Back Home, but in California!

I realized I never finished up our blogging from the Patagonia trip! Well, we are home at last, after 4 flights and over 24 hours of travel to get back to Chicago, IL. We put a lot of our pictures on flickr.com

We are now in California. We are visiting grad schools. We visited Berkeley (which we LOVE!!!!!!!) and Stanford (can you feel the smug!?) and we are having a good time driving around the bay area. Currently, we are sleeping out of our mini-van which we rented. It is crappy! It is a Chevy Uplander, which is NOT a mini-van easy to sleep in. It is crammed full of seats, two captain style and one rear bench seat. We have to take three out of the four seats out, stack them precariously on top of each other, and cram one in the front to get some room for both of us to lay down in it on the floor. At least the floor is flat when you take out the seats. We were expecting a Dodge Caravan or something, but got stuck with a Chevy. It wasn't too expensive, so thats okay.

We really love the Berkeley area the best. Right now we're chillin in a coffee shop with some WiFi internet, and for dinner we want to try out this Mt. Everest restaurant, with Nepalese and Indian cuisine. Mmmmm sounds interesting! Sadly, we're becoming Starbucks yuppies, as its the only quick coffee place open early in the morning. We get up around 6am so that we can beat San Fransisco traffic (plus, we want to hide under the cover of darkness, since we sleep in motel parking lots).

Good news. . . both of us are now officially accepted at the University of Utah!!!!!! YAY! Houses are really cheap there, but sooooo expensive here in California. We got good vibes when we visited the Fluid Mechanics Lab at Berkeley today. We both liked it and it might be possible for both of us to study in the same lab if we are accepted! Hahaha that would be funny!