To
my amazement, I’ve officially passed the one-month mark of being on the other
side of the Atlantic. Here are the top five things I’ve managed to achieve
since arriving in Berkeley.
1) ‘The Dinner Crew’
A
raggle-taggle group of International House students, who converge in the dining
hall every evening to pull the world to rags. Members include a laconic Australian
boy with the greatest capacity for one-liners; an irrepressible Irish
aristocrat with a fierce love of T.S. Eliot; the World’s Greatest Lover (by his
own admission); a pair of classy third-floor ladies known generally as ‘The
Twins’; The Roomate, and myself. Conversation topics are carefully selected for
controversy, and other tables are forced to stuff their ears against the heated
debate and/or raucous laughter. In the fashion of the Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles we also have a Sensei (thankfully not shaped like a giant rat): an
All-American boy from San Diego who coasts around campus on a scooter and
leaves his door permanently open with the offer of free chocolate on the
whiteboard outside. Keep an eye out for out future adventures.
2) A Place in a [Sort-Of] Glee Club
‘Perfect
Fifth’ are one of Berkeley’s many choral ensembles, and seem as nicely cracked as
all the other acapella institutions I’ve been involved with until now. Given that they’ve just undergone a big
structural reshape there’s not too much I can say about members yet, but we’re
booked to sing at a memorial service next week, and at a wedding in the Napa Valley
come October. Here’s one of the pieces I have to learn by then:
...It’s
not quite hand-clapping and Darren Criss, but these guys seem hardcore. I’m
very much looking forward to singing with them.
3) A Journalism Position at Caliber Magazine
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| (I WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE!) |
I
am hugely excited to have gained a position at Caliber, UC Berkeley’s bi-annual glossy magazine. In the first
meeting they stuck a label on my back, informed me that I was now John Lennon,
and asked me to admit to the group in a ‘trust’ exercise, what my most guilty
song pleasure was. With minimal shame I claimed Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me
Maybe’- despite The Graduate’s best efforts to condition me out of it by
licking my face every time he caught me humming one of the riffs.
I
should be able to contribute to at least two of the upcoming issues, and am
brainstorming article pitches as we speak- determined that the world should
hear my views on life in yet another format.
4) The Worst Come-On Line Ever
Stranded
at a party on Friday night, having lost the vast majority of the Dinner Crew in
the beer-soaked throng, I suddenly found myself confronted with a group of
towering, highly inebriated college boys. In the fashion which is apparently
customary on this side of the Atlantic I was manhandled into the middle of the
group and turned in a circle so they could read the slogan on my T-shirt,
before being asked ‘What’s that all about,
dude?” I opened my mouth to explain that it was Shakespeare, but failed to make
it past the first three words, cut off by an exclamation from the largest boy
in the backwards-facing baseball cap. (Why is the backwards cap thing
acceptable? It shouldn’t be.)
“Woah, would you listen to that accent!
Are you British?”
“Yes, yes I am. How could you
possibly tell?”
“Holy shit, check her out! Are you hearing her?” Raucous affirmation on all
sides, before he turned back “Are you related to the Queen? Now tell me, you’re in line for the throne,
right? Right?” He threw himself backwards onto one of the sagging sofas, spread
his legs and gestured expansively to his crotch. “Little Queen- won’t you sit on my throne?”
…How I managed to decline the
invitation I’ll never know.
5) A Sense Of Belonging
Formula
insists upon ending in some sort of cheesy register, and as it’s a Sunday night
I don’t have the energy to strike out into experimental territory. One month in
and I appear to have broken through the culture-shock and the cold water of a
different academic system enough to feel at home. I am able to roll out of bed
and cross past the Campanile (in-word for the clock tower), pick up a Jamba
juice on the way to lectures, and make it through an aerobics class without
dying. In the afternoons I do my readings at the Strada Caffe, listening
absently to the blonde, hatchet-voiced sorority girl two tables away- “She’s one of our pledges, so we can
totally, like, FUCK with her, send her to Sigma, make her do stuff… it’s going
to be so much fun…” Slowly my
hair is bleaching out, and my skin is turning brown. I wear Cal merchandise to
the lectures.
Of
course there are still moments when I wobble- when I want nothing more than to
climb into bed, pull the duvet over my head and wish myself back in my grotty
Norwich student house. But when that happens I call The Graduate, go for a
browse around the vintage shops on Telegraph Avenue… or remember the two-week
old spaghetti mouldering in the kitchen sink.
I’m
definitely glad to be here.
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| Fun in the sun at UC Berkeley's Botanical Gardens |
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