Since writing last I've been on a five day trip to San Diego and the Grand Canyon with Claudia (who I mentioned last time) and Hanayo (another exchange student, this time from Japan). At first things were a little bit difficult, although there English was good it took them a little while to get used to me (I must learn to speak slower!) and there were lots of words I used but by the end of the trip their English had improved loads and we had gotten to know each other really well. Its great having another cultures viewpoint on things, you learn lots of strange things (the Japanese have a different counting system for different things - the way they count birds is quite different to the way they count pencils).
We first went to San Diego because Hanayo wanted to go, we had left the organisation till very late but managed to get beds in what a good friend of mine described as a party hostel where an awful lot of drinking goes on, so we thought we'd be right at home! It was also just off the beach. We spent the later part of the afternoon body boarding and then watched the sunset before heading off to buy alcohol (the most important part of the early evening). The three of us quickly got through a bottle of red before a guy came round wanting to see who would put $7 down for a share of a beer keg (which you can buy in supermarkets!), by this time I was just drunk enough to agree quickly (the other 2 declined just as quickly!). The keg arrived an hour later and the drinking games began in earnest started off by the traditional game of flip cup followed by a nation vs nation beer pong tournament. Thankfully there were already 2 other Brits because I'm crap, was already quite drunk and would let my country down, so I was a cheerleader.
When I eventually stumbled into bed I found the large room pitch black with a single central light and my stuff spread all over my bed. Trying to sort that out whilst sober is difficult enough, imagine trying to do it inebriated. I couldn't find my sheet and was very grateful that I happened to have a sleeping bag with me because it was surprisingly cold. Naturally I woke up the next day with a slight hangover, but was proud to be able to send a postcard to my friend half jokingly, half proudly blaming her for my hangover.
I recovered quickly and once we had checked out we decided to leave our bags in the lockers at the Greyhound bus station and then go on to the Old Town area of San Diego. We quickly realised that Old Town is understood entirely differently in American English to how it is understood in British English. I would assume that the buildings themselves would be old, but oh no, this is America - nothing is old. Old Town does rest upon the oldest part of town, but it consists entirely of replicas of the original buildings, it is one fat tourist trap. They proudly claim that there is over 800 years of history on this site, that Native Americans once inhabited it, but that is all they can tell you about them, ask anything more and the tour guide looks blank. We took a tour (complete with actors in original clothing - Hollywood rejects), went to a dull museum about stagecoaches, checked out the overpriced shops full of Mexican tat ("In Mexico things would be a third of these prices!" cried Claudia) and ate an overpriced Mexican meal (we were starving). The Old Town was keen to stress their Mexican heritage, just not the Native American part.
We then wondered around Gaslamp quarter (v.pretty and at night bustling with people and street performers) and the harbour area before falling tired into cinema seats. After a bit of shopping we headed back to the bus station and caught our overnight bus to Flagstaff, Arizona.
During the trip we had to stop at an immigration check point (we were only a few miles from Mexico) and were told that if we weren't American citizens we should get our papers out. I got really concerned, I had left my visa and passport at home thinking them far too valuable and unnecessary to bring. I hastily got out my provisional drivers license and my UCSB student card and hoped they wouldn't kick me out of the country (Hanayo was fast asleep and blissfully ignorant of all the goings on). When the officials boarded the bus they told us to get documents out and then repeated it in Spanish, they walked quickly down the bus asking anyone who looked Mexican for their papers (which they all had) - except thankfully Claudia, who despite looking Mexican was ignored and so we were allowed to stay due to government over site.
We eventually got into Flagstaff (the nearest town to the Grand Canyon - a mere 80 miles away!) just before lunch and made our way to the tourist information centre. We had assumed that we'd be able to get hold of a camping spot easily and the bus to the Grand Canyon would have plenty of space. After many phone calls I was proved wrong on both counts. We had no way of getting there (besides hitching) and no where to stay when we were there. Eventually we discovered we could hire a car and planned to drive it up that day and sleep in it overnight. Again this proved to be too easy and we were told we had to get it the next morning so we spent the night in a local hostel (a really cool 1920s motel just off of Route 66!).
Knowing that food would be expensive in the Grand Canyon we set off for the nearest supermarket about a mile down the road and set off for supplies. We ended up buying 2 x 2.5 gallon containers of water because the bumpf we'd been given about the Grand Canyon encouraged people to drink as much as possible. Setting off we quickly realised they were far too heavy to carry and so decided to hitch hike. Fairly soon a man and a woman in a pick up truck picked us up and we got to hitch hike down Route 66 in the back of a truck. It was so cool! Definitely something to drunkenly boast about!
During our afternoon it rained and I mean really rained, as bad as it has done in England over the last summer. I had mistakenly believed that Arizona would be all dry desert, but apparently not, we were 7000ft up in the mountains and they had monsoons every summer. I thought monsoons belonged to the area around India, but apparently not. Being English I didn't mind the rain too much and happily jumped in the large puddles that had formed.
The next morning we packed up and went to breakfast, we were all set for hiring our car when we started chatting to a couple who were about to head off to the Grand Canyon and come back that evening, out of the blue they offered us a lift and so instead of hiring the car and sleeping in it overnight we booked and extra night at the hostel and piled into the back of their tiny car. They were lovely and refused to let us pay for either some off the gas or the park entrance fee ($25 per car), so we ended up getting to and from the Grand Canyon for nothing.
When we drove down I was expecting to see the lush mountainous forest landscape change into a desert and the pine trees did get smaller and it got a bit drier but the desert wilderness I had been expecting never appeared, instead the Grand Canyon is in the middle of a forest, it just suddenly appears, this great abyss. We spent our morning and early afternoon walking around the rim taking lots of photos and marvelling at the remarkably varied landscape. Later we went to a talk about the geology (as the ranger put it - "its all down to DUDE!", a wonderfully patronising acronym for the stages of the creation of the Canyon) before realising we were knackered and getting some food.
After recovering slightly from the ridiculously tiring walk we went souvenir shopping, somehow I managed to resist buying the Grand Canyon coasters that fit inside most cup holders in vehicles (what more could you want?) but did buy a postcard and native American ghost beads - meant to protect against bad dreams, a good addition I feel to my religious paraphernalia collection. Later on I also brought a book on the lives of native American women which had proved to be fascinating.
After our little spending spree we went to a talk that "Ranger Bob" (what a great name!) put on just prior to sunset about how the Grand Canyon has inspired people throughout the ages. He had poetry, paintings, music and short readings. He got really into the music and he stood there hugging his little portable hi-fi chest puffed out, eyes closed and lips pursed. He got people to do some of the readings (good thing too - he rushes through poetry and removes most of the beauty of it) and I volunteered. Apparently I was really good and I was asked to do it again later on and later people came up to me and told me I was good and should do it for a living! I was surprised to say the least, but it could be a good little earner and I am living near Hollywood. For doing the readings he gave everyone a fake tattoo that said the "Grand Canyon" and had a picture of the California Condor on it. I got 2 and gave Hanayo one. We decided to place them in tacky "sexy" places just to bewilder people and so I had mine on my lower back, just above my bottom (where lots of people have those horrible Celtic style tattoos) and Hanayo had hers on her leg. Unfortunately I spotted no surprised looking pervy old men.
Anyway back to the sunset - when Ranger Bob had finally stopped massacring poetry we got to sit, watch and take photos of the sunset, it was beautiful. Strangely you could actually see more of the canyon when the sun had set that when it was up. After this we met up with the couple who had given us the lift and we piled in the car again. By the time we had gotten into the car (no more that 45 minutes after sunset) it was pitch black and I was grateful that we weren't spending the night in the car.
On the way back I could see some amazing stars, they were so big and there was so many, it was stunning. If Claudia had been driving I'd have asked her to pull over and would have gotten out but all I could do was look through the glass. When we got back to Flagstaff we discovered that the stars were prominent here too so went for a walk to a place with fewer lights and looked up. I swear we could see the milky was, there were a couple of slightly lighter patched in the sky, almost like thin clouds, but not. I'm fairly sure they were made up of distant stars. It was stunning. The stars seemed so close that the constellations were too big to recognise easily. I now really want to go camping in the middle of nowhere and star gaze properly.
After getting a lot of sleep we woke up refreshed and did a bit of exploration of downtown flagstaff which turned out to be a cool spiritual place. They seem to be very proud of their native American heritage and there were lots of shops selling native American wares. There are also apparently Shamans on top of the nearest mountain who prevent anyone from climbing it and cast spells over the area, Hanayo loved this idea and couldn't find out enough about them.
Soon enough it was time to leave, but when we got to the bus station we were informed that the bus was running over an hour late so we went to a nearby fast food restaurant (if they really deserve that definition!), had some lunch and whiled away our time. Hanayo taught us some Japanese and showed us how to write our names. We were by far the liveliest people in a place otherwise full of unhappy, overweight people.
The bus seemed to take forever, we finally reached our apartments at 7am. I met my flat mate Lieke for the first time when I had to ring the doorbell because I didn't think I had the key for the security latch (turned out it was the same one as the normal key). Thankfully she is jet lagged and was awake anyway. I was getting quite concerned about the introduction, she wasn't aware that I was arriving so early and might think she was being burgled or something. In the end it was a congenial meeting that quickly involved tea. She seems nice.
And so Claudia, Hanayo and my adventure ended as quickly as it had started. Tomorrow there is the introduction for international students which will inevitably prove to be unbelievably boring, but will at least be a chance to meet new people and afterwards I'm hosting a party!
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