Hola! Como estas?

So I've had a few days to get settled and everything and so far I'm really enjoying California. The weather is pretty nice, typically 13-15 Celsius and there's been some rain but it's really just drizzling. Apparently I missed about a week straight of rain which ended right about when I got here.

One thing that caught me off guard was how common Spanish is here in California. I mean, I was expecting some but I figured that I'm in Northern California, a bit of a ways off from Mexico so I didn't think there would be that much but it's really everywhere. Lots of the people around my neighbourhood either only speak Spanish or primarily speak Spanish. Anyway, we went to a discount store to buy some dishes and stuff and we see this sign posted which says something like "Due to California State Law declaration 65 we must inform you that some dishes sold at this store are known to cause cancer, etc.". If they KNOW it causes cancer and other harmful stuff why would they sell it? So we decide to ask a woman there for help. She says "Sorry, no speak English". So acting all proud of myself that I took Spanish 101, thinking I could get some little bit of information out of her, I reply "Yo hablo un poco espanol." She replies "Oh,..." and then goes off at a mile a minute. Un poco = a little!! I couldn't even break apart the words because she was speaking so fast. We excused ourselves and moved on to two other salespeople who again couldn't speak English. I was discouraged so I didn't even try this time. Anyway, finally the 4th guy speaks English and explains to us that some of the stuff is for display purposes only and you aren't supposed to eat off them because they contain lead and he shows us how to tell the difference.

I don't know why I went into such a detailed story but meh. I'm not deleting it now. Feel free to enjoy or suffer through it.

Aside from that work has been really awesome so far. I really like the company but I'll save that for another post! Oh, I also visited Stanford University on the weekend and it's an absolutely beautiful campus. That would definitely be a "perk" of studying there! Unfortunately I don't have any pictures though because my camera ran out of batteries. :(