San Francisco first impressions

I have landed yesterday in San Francisco, after a 3 hours flight delay, and could view a bit of the city and the bay from the shuttle car.
The weather was absolutely gorgeous and it was even pleasantly warm and summery.
I arrived to the house where I am going to stay and had a great evening sharing food, thoughts and experiences with my new landlady/roommate.
I ended up going to bed at 10pm local time, which was a normal enough time, but actually meant 7am to my body clock. I realised that I had been awake for 27 hours already!
I was still full of adrenaline but could feel the way my brain wasn't functioning 100% normally. A bit slow, or else words suddenly missing in the middle of my speech...
I woke up at 2am, my body clock telling me it was way past time to get up... But it was dark and I could thankfully get back to sleep until 8am.

The house I am staying in is beautiful, and here is the view from my bedroom!! Not bad, huh!!


So today I went for a walk around the house, and after a very steep road that seemed to go on for ever, as if it was going to bring me straight into the sky, I arrived at the trails of the redwood national park. Nice! So close! But you have to really deserve the view by climbing up there!


I am not quite sure of what I will do in the next few days, but I will start by taking it easy, and getting over the jet lag...

Soon, soon

Time is getting tight before the big flight.
I am digitalizing CDs and sorting out books and will start on clothes soon.
I am still wondering how I am going to manage to fit everything in twice 23kg.
Hmmm... We'll see.
I learned with the Camino that I can live with very little anyway, so I can always remove things from the suitcases.
I am excited. In barely more than 3 days I will be at the other end of the world, and a new page will open. Where I can create anything I want.
I have almost finished re-reading the last Harry Potter, so I won't have to bring the book with me. Reading it a second time allows me to notice all the details I had missed in my hunger for the storyline the first time. I still read until 3am last night. Proof that even the second time around it has the power to captivate and engulf me and not let me go anymore.
But things are good, between the reading and sorting I am meeting the last few people I want to see before I leave. Busy times, but happy ones too...

Long lost song

Today I found a song I had tried to remember for months.
It was a song I used to hear on the radio when I was at university in Bordeaux.
I remembered the feel of it, but couldn't remember either the name of the group or the title or the words or the melody... Basically I had just a vague feeling of the song left.
And well, today thanks to some clever research on the internet, I found it again! It was Lilicub's "Voyage en Italie".
Have a look:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x141on_lilicub-voyage-en-italie
It is pretty kitsch but makes me smile every time.
I remember eating breakfast in the sunny kitchen of the flat I was sharing with my best friend in Bordeaux, and hearing the song on the radio while getting ready for university...
Nostalgia nostalgia...

Apart from that I am pretty much spending my time meeting people at the moment.
I haven't even started packing even though I have about a week left before the big flight...
Ah well.
I know it will be ok and everything will sort itself out, like it always does.
Today it felt more important to look for that song on the internet than to start thinking seriously of what to take with me.
Hmmm... I'll continue to go with the flow and we'll see what comes.

Got a room near San Francisco!

That's it, the search is over.
I phoned a lovely lady this afternoon (well, morning for her) about a room for rent I had seen on Craigslist, and we really hit it off. So after over an hour conversation, we both agreed to end the search, she for a roommate, I for a place to live.
I have been on a little cloud ever since.
I knew it would go well. I felt guided.
But it is something else when it actually happens.
So to celebrate, I watched the Fifth Element again. On French TV.
It was strange to see Bruce Willis speaking French, but hey, I love Bruce Willis in any language. Especially in that tiny orange top designed by Jean Paul Gauthier!
Now all I have left to do is to work on a list of objectives I want to focus on while I am there.
So I don't "waste" my time having fun and forgetting why I am there for.
Ah, and also I need to start thinking of packing... Not quite the same to go somewhere for 3 months or for a week...
OK, I'll go and read a bit of Harry Potter to calm down (re-read in fact).