Day 21

For todays breakfast I bought a coffee and a carrot muffin and went to Union Square again. It was kind of foggy, but not cold.

Despite of the giant size of the american coffee cups I dislike that it's always a paper cup. Even if I sit down on a table INSIDE the coffee shop I have to drink my coffee out of a paper cup. So the taste of the coffee is always the same, like paper. It's very funny to read the slogan "The world's finest cup of coffee" (see picture) on a paper cup, at least for a non-american.

And the giant size of the regular american coffee cup has created a funny habit, you see many many people walking on the street carrying a paper cup of coffee in their hands. That's strange to me. So the coffee is cold and tastes like paper...After breakfast I went to pick up my race pack for tomorrow. The distribution point was the Hyatt Hotel on Fisherman's Wharf. I decided to take the direct way, which goes straight over Nob Hill and Russian Hill, two hills in the neighborhood. It was very hard to walk these steep streets, but on the other side there was a beautiful view from the hilltops..
View to the South.
View to Finance District.
The Bay Bridge (has the same size like her sister, the Golden Gate Bridge, and was built at the same time, but is not so famous. But that's an usual issue between siblings :-).
And of course Alcatraz...in the fog.

Day 20

This was a gray but dry day. School was interesting today. We saw a good movie about a 17 year old boy who lives in Oregon and has some problems with school and family. It was pretty interesting. The name of the movie is "Thumbsucker".
Beside the movie there was nothing important today, so I took a picture of a cable car, since this is a typical S.F. attraction. Unfortunately the grey sky doesn't provide a nice light...
And here is a very typical scene from Powell Street: everybody is taking pictures of the cable cars :-)

Day 19

For the first time it drizzled the whole day, a typical winter day in San Francisco as I've been told. So I went to the laundry again. This time I chose another laundry than last time. It was cheaper and I found a dryer this time, but there were also more odd persons in there...

Day 18

This morning in school everybody was talking about the Castro fest yesterday. There was a shooting two hours after we left the party. The policy only knows that the shooter was masked(!). I think I will not go there next year ...In the first break, when I bought my Espresso Macchiato at the Starbucks next door I saw an interesting flyer. It announced that the country music singer Mika Marks will perform on Union Square at the time of my lunch break.Of course I went there. Also the sun came out for a moment. The music was good..if you love country music.
In the evening I went for running at the Embarcadero again, in preparation of the half-marathon. This time I took my camera with me. Here are some evening impressions from around the Ferry Building:

Day 17 - Happy Halloween

Today is Halloween, a special day in San Francisco and the rest of the US. The teacher were alreayd dressed up in the school this morning. In the second lesson for today we watched Friday the 13th. Very funny these horror movies from the eighties.
After school a group of students including me went to the Halloween parade in the Castro district, thats the district with the rainbow flags. But it was rather disappointing: no music, no drinks, no trucks with good looking dancers on it...everybody was just walking around.Of course I dressed up, too (but forgot the sunglasses). Unfortunately I was not the only one with that particular idea, but we decided to forgive each other :-)
And there were many special dressed men, but less than I expected.
It was very cold, in the low fifties. I don't know how they survived it without getting a cold..
And there were nice dressed girls as well...
There were many other funny costumes. Unfortunately my pocket camera is not very good at night, so many photos are not sharp. It seems I urgently need a new camera :-)