The last few days in Berkeley, CA

Hey there y'all - another update from my time here at Berkeley.
Another eventful few days here on campus - I'm beginning to get a hang of the layout of this campus, and it's just amazing.
Possibly my favourite part of it all (apart from the awesome buildings) are the ways in which the campus is integrated with its environment. Two branches of strawberry creek run right through the campus, and are built into the structure of the university. So you might be walking from one side of campus to another, when you come across a glade of redwood trees, with a stream running through the middle. you'll walk across a bridge, and you might even stumble upon a log cabin (a genuine, no fooling log cabin) - all of this in the middle of campus - and because there are two branches of the creek, there are several such oases around campus.

The other thing I've noticed recently is what an interesting place this is on the weekends. Of course, classes haven't started yet, but I figure that during the week, it'll be pretty much like any other university - people rushing back and forth between classes etc. But on the weekend, it's unlike anything we have at universities back home.
I guess because so many people live on campus, there's a lot going on here on the weekends. On Saturday night, there was a big concert in the Greek Theatre next door to where I'm staying. On Sunday, I went for a walk up in the hills around 6 O'clock, and was amazed by everything that was going on. Simultaneously, I could hear the Carillion (61 bell organ at the top of the clock tower) being played, the footballers and cheerleaders practicing in the California Memorial stadium, and the marching band practicing on the soccer field. The whole place feels so alive, nothing like uni on the weekend back home.

In addition, my Sunday afternoon walk was -incredible-. I went up into the hills behind where I'm staying (still part of the campus, it extends right back into the hills). First of all the view from up there is -amazing-! You can see right down and across campus, then all the way to the Golden Gate, Alcatraz, San Francisco - almost the whole bay. From there, I climbed up to the big, yellow, concrete 'C' (for Cal, a moniker for U Berkeley) in the side of the hill (Incidentally, the giant C was laid out on that hill in 1905 - it's now 103 years old). I met a couple of international graduate students from Pakistan on the way up (they're here studying Public Policy - you meet all sorts of interesting people around campus here), and saw some big, flightless turkey-like birds (not turkeys, but you get the idea) and a freaking deer. Which was amazing, to see it wandering around so close to the built-up campus.
No photos of all that excitement, unfortunately - I had left my memory card inside my laptop - but I'm gonna be sure to go back up there for some photography, probably later this week.

Today (Monday) was the first orientation day, which was fairly dry, but tomorrow promises to be more exciting - I'm moving into the fraternity house which is to be my permanent accomodation, as well as going on a short hike with the International Student program.
Will report back soon,

'til then,
Jono

PS. New Flickr set up (including a couple photos of me, just to prove that I am really here). Also, any of y'all who were having trouble commenting before, I've changed the settings so that you don't have to register or type out random letters before you can post comments. Hopefully that makes things a little more straightforward.