Rainy Days, Hot Days and Gun Scares

It has been a crazy week. We had rain, we had sun, a visit from my sister, a trip down to LA, and a gunman scare on campus.

Last Tuesday was the first time I saw rain in months. And it rained torrentially...it wasn't actually bad at all but the Californian drainage system just can't cope with rain. Most of the roads were flooded and how I so wished that i brought my wellies. Seeing rain triggered some mixed emotions, On the one hand I was kinda happy to see rain again after such a long time, on the other hand...wasn't one of the points of coming to California was to escape the British weather? Tuesday was also the day my sister came to visit....maybe she brought the British weather to California with her?

I also took my driving test on Wednesday as my sister took a car up here. I failed by one minor fault. = ( But the driving examiner does not know how to drive or Californians drive differently from the UK (not talking about driving on the other side of the road but on driving techniques). Apparently to pass the driving test in California you should be using the hand cross-over technique for steering, accelerate when your approaching traffic lights, only look backwards and not look around for dangers when reversing, and also drive as close as possible to a parked car on the road as possible instead of keeping a safe distance. In the UK, if you do any of these things on the test it would be an automatic fail but apparently in California you would pass the test. = S

On friday, I went down to LA with my sister for the weekend as my sister was leaving on Saturday and it's my cousin's birthday this week. After class, we drove down, taking multiple stops along the way. We stopped at the Camarillo Shopping Outlets and at The Grove. All in all it took us 8 hours to do an 160 mile journey due to the stops and the very irritating LA traffic jams.

Today there was a gunman scare on campus in the afternoon. I didn't find out about the gunman until I got to my afternoon class. We were waiting for the TA, who was teachng the class for about 10 minutes and he still hadn't turned up. Then someone checked their emails where there was an email from the TA that he was stuck in North Hall and the class was cancelled. And then a friend texted me that there was a gunman in South Hall and to stay away. Despite the warning I decided to cycle around South Hall as it was adjacent to the building I was supposed to have my class in. South Hall was surrounded by CSOs and police officers guarding all the entrances. It was quite a surreal scene as campus was eerily empty as i guessed that received the warning email before they left home while I only received it after I got home. I later found out that the "gunman scare" was that there were reports of a man allegedly with a gun on a top balcony of South Hall shouting at students and threatening suicide and that the intial investigation has indeicated that there was no actual threat.