California, Here I Am!

2200 miles, as the crow flies! That's the distance between me and university, now that Andra and I have landed in Berkeley. Well, okay, we landed in San Fransisco International Airport. Then we took the bus. Know how much a student fare costs there? 35 cents. But we didn't count as students there. Damn politics.

This flag was hanging outside of the Berkeley YMCA. Cool.

We spent like fifteen hours walking around. It's like 70 degrees Fahrenheit and people are complaining about how cold it is. We're also in the middle of the Berkeley "Artisan Holiday Open Studios" festival. Which means a whole lot of arts and crafts are for sale, plus some pretty cool 'real' art. There was a guy selling inner-city subsidized birdhouses. And I have to agree, if birds had project tenements, that's what they'd look like. He told us it was a former crackhouse, but in good shape. See now, that's the kind of thing you just wouldn't say to a customer in Toronto. We went to a glassblower's. Check out my picture of him in action.

We weren't allowed past that railing, but I really wanted to help.

In his gallery he had a ton of glass things, many of them featuring Jesus, including one in which the son of man was nailed to the McDonalds Golden arches. Which is some pretty impressive glasswork, not to mention a venomous jab at consumer-based society, or something. The YMCA here is so cool I even took a picture of their parking lot:

They all parked there anyway.

Okay, so maybe that's not that cool. but the fact is, we're in CALIFORNIA right now. Has Toronto got its first foot of snow yet? Remember that winter when they had to call in the army to de-ice the roads in Toronto? Well their isn't enough frost in Berkeley to ice a cake, and that's such a clever wordplay that I'm gonna call attention away from it with this photo.

We can wear tank tops outside here. Betcha you can't, townie.

So, as you can see, the first day in Berkeley has been awesome. We're back at the Y now, Andra's taking a nap since she didn't sleep on the plane and we've been running around all day getting the most out of everything. Since Aunt Marty is paying for the hostel, I figured I could spare the $1.25 for an hour's blog in the computer room. Berkeley is fantistic. I want to go visit our old house, here, the one my family lived at when I was in grade three and we moved here for six months. Our landlord was an old hippie who changed her name to Avanda during the sixties, and it don't get much more awesome than that. It does get a little more awesome than that, though, because of the most awesome man in the world. You may have been wondering about him, who he is. We certainly were. It turns out that the most awesome man in the world lives in Berkeley, and we met him today. Here he is, you may now stop looking.

You know you can't top this.

That's all for now, more when I feel like it. Eat a snowflake for us.

- Andra/é