mood: free
music: New Soul – Yael Naim

Saturday, April 11, I went on a major photo-scavenger hunt around the Bay Area. It was called the “Amazing Bear Hunt” (okay, seriously, it’s amazing how Cal just inserts the word “bear” into absolutely everything: Bear Market, Bear Facts, Telebears, Golden Bear Cafe, Bear Necessities…), and I joined with Mark and his floormates. At first, the leaders were super serious about the whole thing, but then one guy got really sick and another’s parents came, so then it was decided that we would just do it all for fun.

Woke up at like 6 AM and met up with everyone at Unit 1. Then, we walked over to Unit 3 and stood around for like an hour just eating breakfast. At 8 AM, we got all the clues in envelopes and headed off to explore the Bay Area! Nick ran off as soon as they said “Go!”, but he ran off in the wrong direction so we had to spend like ten minutes looking for him, LOL. I was grouped with Mark, Miraya, Nick, and Minoo, and we did a few clues in Berkeley before heading for Oakland. Which was scary, by the way. I kept being paranoid that someone was going to come around the corner and shoot us, LOL. We almost got run over by this angry driver who didn’t yield to us even though we were in the middle of the street; he even yelled at us. Eep! There were a lot Chinatown clues, so we headed for Oakland’s Chinatown, which had street signs with both English and Chinese printed on them. That was kinda interesting; I didn’t know that existed in the U.S. We trekked to Lake Meritt only to find that we had the clue wrong, but we got to talk to these really nice runners on the way, and they basically gave us the answers for like half of the Oakland stuff, so that was pretty awesome. We went to Downtown Oakland and found some stuff. Wow, Oakland is an old city! The Civic Center part is pretty nice, though; it was probably the most Orange County-like area that I’d seen thus far in the Bay Area.

Mark had to leave for his Decadence (A capella group), so the rest of us wandered around Oakland for what felt like hours, searching for the answers to all the clues. I was a little annoyed at certain points because, like, one of the clues went something like, “This is last remaining Victorian street on the East Bay after the 1908 earthquake.” So we had to go to Old Oakland for some clues, and I looked around and realized that the entire area was filled with Victorian architecture; but when I pointed this out to the others, they were really skeptical and kept wanting to Google it and ask people about it. I was really frustrated when they started asking online ask services, and I kept telling them that I was absolutely sure this was the location, but they just wouldn’t believe me. Finally, they agreed to take a picture at the intersection, just in case I was right — even though afterwards, they just kept asking people and looking around for it. Later, Mark had some spare time after the auditions were over and sat at his computer searching stuff, and they asked him to search the Victorian street — which ended up being the frickin’ street I’d been pointing out the entire time. So I felt partly triumphant and partly even more annoyed. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t work with friends that trust you. Oh well, I was right, so whatever!

After searching in vain for the rest of the Oakland clues, we finally decided to head back to Berkeley for lunch at GBC. After some drama, Mark decided to join us since Minoo and Nick were going to quit in a few hours anyway, which was when he had to go back to Berkeley for the second round of his auditions. Miraya and I were sad, but we couldn’t do anything about it, so we had a quick lunch before heading off to San Francisco. We got to explore Union Square and Chinatown, which were both pretty cool. I’ve never been to a Chinatown before, so that was pretty interesting. And Union Square had so much freaking shopping stores! And best of all, it had SPIRAL ESCALATORS. Dude, who the hell thought up of that shit? It’s freaking amazing.

Anyway, around four-thirty or so we headed back to Berkeley, and Mark ran off to his audition. The rest of us found like three more clues just around the BART station and then split up. Nick and Minoo went back to their rooms, and Miraya and I went to Unit 3 to turn in the clues. Since my camera batteries kept running out, it took way longer than expected, boo. And then the RA’s computer ran out of space, so that took even longer. By the time we got back to our rooms, we were pretty exhausted. I took a shower and relaxed for a bit, which was really nice.

Later that night, Mark found out that he made the A capella group! (And had to go through an intense initiation thing, even though he’d been walking around all day and was exhausted already, poor baby.) But yay, I’m so proud of him, and I’m very excited to see him perform with them.

Frickin' cool car we saw in Oakland.

Jack London Square. Wish I could be an author so renowned I'd get an entire area named after me.

Seriously, are those not the most Victorian buildings ever?

The famous Fox theater. It was featured in Pixar's Up!

Berkeley landmarks in the City!

We found this hilarious.

Nick ran off to try out the spiral escalators without us!

Does your school have a ginormous tuning fork?