Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay
Well, I'm back to being away from everyone I know and love, so I will try to post on my blog regularly again. So far, life in Berkeley has been great. For the most part, I feel very comfortable here. It's probably more like Vancouver than anywhere else I've been.
I had about 3 days to settle in to my new apartment before PhD Orientation started. We had a Friday, Monday-Tuesday of massive information overload from the Assistant Dean for Admissions and the Dean of Students (as well as many other fabulous people who gave us loads of information).
Last week classes started at UC Berkeley. I'm not registered in any classes for credit there, but I'm been attending an Arabic class (which I'm trying to get into) and sitting in on a first year history class in history of the Middle East. That's more for the lectures - I have some catch up to do in that area. The professors at UC Berkeley (known as "Cal") are very warm and accommodating so far and very helpful with letting GTU doctoral students sit in on their classes (with the exception of one other language I was trying to take where they didn't allow anyone to audit).
Monday, Labour Day, I went with three girlfriends (Christine - from Vancouver who is also studying here at the GTU, Elizabeth - another first year PhD in my program in Interdisciplinary Studies, and Anna - Elizabeth's sister) joined the Bay Area Chapter of the Sierra Club for an urban hike. We did over 10 miles (the google map says less, but it takes the most direct route and it's not *exactly* what we did) from the Ferry Building up to Coit Tower, down to Fort Mason for lunch, all past the Marina and Crissy Field, over the Golden Gate Bridge, and then along the shoreline to Sausalito where we caught a ferry back to San Francisco. It was about 8 hours in total - quite the hike!
View Larger Map
Anyways - that's about all I have to say for now. I'll post pictures from the hike later.
I had about 3 days to settle in to my new apartment before PhD Orientation started. We had a Friday, Monday-Tuesday of massive information overload from the Assistant Dean for Admissions and the Dean of Students (as well as many other fabulous people who gave us loads of information).
Last week classes started at UC Berkeley. I'm not registered in any classes for credit there, but I'm been attending an Arabic class (which I'm trying to get into) and sitting in on a first year history class in history of the Middle East. That's more for the lectures - I have some catch up to do in that area. The professors at UC Berkeley (known as "Cal") are very warm and accommodating so far and very helpful with letting GTU doctoral students sit in on their classes (with the exception of one other language I was trying to take where they didn't allow anyone to audit).
Monday, Labour Day, I went with three girlfriends (Christine - from Vancouver who is also studying here at the GTU, Elizabeth - another first year PhD in my program in Interdisciplinary Studies, and Anna - Elizabeth's sister) joined the Bay Area Chapter of the Sierra Club for an urban hike. We did over 10 miles (the google map says less, but it takes the most direct route and it's not *exactly* what we did) from the Ferry Building up to Coit Tower, down to Fort Mason for lunch, all past the Marina and Crissy Field, over the Golden Gate Bridge, and then along the shoreline to Sausalito where we caught a ferry back to San Francisco. It was about 8 hours in total - quite the hike!
View Larger Map
Anyways - that's about all I have to say for now. I'll post pictures from the hike later.
