Berkeley

On Tuesday, my brother Alex and I drove up to Berkeley, where he goes to college. We spent the day moving him into his new house (shared with three roommates). We had to reassemble his bed and assemble his new ikea desk. I've discovered that ikea furniture is fun, and that non-ikea furniture that is old and lacking instructions is difficult to put together. But in the end, we succeeded with the help of our good friend Tim, and spent the rest of the day organizing Alex's things (whether he likes it or not...), getting ribs for lunch, and playing with his roommate's kids, who were visiting for the day. They are about seven and three, extremely energetic, and left us absolutely exhausted. To reward ourselves for a move well-done, we found a Thai restaurant conveniently only a block away from Zendo (the new house). Thai is pretty much our favorite, and they had decent pad thai and curry, though not exceptional.

Zendo is only a block from San Pablo Avenue, a very downtown-ish street with lots of restaurants and small shops that runs all the way through Berkeley. It's about three miles from campus, but Alex has a bike and will do fine. I was particularly charmed by the area: very much like San Francisco in weather and small, odd houses and shops, but cleaner, nicer, and smaller.

On Wednesday, we ran errands in the morning, buying the few things we'd forgotten to bring with us, and were on campus by 10:00. I quickly discovered that asking my brother, of whom I am very fond, to show me around was a mistake. He is a math major with a minor in computer science, so he knows where exactly two buildings are: Evans Hall and Soda Hall. We soon resorted to calling Tim, who is an eagle scout and therefore must be better oriented than Alex, and proceeded to climb lots of trees while we waited for him. Berkeley, I was surprised to discover, is actually a very green campus. I didn't mean “green” as in environmentally friendly, though I suppose that could also be true. With its fog and cooler weather, it is a far lusher place than Sunnyvale, covered in beautiful grass, ivy, and sprawling California oaks that are perfect for climbing. This combined with the beautiful, old, impressive Roman-style architecture left me quite visually struck by the university.

When Tim arrived, we followed him around to find all his classes for this semester, as classes began on Thursday and Tim is an organized sort of fellow. This provided me with some sense of having seen lots of the campus, though I was quite disoriented and don't know how much I saw or didn't see. Then we decided to try getting into the main stacks again, having been rejected the first time because I lack a Cal ID. Seeing lots of books is a must for every college tour, I believe, because it makes me very excited and says a lot about the school. So we walked around the library for awhile until we found an information desk, and asked if I could have a visitor's pass. Actually, Tim did the asking, since he is a redheaded, harmless-looking nerd who is also very good at talking to people. Alex and I also look fairly innocent but lack the necessary coercion skills. The guy at the desk told us helpfully which other desk to go to, and that we should sound more like we had a research project and less like it's a tour. So Tim decided we were researching LBJ (a favorite topic of his), and we got ourselves a visitor's pass.

Berkeley does indeed have lots of books. Alex was astonished that it was not above and beyond anything I'd seen previously. This, I explained to him, is because I have now done eight college tours, while he hasn't done any. All colleges have big libraries. Some colleges have enormous libraries. I believe the biggest ones I've seen were at McGill, Minnesota, and Berkeley, and I do not think Berkeley is the winner, though it is difficult to estimate on that scale. Anyway, we spent awhile wandering around the stacks and then went for lunch at La Burrita, a great Mexican place right next to campus. By this point all of us were a little tired and I was a little dehydrated, so we split and went home. At 2:45 I decided I could still beat the rush hour traffic home instead of waiting for 9 or 10 at night, so I said goodbye to my favorite brother and came home to wish my mother happy birthday.

My overall impression of Berkeley: Wow. I was not expecting to like it so much – not expecting that the city would be so charming, or the campus so beautiful, or that it would feel enough different than home that I could stomach living there. But it does! It is all of those things, and if there was a bat's chance in hell I could get in, it might well threaten my plans for Madison. Fortunately for Madison, my GPA and test scores are above average for Berkeley, but below average for going to Berkeley from my sickeningly competitive high school.

In other news, T minus 5 days until I fly to Boston. T minus 7 until I fly to Paris.