UCR is changing. I feel it in the nonexistent river. I feel it on top of the C. I smell it in the trees. Much that once was, is now lost, for none who party can remember it. It began with the forging of the Great Tests. By week three, midterms were given to the CNAS, beings who still...
Unless you live under a rock, you might have heard that Edgar Allen Poe beat a gold miner during this year’s World Cup. But who actually cares about basketball, am I right? We all know the real attraction is the thirty-second ads that pop up throughout the game and tell us to buy things. So to all of my...
“Oh my God, I haven’t been on Instagram in like, five days!”
These were the first words to grace my ears as I sat down on my flight from Berlin to LAX. I was surrounded by a soccer team of 15 year-old girls and their parents — the dads all wearing what seemed to be the same pair of khaki...
Last week, some of you might have noticed a sea of people undulating around the Bell Tower with no real rhyme or reason. Some of you who occasionally use that new-fangled Internet machine might have noticed the surge of videos depicting people flailing about for half a minute. Now you might be wondering what is going on, or where...
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! For the times, they are a changin’. There was a time, not too long ago, when an empire of eyeliner, ripped skinny jeans and whiny vocals ruled the world. When Hot Topics were inescapable and Pete Wentz was actually taken seriously. Well, more seriously, anyway. Yes, it was the Emo Empire, and...
Fail Better
April 6-7
The pub was filled with the steady booming of old-school Schlager music—dwarfed in sound only by the clinking of Astra bottles and the consistent cheering of a good time. My six fellow Californians and I had been taken to Hamburg for the weekend, and had spent the day touring the lovely city and enjoying the first clear...
April 19 – The Train
I was on a train, alone, in the middle of the night, thousands of miles from my family in the states and with four hours of sleep fighting against four beers in the battlefield that was my body. I’m not usually prone to such surreal, existential realizations, but I couldn’t help but be amazed at...
As of writing this, I am in my ninth week of the 15-week UCEAP Language and Culture Program. So while I feel like I have just settled in here, it has just occurred to me that I am past the halfway mark in my stay here. I can’t say that I am ready to go; on the contrary, I...
May Day
May 1
“Happy New Year!” shouted an alcohol-slurred voice among the multitude of faces.
This was the greeting my friends and I met as we got off the U-Bahn and into the crowd that consumed the middle of Berlin. The first of May is a national holiday in Germany, in which almost everyone has a day off from work and...
A Weekend in Amsterdam
May 9-15
One of the greatest things about Germany would have to be its location. With its position smack-dab in the middle of Europe, you are only some hours away from a multitude of other cultures in every direction. As such, I found myself in Amsterdam for an extended weekend.
My friend and I exited our night train...