Neighbours

So here's some random info to start this post off. In America you need a degree to be a policeman. I kid you not! Then even with a degree people still get turned down. Why do people want to be policemen - well, because they get paid well! There's a lesson in here somewhere although I think Charles Ngaqula may have trouble spotting it.

The reason I'm able to share this startling piece of information with you is that TJ, who lives on the bottom floor of my apartment block, wants to be a policeman. And he seems entirely normal - a very nice guy in fact. I nearly fell over when he told me about the degree bit! As far as I understand this is just to start off as a normal policeman too. No fast tracking or anything.

Ted, (from the floor above who went to gym at midnight) is a fireman. Not a full time one - just a seasonal one, ie during the summer. But still! I seem to be meeting all sorts of interesting people here.

Our apartment block is inhabited mostly by males, our side of it anyway. I have met our across-the-hall neighbour very briefly. Her name is Rosie and she's the only other female so far. There are still two other apartments who's inhabitants I haven't met however. Our side of the apartment building (so called because in the middle there's the lift and staircase) is all two bedroom 2 bathroom places. The other side (where TJ and Rosie live) is just single apartments. I hope that that random information helps you to sleep better tonight :-)

The guys on our side all seem really nice though. On the ground floor is Scott and Anwar. They have the unfortunate accomplishment of being right by the entrance to the building and their 'balcony' is right by the street (is it still a balcony if it's on the ground?) So it's really easy to pop your head in and say 'hi'.

This is Scott parking on his couch watching TV one afternoon. He had the misfortune to be ambushed by me after I'd been taking pictures of the outside of our building! Note the close up of the lovely bricks. Apparently they don't believe in plastering - inside or out. Against the wall is their screen door - I'm not sure why it's there, it's definitely not supposed to be!

On the second floor is Pasha (or Parsha - not sure of the spelling) who's family is originally Iranian, or Persian as he put it, and Dave. Dave is a manager at Starbucks so regularly gets up at 4:30 am so he can open the store. Apparently there are people who want coffee at 5:30am!

Then the 3rd floor is me and Sarah and on the 4h floor is Ted the fireman and his roomate who's name I have temporarily forgotten. The guys are all very amusing and always up for a party. Although I think that some of them may have done a bit too much partying in previous years - some are taking classes at both SDSU and Grossmont College which is another University (I think) not too far away. Something which adds to my previous conclusion is that Ted, Pasha and Scott all belong to a Frat which is suspended from doing any social activities this year - the exact reason for this has yet to be discovered.

They also entertain us! When Sarah and I moved in we were told 'you better be cool.' Apparently their friends used to live in our apartment but got kicked out. So when they first walked in and saw our apartment their comment was 'Wow, you've chick-ified the place!' I thought that was pretty funny. Funny enough to share anyway.

Moving is a pain!

Before I get on to the topic of this blog post - namely moving into my apartment - there is something I wanted to add on the subject of my last post. The gym is open 24 hours a day during the week. When I heard that I thought that was one of the craziest thing's I'd heard - I mean, who on earth is going to go to gym at some odd hour of the morning?? Well this morning I was chatting to the guy who lives above me - Ted. It turns out that he went to gym last night at about 12pm! This was also after he'd had a couple beers. He didn't seem to think that there was much strange about this! So there do appear to be people who are crazy enough to go to gym at any hour - and I apparently am living in the same apartment block as one of them!

Moving, apartments... aah, what a wonderful topic. I just felt like adding that seeing as I've been putting this off for so long! Well to cut a really long (and rather boring) story short I have found a new apartment and am no longer living at Marge's house. The location of my new apartment is great - it's sooo convenient! It's literally across the road from the campus on a street nicknamed 'College Row' because all the apartments on it are inhabited by students. If you're interested in having a look at a map of the campus btw the link is below:

https://sunspot.sdsu.edu/map/display.cgi

We're on the upper left side of the map right next to the International Student Centre (which is red). We're also just down the road from the university gym and if I want to catch the trolley or a bus all I need to do is to walk through the campus. So location gets 100%!

Above is a picture of the apartment block - not much to look at but it gets better though! We're on the 3rd floor (3rd window up on the right). I'm not too sure what happened to the ground floor because the numbering starts at 1 - wierd! The apartment is in a mini complex called College View Apartments (highly imaginative!) There are 32 apartments in it in total and our block gets called the tower because it's the tallest of all the blocks (again, a huge stretch of imagination there).

Inside it's really nice, although we had to fight to get it that way. It's a 2 bed 2 bathroom place. I have the smaller bedroom, not that that counts for much - it's still bigger than my room at home I think! Below are some pics of the place:

This is Sarah and her Dad Rick when we were moving in - note the piles of stuff in the background!

My room viewed from the doorway. It's so wierd - we don't have lights on the ceiling - something to do with having heating up there?? So we have lights in the kitchen and dining area and the bathrooms, that's it! Anyway, that's why you can see numerous lights in the room. I found the desk on a fantastic website called craigslist. It's very heavy though! Our building has a lift but it's really small so the desk didn't fit in so the two guys from the ground floor flat carried it up the stairs for me! At least that worked - Sarah had to haul her bed and couches over the balcony!

The other side of my room - this pic was taken from the bed. Note the fan - it's been so ridiculously hot in my room for the last few days and I couldn't work out why. Initially I thought it had something to do with leaving the lights on but then I made a concerted effort to switch them off. So then I thought it must have something to do with the air circulation in the room and left both the blinds and the door open. But it still didn't help! The rest of the apartment was noticeably cooler than my room. Eventually, last night just as I was getting into bed I had a brainwave - remember I mentioned the heating in the ceiling and why we can't have lights there... well it turned out that mine was on full blast! Why? I have no idea. but at least the problem's solved now. I just had to suffer for almost a week before I worked it out though - silly Kate!

This is our kitchen and dining area... note the tiles, they're important later! The window looks out onto the roof of the apartment block next door. We're lucky we have it though - we get a nice breeze blowing through! The apartments below us all have a wall there instead and it makes it really dark and stuffy.

This is our lounge/living area. The photo's taken from the dining area. It's sooo big! You can see the sliding door and balcony that those couches had to be hauled over! Luckily Sarah had all the extra furniture we needed so all I had to get was stuff for my room.

This is our balcony and view! We look across to the university. The parking lot is for the International student centre so we're literally right across the street. In the distance you can see a white tower - that's the University's bell tower. It rings at odd times, I still haven't worked out when! As Warren pointed out, the logical thing to do would be to ask someone. It sounds really pretty though!

So now you've got a basic idea of the apartment. it's pretty nice huh? I think so - especially when I've seen what some of the other's in this building look like. although they do have guys living in them which says a lot! But it didn't always look like that... far from it in fact. We weren't shown our apartment initially as there were still people living in it. Instead we were shown an empty one on the ground floor and told 'your one will look just like it' and we're painting it and putting new carpets in. Well our one did look 'just like it' in terms of layout only! It was gross and dirty and smelled. The carpets - let's not even go there! They were so bad that even the carpet cleaners refused to clean them as they said there's no point. Then the landlady turned around and said I'm not putting new carpeting in. I don't have the money now (because she'd just spent $11000 doing up her daughter's apartment as we later discovered). That was not cool! We got what we wanted eventually but only after a lot of 'discussion'. I think it also helped when she came up to see the place and saw just how bad it was. So remember the bit about the tiles - well below is a pic of the dining area being tiled (it used to be carpeted) and the evil landlady. Although she was reasonable in the end.

The tiles were so odd - not ceramic ones like I'm used to but these funny plastic ones that just got glued down. But still better than carpet. As for the rest of the place - let's just say if a career in economics doesn't work out I could become a professional cleaner. I spent 3 hours cleaning my bathroom. It was totally disgusting. I wouldn't call myself a neat and clean freak (anyone who's seen the general state of my room at home can testify to that) but I'm used to stuff being relatively clean and at least hygienic! After my 3 hours in the bathroom my fingers went all funny after all the disinfectant. Oh, and it's not exactly a big bathroom!

The end result is that now Sarah and I have a really nice place to live.

Slacker

So I've been monumentally slack and for that I must apologise - I last wrote on here a week ago - shocking! I do have some small excuse though, I moved! Which occupied all weekend - Friday and Monday included. But more about that and the apartment later... possibly in another block entry. Divide and conquer is my theory at the moment as so much has happened recently that the prospect of putting it all into one blog post is rather daunting. To put it mildly.

So we start at the end (where else??) I went to gym this morning. To put this into context, the university gym, called the Aztec Recreation Centre, is just up the road from my apartment. Literally about 100m, maybe 150m at a push. So the other night my roommate Sarah and I decided to go and sign up. Gym here is horrendously expensive - a whole $17 per month! We also had a look round while we were there. Aside from the fact that it was hideously busy, evenings are apparently not the time to go if you don't like queuing, the facilities are uber impressive.

For your $17 you get access to the ARC itself and all that it contains (more on that in a minute), the Aquaplex which is just up the road - no idea what's in there besides the obvious, water, but will let you know when I've investigated, the tennis courts, bowling arcade (bowling is a sport here it seems) and possibly more which I've temporarily forgotten. Back to the ARC, the gym itself is quite interesting, it's split into very different sections. A free weights section, a machine weight section and then a cardio section. They're all large! The weights sections are definitely bigger than the ones at Virgin Active Westville and the cardio section is about similar probably although they have a much bigger variety of machines, just not as many of each type. Eg, they have 2 types of orbitrek/elliptical trainer machines (which I only realised once I was using the one type this morning) - ones where the handlebars move (like VA) and ones where they're just stationery. There's also basketball courts/practice hoops in the gym as well as a climbing wall which looks so cool! There's one studio for aerobics etc and one they call a multi purpose room. It has spinning bikes in it, punch bags and steppers. You can go to a stepper class like you would do spinning! Might try that sometime although it's only in the evening.

Ooh, I just remembered the best part. You don't need to remember your silly card for gym and wait while someone swipes you in - things are far more advanced here! You walk up to a turnstile and enter your access number (mine's just the last 5 digits of my student id) then you scan your hand! I couldn't believe it, it's soo cool! I'm definitely going to take a pic of it and post it on here.

It was sooo funny today. After I'd finished on the orbitrek I decided to do some stepping because that's what I normally do at VA. One problem - there were no normal steppers (from what I could see initially, or not see as I didn't have my glasses on or contacts in. Instead they had a stairmaster machine which was literally like a revolving set of stairs so when you're on it you actually physically step up on to the next step (or you don't have to in which case you fall off when the bottom step disappears at the bottom). I tried that for a while but it was really hard - the steps you have to take are big and not what I'm used to! I survived 10 mins but by then I'd spotted what looked like normal steppers so I decided to switch. I hadn't seen the steppers before because they're much smaller that the ones I'm used to - these don't have bars on the side, just handles in the front so you are really stepping 'up'. If that makes sense. The first one I got onto, the pedals started going down then there was a loud clunk - like the chain had slipped or something. I tried a few more steps then decided something was definitely funny and if it wasn't - I didn't want to use it anyway. So I got off and onto the one next to it. Well - on that one I couldn't even keep the pedals up no matter how fast I stepped. So feeling like a bit of an idiot I went up to the front desk and asked if there was anyone who could show me how to use the stairmaster (they're all called that here I discovered). The girl at the desk smirked a bit but got one guy to help me. He came over to one of the other machines (that I hadn't tried, there are only 5 of them by the way though) and showed me how to use it - it worked normally, just like the virgin active ones. So then I asked him to try the other two that I had tried and the exact same things happened to him! I was so happy it wasn't just me! While I was on the normal stepper he came back with a maintenance type dude so hopefully they'll be fixed if I try to use them again. They definitely wont be my first choice though.

So that would conclude 'Kate's first gym experience'. I have to run downstairs now to check the tumble dryer (gasps of admiration I hope - I'm actually doing my own washing!) but check back soon because I want to try post a bit more stuff about my apartment and starting varsity today.

Lots and lots of Jelly Tots!

Wow! A lot has happened in the past few days so this could be quite long. Or not – it all depends on how tired I get! Well, it would be logical to start at the beginning but I’m not quite sure when that was so I’ll start at the end and see where I finish up.

I have a place to stay! Admittedly I have one already at Marge’s house but this is my own place. It’s right next to SDSU – literally across the street which is super convenient. The university gym is about 100m away and if I want to catch the bus or trolley I just have to walk through campus. It’s not in university housing though, it’s in a privately owned apartment building. It’s a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom place with a huge living area. I have a roommate, a really nice girl called Sarah. She’s from somewhere in California and is doing a liberal studies major which essentially means she want to be a primary school teacher. I know, I didn’t get it either – still don’t in fact.

It looks like a really nice, fun place to live though (aside from the super-convenient bit). All 32units are occupied by students but not 1st years and the manager is quite particular as to who she rents to which is a good thing as SDSU has a HUGE rep for being a party school. It apparently made the news for the past 3 years for STD epidemics on campus! I though that was really funny and just had to share it! So most of the people living there are a bit older (at least 3rd year) and hopefully wiser :-)

I’ll probably move in on Friday. Sarah has all the stuff we need for an apartment which is great. I just need to furnish my room. We’ve sent out an email asking if any Rotarians have spare stuff (like a bed!) but haven’t had any responses so far so it looks like I’m going shopping. It was quite funny – I went there today and Sarah was moving in. The only problem is that we’re on the 3rd floor (with ground level being the first floor) and the stairs are really narrow so to get couches and beds up there is an issue. So her dad and some of the guys who were roped in to help (no pun intended) were hauling the furniture up over the balcony! It was quite a sight!

Today we had orientation at the International Student Centre and then Ecos orientation. They had ‘breakfast’ out when we arrived at the ISC – coffee and donuts. I had a lemon jelly donut which was an interesting experience and one I don’t think I’ll be repeating too soon! Basically I took this donut which was round and smaller than the other huge rings and looked plain. All was good until my second bite when this lumo yellowish liquid started oozing out. Not what I had expected! Luckily there was an orientation volunteer sitting at the same table as me so I asked him, “What is this?!” All was explained and after a few very sweet bites coupled with the rather unpleasant fake lemony taste I abandoned the rest. Like I said, not to be repeated!

The orientation itself was rather useful (read: necessary but boring). I thought beaurocracy was a speciality of UKZN but apparently not! Let’s jut say that lots of paperwork seems to be involved with everything! At least they tell you about it upfront though and I now know the right people to talk to. To give you an example, in order to graduate you have to file your course of study with someone (the graduate office possibly?? Forgot that bit), and in order to get a course of study you have to meet with a graduate advisor and basically map out all the courses you’re going to do. Then you have to submit something called an ‘intent to graduate’ and you only do this at the beginning of the semester you are going to finish your degree in. Presumably after all this you’re allowed to graduate (provided you pass everything that is…) If you don’t do all this you cant though. I was like huh? All that happened at UKZN was that you got a thing saying ‘degree complete’ on your academic record then you get a letter about grad and when it is and that’s it!

I met some cool people though! They started us off with some icebreakers – basically you had to go to the sign that applied to you and meet two other people. So the first round was what college you’re in (College being the Faculty I guess). So I’m in the College of Arts and Letters and I tootled off there. I met a couple of other ecos students – one from Thailand. Then we had to go to our favourite sport. The choices were somewhat limited so I went to cricket…. Along with all the Indians! Indian Indians. I felt a bit outnumbered and decided that that wasn’t the time for smart comments about match fixing. The interesting bit came when the categories were favourite type of music. A girl from Turkey told me that the Killers are coming to play in San Diego – must investigate! I made friends with a really nice girl from Canada. We might go on the ‘City tour’ with the ISC this weekend. I also chatted to people from Germany, Japan, Australia and Korea. All over actually! Of the foreign students, the biggest proportion come from India followed by a variety of Asian countries. It was interesting.

I had Ecos orientation in the afternoon. I was worried about being late so I skipped lunch at the ISC and went straight there. Our Masters class is quite big – there are 26 of us starting this semester. There are also about 20 continuing students (the degree takes a minimum of 3 semesters). The class is about half American, half international students (all Asian except me). There are more guys then girls and quite a few of the Americans have just finished their degrees (in June) and are continuing with their Masters. It seems like a nice class – no doubt I’ll be able to elaborate on this further after classes start on Monday.

I think now is the appropriate time for me to share my timetable with you. I have 3 core classes (Micro, Econometrics, Econometrics Lab (aka prac) and one elective (International Economics).

How cool is that?? No lectures on a Friday and please note the time I start varsity! Of course you have to do a fair amount of work on your own but still! I’m contemplating applying for a job at the library because I have the time (quite obviously) and then I’d have extra money to travel.

After the orientation I went with Jaren (the son of Dad’s best friend from University who’s coincidentally also doing an Ecos Masters) to the book shop to get our textbooks. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention, when I registered for my classes I registered online! It was so cool (and took all of 3 minutes). So when you need to get your textbooks there’s no waiting to look in a grotty file that may or may not have your required textbooks in it, all you do is log on to the computer system and you can print off your personal book list. Then you wonder around the book shop (everything’s in alphabetical order with signs) and just pick up the books you need.

Why is it that Economics textbooks are the biggest, heaviest and most expensive?? I bought 3 textbooks and they cost $350! How hectic is that?? And they were all second hand. The bookshop has a system where you can sell your textbooks back to them provided they’re in excellent condition. So I got a significant discount on my textbooks and they’re all like new but it was still $350! I’m in shock. You actually can’t convert stuff into Rand – you’d have permanent heart failure!

Ooh… another exciting announcement – I met the Mayor of San Diego last night. I don’t think I’ve ever met dear old Obed even though I’ve lived in Durban all my life! I went to a Rotary function – the chartering of a new Rotary club – and he was the guest speaker. It was at the Mirimar Officers club. Mirimar is a massive US Marine air base – it’s like a small city, there’s even a McDonalds on it! Random fact for the day: San Diego has the premier medical facility in the USA for treating injured soldiers. The Colonel in charge of the base told us he’d just met two soldiers who’d just been flown back from Iraq – one of whom had lost the lower part of his leg – not nice.

It was a really nice function – it was smart so we all got to dress up nicely! (Above is a picture of Marge and I taken at the function). The speakers were interesting (the Colonel and the Mayor) and the food was good (Americans call prawns, shrimp. I got extra because I don’t eat red meat! Actually, that was a bit odd – it was a plated meal so you were served a plate with some veges, mashed potato, a steak and a little bowl of large peeled prawns – it’s like they couldn’t make their mind up about what to serve so served both! Anyway). I got introduced to soooo many people! My head was practically swimming with names.

The new Rotary club they chartered is really interesting. Rotary is mostly made up of older males worldwide. So there’s a big push to get younger people involved. The new club is called the La Jolla (a place in San Diego) new generations club and is made up of only younger people – 24 to 43. The average age of the club is 32 and there are half males and half females which is quite different to the rotary norm! They meet on Wednesday evenings just after work and they meet in a bar (or a sports grill as they put it!). So it’s a fun social occasion that people want to go to as well as doing something good for your community! The club president made a very good point in his speech – he said (to all the other Rotarians there) that if you look at our club we have bankers, lawyers, real estate agents etc. We’re just like you, we’re just a bit younger. It’s such a simple idea but it’s really worked – the club’s only just been formed and already they have new, young members signing up.

That’s about all from me for today (she says 3 pages later)! I guess I didn’t get that tired after all! Tomorrow I’m off to the horse racing at Del Mar which is about half an hour away from downtown San Diego. I’ve never actually been to the races in Durban but I’m going in San Diego – typical! It should be fun!

Ooh, I just thought of more stuff and hadn’t posted this yet so this just got longer, I’m waiting for Marge to finish on the internet so am writing this in Word … I wrote a cheque today! Never done that before so I had no clue what to do! Luckily I got help without anyone laughing too much! Quite a few places accept cheques here, there’s no charge for using them and credit cards aren’t always accepted. I’ve ordered a cheque book – I could have got a cute one with Tigger or Garfield (or any other cartoon character for that matter) on it for 12$ extra! I saw no point in paying $30 for 120 cheques when I could pay $18 for blue ones. I’m just going to give them away anyway. Other thing’s I’ve got while I’ve been here include:

• A camera (thanks for my early birthday present Mom and Dad!)
• A 160GB portable hard drive (Andrew’s very impressed with the price)
• An ipod shuffle – the tiny green one, it’s so cute!

Electronics are just soo much cheaper here!
Now I really think I’m done! I’d love to hear from you all and find out what you’ve been up to.

Where I live (at the moment)

So this is Marge's house - where I live at the moment. She lives in a neighbourhood called Kensington which is quite old - all the houses were built in about the 1920's. It's also quite close to SDSU which is great for me! Please note - no fences! and Marge keeps a spare key on the front step. It's so cool!

This is a view of the street just to give you an idea of the neighbourhood - it all looks the same! It's apparently very 'Southern Californian looking' if that helps?

I think you should all be very impressed - I went for a run yesterday morning around Marge's area! Well it was more of a jog - walk when I got tired - then jog again. I don't know exactly how long it was but probably about 3kms. The problem is the area's really flat so you don't get any downhill breaks! It's so pretty though and there were quite a few people out walking dogs etc (mostly tiny silly things). What's quite nice is that the pavements are set in from the road (as you can see) and you're not running next to people's walls because they dont have any! When I got back to Marge's I lay on her front lawn and did some situps and stretched. One of her neighbours was getting into his car and said 'that's good' or something. I just laughed.

I don't know how long I'll be staying here though - Marge says I'm welcome to stay for as long as I want. I've been looking for places on an excellent website called Craigslist and am going to see 3 today. I'll keep you posted!

Random stuff from the past 2 days (I couldn't think of a better title :-)

I'm sunburnt! and it's all my fault. Today I went off to SDSU to ask about courses (or classes as they're called here), see what I need to do to register and just generally check out the campus. It's really pretty! Very big and spread out. Anyway, as Marge is away at the moment in order to get to campus I had to catch the bus. It's about 1km, maybe 1.5kms to the bus stop from Marge's house. I left at about 9am and had a pleasant stroll there. Yes, I understand that I just said walking was pleasant but it was - not to hot, it's a flat walk, the area's really pretty etc. Buses here are airconditioned! How cool? (excuse the pun). Anyway, I made it to campus and with the help of my trusty map I printed off the net I started finding my way around. I went to the international student centre (the long way round - grr), had a meeting with the economics graduate advisor, and generally had a look round and did 'useful stuff'. As I said though, the campus is spread out so this involved a fair amount of walking in the sun. The genius that I am didn't even consider putting on suntan cream this morning. So that + campus walk + walk back to Marges at 1pm = burnt Kate. Not fun.

Yesterday I went to my first Rotary Club meeting. It was in a rather smart looking hotel. Everyone was really nice and friendly. The best part was - I got asked THE question..... Do you have wild animals walking around where you live?! I was a good girl and gave him a serious answer. I was tempted to say that we ride elephants to work though :-) The meeting itself was very similar to the ones I went to at Kloof Rotary before I left. There was a speaker from another Rotary club talking about how to get new member and retain them. It was quite interesting - the subject matter wasn't that thrilling but he was a very good speaker. I was introduced and said a few words. Can't remember what now, just something along the line of how happy I was to be there etc. The one thing that got a good laugh though is that people have been asking me what I think of San Diego - so of course I say it's very nice, hot and that there seem to be lots of Americans. Ha ha. They have a full lunch with their meeting. Today it was quite a nice salady thing. There was iced tea to drink - but not like Lipton. Proper tea with ice! Unsweetened. It was quite gross so I drank water instead. San Diego's water is pretty nice. A bit different to Durban but not unpleasant tasting.

Yesterday's other big adventure was going to an American supermarket! You have no idea just how much variety there is. I think I amused the woman I was with (one of Marge's friends) endlessly! Some stuff is the same - they have Colgate toothpaste, Lays, Danon yogurts etc but some stuff is totally different! There are lots of ready made meals and everything seems to come already packaged. I know that sounds a bit random but I can't think of a better way to explain it at the moment. All their fruit and vegetables look absolutely perfect! And they're all presented beautifully. You don't just have a bin/container thing (the right word escapes me at the moment) of apples, they're all laid out individually in neat rows. Everything is so big! I battled to find a 500ml bottle of water. Well I could find them but they were sold in 6 packs. I could buy the litre version individually. It's called 'family sized'. I had to get a shampoo but didn't want to buy an enormous bottle as I didn't know if I'd like it or not. That was hard! I had such fun though - I think the easiest way to entertain me at the moment is just to take me grocery shopping :-)

Random observation I feel the need to share - food's really sweet and artificial tasting. I make this sweeping statement after drinking diet coke, eating yogurt and a bran muffin so I feel fully qualified :-) It's overly sweet, and not in a good way (and this is coming from me who loves sweet stuff). Also it leaves that unpleasant artificial-sweetener taste in your mouth.

Tomorrow I'm off to see some of San Diego. Dad's best friend from University has lived here for the past umpteen years so he's taking me out. How's this for a coincidence - his 26 year old son has decided to go back to university after working for a few years and is going to SDSU..... to do his Masters in Ecos! Wierd huh? Oh, and they call it Econ here - I got asked what I was talking about today.

Getting sorted out.

Good morning! (Well it is here anyway). I think you should know that I just boiled water in the microwave so I could make myself a cup of tea. I couldn't figure how to turn the gas stove on to boil the kettle so this seemed like the next best plan. Marge doesn't have an electric kettle. Apparently most Americans don't.

I had a rather busy day yesterday - I started getting myself sorted out. Marge and I went to the bank and I now have a checking account. I think it's just like an SA current account. The cool thing is I'm not paying any fees for the first year because the nice bank manager is a Rotarian. We also went off to Costco, which is exactly like Makro, to get me a cellphone. Talk about confusing! I had your usual choice of different networks as well as contract or prepaid. That's where all similarity to SA cellphone's ends! I'm on a network called Sprint and I have a contract that gives me 200 minutes. But how cool is this - it's free to call anyone else on the sprint network. The minutes are for the daytime, after 9pm every night and on weekends all calls are free! I think the SA networks need some lessons. The only thing that sucks is that your minutes get used up if you call someone and if they call you. Oh, and I have a Motorola phone which I have absolutely no idea how to work - bring on the instruction manual!

Marge left yesterday afternoon for a Rotary meeting somewhere by San Fransisco so I have the house to myself until Sunday. Talking about housing, I started looking for apartments yesterday on a really cool site called Craig's list which is like an online classifieds. I found a few that look like possibilities but wow, rent's expensive!

In terms of public transport, San Diego has an urban train system called the trolley as well as buses. These are going to become my best friend as I have no plans to get a car. So the plan for the moment is to find an apartment somewhere along the trolley line. The one trolley line (the green one in case you're interested) goes straight to SDSU - there's a station right on the campus which is called SDSU station funnily enough :-)

Moving swiftly along (and back to my original point) I found a couple of places that look like possibilities and got hold of the people yesterday. Sandi Rimer (the district's Foundation chair / another Rotarian if you don't understand Rotary-speak) picked me up yesterday evening and we went to see one of the places. It was nice but not right so we'll keep on looking!

Yesterday I was also having a freak-out about the electricity here. America Runs on 110V while SA runs on 220V. This seemed like a huge problem because I thought I wouldn't be able to charge my laptop, toothbrush or SA cellphone! So Sandi and I went charging out to find a power converter but had no luck. Shops are open until 9pm by the way. I was quite stressed by this point. To cut a long story short I spoke to Mom and Dad at about 10pm my time, 7am SA time and it turns out the most things will charge on a range of Volts (from about 100V-240V). I'd tried to charge the only one of my things that doesn't have a power range that includes America - my toothbrush. So I'd panicked and assumed everything wouldn't charge.

Lesson for the day: read the small print! (on the charger in this case).

Oh, I also got my birthday present early yesterday from Mom and Dad - a camera! So I can start posting some pics on here too.