Today I met Turtle and we went to see the campus. The large campus area lays just by the water and has dozens of buildings connected by walkways. There are separate lanes for bikes and skateboards, and using them as a pedestrian might result in a huge fine >:-o.
Students from the Education Abroad Program have to register when they arrive, so we went to four different offices, first to get information at the EAP center, then to get an ID card and after that to the Office of International Students and Scholars where they copy passports and visas and we signed some papers. Finally we headed for the Students' Health Services to try to convince the unfriendly lady in the reception that the insurance from our home university is sufficient enough and that we don't need to pay $1000 for UC insurance. However, the lady was a true bureaucrat and could not read the terms of the insurance (three lines saying that it basically covers everything up to any amount) and she who can do that is not in her office after noon. Smooth is not the first word that comes into mind.
We went to the beach instead and made plans for the weekend. Tomorrow we'll take a spontaneous trip to L.A. It's a 1.5 h drive away and hopefully we can met with some other Swedish exchange students there. Now I will take a jog along the coast and then met up with Turtle again for a drink. Not too many drinks though, because, as I learned from the girls I met yesterday, being drunk in public is a crime and the cops patrol the Isla Vista area and arrest drunken students. Having open containers of alcohol in public is also a crime, quite a cultural shock for a student from Lund...
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