Until now we have mostly been spending the summer going on various trips and events in smaller groups, but that changed this week with a Wine&Cheese party first, and then a Tapas-night tool Then in between this and the pressure from our work and studies which is really building up now, we also found the time to see some movies, visit Gloria and to go clubbing in San Francisco!

The day after the rodeo it was back to work as usual, but since thursday nights are quite good in downtown Mountain View we squeezed in an eventful night out. For once it was not an indication of how the coming weekend would turn out, as we instead played it cool by the pool and had ourselves some nice dinners.

This week started off more or less like last week, with more work and studies to be done. However after classes on tuesday we got off early, so Øystein and I spent the extra time at Fry's looking at electronics before we went home and watched a movie at the class projector that we are taking care of this week.
Then after work on wednesday we headed straight down to Salinas near Santa Cruz to see a real life american rodeo! It was the Great Bulls of Fire show on the California Rodeo Big Week, a televised professional bullriders challenger event!

This weekend it was time for another roadtrip, this time to see more of the Californian national parks and great trees, and perhaps even a redneck or two. We headed out early on friday afternoon with Øystein, Carina, Alex and myself in one car and Martin and Camilla (M's danish girlfriend) in another. We had booked accomodation at the Sequoia Motel in a small town called Three Rivers just outside the Sequoia National Park, about a 5 hour drive from the Bay Area.

Since we got back from Vegas the realities of everyday life has really caught up with us, so we've had to put in quite a few hours with the books lest we'd fall too far behind on the study materials. Besides this and the internship work we have not done much lately deserving of mention, other than catching the premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest up in the Century Cinema multiplex at Shoreline on friday night. It was a good movie, but it didn't even close to the first one in any aspects, but it is one of those that you just have to see.

Then the weekend was mostly spent recouperating the lost sleep from last weekend and reading study-materials by the pool, as well as talking to my Carina at home on Skype. Arthur and I also dropped by a party at Ida's place on saturday night as she had bought lots of fruits and liquor and was mixing fancy tropical drinks for everyone! Around midnight everyone went down to the Buddah Lounge to check out the nightlife, but we didn't stay long and returned to Park Place for a nachspiel instead. A couple of the guys then brought guitars as well, so we were all having a great time singing and drinking.

Come monday this week turned into a deja vù of last week, with nothing happening but working long hours, studying and reading by the pool, only interchanged with business plan meetings, lectures on tuesday, and watching the Discovery channel. This made for a very boring week, but at least we are going on a great trip this weekend! In just a few hours we are leaving for Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks to stay in a real american trailer :-)

Yesterday was the American Indepence Day, and after sleeping in to recover from the trip to Vegas, Arthur, Øystein, Carina and myself headed into San Francisco to join in on the celebrations. We went down to Pier 39 and just took in the atmosphere as where a large crowd had gathered to see the fireworks display that were scheduled to just after nightfall. It was quite a chilly night, and as I had forgotten to bring my jacket I ended up buying a cheap buy very warm two-sided souvernir jacket at a streetside booth, so now I have one of those as well! After walking around for a few hours, darkness fell and it was time for the fireworks to begin, so we found a place out on a pier where we could watch with a nice view of the bay. The fireworks were good, but compared to what I experienced in Australia they were actually a bit dissappoing when considering the amount of people living in the Bay Area, and they were short too - lasting just over 20 minutes.
Our plan for the rest of the night was to meet up with Martin downtown, and have him show us around to some good parties that night, but we were unable to get in touch with him at all, so since we were all quite exhausted we just headed home after the fireworks-displays and called it an early night.

There was one thing I found strange however, which is that while americans are often very nationalistic I didn't see any people displaying even a single american flag on their national day. This is made even more ironic since the flag is beeing religiously portrayed at almost every building on all other days of the year. Strange people these americans :-)

We had planned to leave on our roadtrip to Las Vegas at about 9a.m in the morning, but as usual with such plans they didn't quite happen the way we intended. Since both me and Carina were staying at Alex's place from the reception last night we had to get up and find our way back to Mountain View to pack our stuff before we could get on our way, so before everything were in order the clock was nearing 11a.m already, and then we also had to stop at SafeWay to stock up on food an water for the days in the desert.