Day 64 - Traffic light party

Tonight my hall did a traffic light party at the bar downstairs. If you're not familiar with that term, it's a thing where you're supposed to wear red if you're taken, yellow or orange if you're single but picky or not interested, and green if you're "single and up for it". I'll leave it to you to guess which color I wore. :-)

It wasn't bad.. more fun than the dancing last night. But it was still another loud place where it was pretty impossible to have a meaningful conversation. I left after about 30 minutes.

Yesterday at the international student meeting I met a Fresno State exchange student who happend to be from Santa Rosa, CA. For those of you who don't know, Fresno State was the big rival when I was at San Jose State, I have family who attended Fresno State, and I was born in Santa Rosa. So it was very neat to meet such a person so far away.

Tonight after I left the party, I met her for fish & chips and a nice quiet walk around the campus and surrounding areas -- Reading is an awesome campus for walking around at night. I know it kinda defeats the purpose of the whole foreign experience, but it was great. Talked for almost 3 hours and never misunderstood a word or asked for anything to be repeated (until tonight I think the longest I've gone here without asking someone to repeat something is about 5 minutes). But it was more than just the "language barrier" that made her easier to talk to. It's hard to explain.

As much as I love hanging out with English people, tonight reminded me that I'm still very much an American from the Bay Area.

posted by Matt @ 11:59 AM