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Published: August 22nd 2011
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After hearing from several people that from the park around it, you could pretty much see some of the stages and definitely hear the music from OutsideLands festival, me, Amie, Harry and Olivia decided to head down and check it out. We jumped on a very full bus for 20 minutes (there were some optimistic ideas of walking to the park),with the general idea of walking around, attempting to bribe the security on the gate with our British accents or convince them that we were a band ( a Barber string quartet-hence the lack on instruments) so that we could get in for free. After walking around most of the festival fence perimeter we concluded that perhaps this wasnt going to work and entered into a fierce hagaling battle with a Mexican named Jose who sold 2 tickets for $50, to Harry and Olivia and after taking a shine to me (he later asked for my number and then invited us to a baseball game) let me and Amie have 2 for $40 each. Nice.
The festival was incredible. There was no pushing, everyone was chilled out and freindly, the loos had loos roll, soap and water, there were no
Photo 3
You've got to love San Francisco queues for anything and the hills around each of the stages meant that you could actually see the bands. The Americans know how to do festivals!
We had to go to campus quite a bit this week, but still managed to do some sight seeing around San Fran, going to places like Fishermans Warf and avoiding the hills by taking busses. The beginning of the week included International Orientation which mostly involved a lot of "GO BEARS" shouted by some overexcited Americans, followed by eating pizza and mingling till you tingle (this is actually an event). The campus is amazing, but if at any point I am feeling homesick and missing the concrete of UEA, the environmental design building here looks exactly like the library. On Wednesday we went along to a Co Op, which is a student run housing scheme. It is exactly like every American Uni TV show you have ever watched...red cups, people drinking out of jars (actually this was rather bizarre), kegs and very friendly people.
We all got to move into our halls this week too, mine is a dorm which is mostly filled with first years who are very excited to meet
MASSIVE FOOD
This lasted me lunch and dinner, and I wasn't hungry for breakfast everyone and think its awesome I'm from England. Its covered in cut outs from Dr Zeus (?!) but I have a view of the Golden Gate Bridge from my window which is is pretty cool. Moving in also involved going to Target, possibly one of the most exciting shops ever. They sell everything you would ever need in life. However, they do seem to hire some strange people as we discovered after spending 10 minutes trying to explain to a woman what a duvet and duvet cover was, so instead we opted for the comforter option (which is essentially a duvet with a cover constantly on). We later found out that duvets really were quite normal in America, although apparently not in Target. It was in fact rather lucky that we weren’t thrown out of the shop, as following the duvet confusion we decided on a game of indoor baseball (helmets, gloves and all), and then got rather over excited by the 2 litre bottles of vodka, whisky and rum with handles...handy for swigging.
This week I have also been to a Frat party. They are odd. Some of them literally have clubs in the basement and they always have beer pong tables, free alcohol, bars and djs. I made friends with some guys snake (not a euphemism) called Steve (the snake not the guy), but the frat guys are generally not super friendly unless your in a tiny dress, heels and part of a sorority.
Other exciting events that have occurred this week are: I have been impersonated by a 50 year old American woman, despite the fact I am not yet legal-I have spent rather too much time being hungover, I have been weaned onto beer and I was introduced to the game apples to apples, which I would not recommend anybody ever play if they want to enjoy themselves for an hour but seems to be THE game to play here (in fact I just heard someone in the corridor excitedly announcing that she had brought it with her).
I'm now off to eat dinenr with my roomies and mingle with my floor.
Lots of Californian love xxx
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