A crazy day in review

Okay, my first real day in south and sunny LA. I woke up around 7.30am although for a jetlagged person like me this feels like midday, the only difference is the headache. That air mattress is way too thin… It is viciously overruling my free will and forcing me to become an early bird here! (Customs should have confiscated it at the airport, this mattress really has totalitarian ambitions). Tyler was awake too, since he had to leave for work around 8am. With Tessa gone to UCLA, I was really glad to talk to mom on the phone for this texting and chatting is so not working for me. It’s difficult to simultaneously answer ten people who are all asking questions like ‘how is it over there’ or ‘what are you doing’ or ‘how is the food’ when in fact you want to talk about something else, to somebody else or don’t want to talk at all (which is not the case, but Obama’s speech writer’s rhetorical philosophy roots for threesomes).

In the afternoon I went to Dashew International Center, which is on the east side of the campus. As a newly arrived exchange student I had to ‘check in’: filling out some forms, signing up for the introduction, getting a campus map. And then it struck me: there are a lot of Asians out here! Los Angeles has a fairly extensive Asian community. There’s China Town, Little Tokyo and something with Koreans, but really, UCLA campus should be mentioned on that list too!
Checking in wasn’t that problematic so after a few minutes I was trying to find my way to Kerckhof building (say Kúrkov), a very beautiful but fake Gothic-like building home to the Daily Bruin, Bruin Card office and a lot more. The campus is really big (bold ;-) ) and beautiful. The grass is exactly the same height everywhere you go. Since I am a very vintage girl with a prehistoric disposable camera I haven’t got any pictures yet but I promise to post some as soon as I time travel back to the futuristic era of 2010.
I couldn’t explore the campus without paying a visit to the UCLA Merchandise store. There are more than a hundred different T-shirts, all with varying prints referring to UCLA, Bruins or the university’s founding year 1919… They even have baby onesies! And now we are only talking about the clothing department.
After being brainwashed (UCLA is the best) I fell right into a bunch of leftish protesters exclaiming ‘Diversity Now!’, ‘Fight for Women’s Rights!’ and other compelling slogans I could not figure out. Later on, my Dutch professor Joes Segal told me this was daily routine, the lane near Kerckhof being the designated (and only) place for students to protest. By the way, I could not withstand the peer pressure ;-) so I ended up signing for a petition urging Schwarzenegger and other bimbos of the Californian government not to cut on educational expenses.
After I had shaken off the Democrats, the lady in the Bruin Card Office told me I couldn’t get a student card before the start of Spring Quarter. I experienced my first (minor) setback and that on such a glamorous campus. How am I supposed to study in the super clean way too expensive library now? I decided not to give up so easily and found my way back to Dashew, convincing the chief officer of international affairs that I really needed a Bruin Card in order to do research (and to drive the bus for free, but I didn’t say that). He ended up changing the date on my DS-form to 03-03. If everything works out, I’ll have Bruin Card by the end of the week.

My fear to spend the evening alone appeared unnecessary for Joes contacted me and picked me up to have dinner at some kind of Tai restaurant. I ate my first curry ever and it was outstandingly good, and for a fair price also. After dinner, I went to Joes’ chamber ensemble rehearsal in Schoenberg hall (Sjowenburg not Schönberg of course) and met two Dutch Fulbright students. It was nice to talk to these ‘exchange experts’ who’d been in LA for more than 4 months. And as a bonus, they played Telemann, Bach and Loeillet de Gant. Home, I ended up low culture before the way too big TV (yeah, you should be jealous) with my roommates. All in all, a crazy day in review.