I was watching your videos on your facebook the other day and Marco (my roommate) called me a pedifile (sp?). Let me know what's been up with you as well. I plan to call back Kat within the next week! =)"
I'm going shopping in SF today with my girls. Hope everyone's doing well. =)