ladida

I know I said I'd blog about San Francisco, but I'm kinda lazy to backtrack right now. Instead, I shall entertain all your lurkers with my exciting expeditions of my first day in school.

Let me first say that the UCLA campus is gorgeous. It has amazing architecture in colonial styles that make me feel like I'm walking in a museum or something. The stairs to my classes are a bit of a pain, but compared to the gravity-defying hills of San Fran, it's really nothing. Our studio apartment is pretty bare, but alright, save for the fact that I am sorely TV-deprived. And with Studio 60 on it's final ep this Thurs, I'm getting quite desperate in finding a television source.

But anyways. Classes were okay. I'm taking Social Psych and Film & Lit, if any of you care to know. I'm a little intimidated by some of my classmates. Suddenly my notion of coming to summer session to clear rubbish modules doesn't seem so bright after all. Sighs. On the bright side, it's all gonna be graded as pass or fail when I get back to NTU, so here's hoping I'll manage to pass. Hm.

We had quite the adventure when we arrived in LA on Sunday night. I swear, Sunday night had to be the longest night of my life. I thought we would never leave the airport. First, our flight from San Fran got a little delayed because a flight to Seattle got delayed, which affected our flight because Air Alaska placed some of those passengers on our flight. The flight was blessedly short, but whatever time we gained there, we lost in spades at baggage claim. LAX Terminal 3 seems to have a problem of too little belts and too many planes. When we arrived, people from earlier flights had been waiting for their luggage for forty minutes.

Obviously, this did not bode well for us.

Added to that, no announcement was made about which belt our stuff was supposed to be on. So I went over to the Air Alaska baggage office and was told by a rather flustered man that the airline was still deciding which belt to put our luggage on.

Right.

After almost one hour and about ten trips up and down three carousels, we finally got our luggage. Then, then, we got on our Prime Shuttle bus (which we'd booked) to take us to UCLA. Right?

Wrong. He made like ten trips around the entire LAX, looking for more people to pick up. Even when his little van was already quite filled, he still stopped and asked if anyone wanted a ride. We were circling LAX for the longest time. I was seriously wondering if we were being stuck in LAX on some hideous loop like in the movie Groundhog Day. God.

We finally left LAX at about midnight, I think. We told the driver where we were staying at, and he confidently assured us he knew where we were staying. Which is a good thing. Right?

Wrong again. He dropped us at the wrong place. And was pretty snippy about the fact that we didn't tip. Uh huh. Good thing we didn't. He dropped us off on a hill with three suitcases, two smaller bags, three laptops, and three hand carries. And absolutely no frickin clue as to where we were. I had to go all the way down the hill to find a road sign, then all the way up to get my bags, before going all the way down again, this time with the bags. It took us like an hour just to find our way. And when we finally managed to dump our stuff in Jing Yng and Vanessa's room (which was available, thanks to the wonderful fact that Vanessa had checked in earlier today), we had to find our way to the late-night check-in office. Which should've been a piece of cake, since we knew where we were at last, and we had a map. Right?

Wrong for the third time. We got so bleeding lost, we finally called the hotline. The guy on the other end was trying to give us directions, but once he heard that (unlike the rest of the apparent UCLA population) we had no car and were on foot, he came to pick us up. I swear, I've never been so happy to hear a car pull up until that moment. The brilliantly nice guy drove us to the office, checked us in, gave us our keys, and got us a ride back.

Oh, but embarrassingly, Alvina and I didn't recognize him the next day when we bumped into him in the elevators while exploring the campus. In our defense, he had a cap that was pulled way down. In any case, he's totally the greatest. I do think we should find out his name just to thank him. But oh wells. In any case, his best friend apparently stays on the sixth floor of where we're living, so we'll probably run into him again. Heh.

Alrighty. Gotta read Macbeth for class on Thursday (omg.) so I'll post about San Fran soon! (I think.)