Santa Cruz - Carmel by Sea, San Jose

Last week we had a midterm in real estate management. This ment that we didn't had class on thursday and hereby our weekend started on wednesday evening. Midterm wasn't that difficult. Calculations were pretty easy but I had some difficulties with the vocabulary. A funny thing was that you actually have to buy a blank test sheet by yourself. Even thought six sheets cost only USD 1,70, it still feels a bit weird compared to the system we have in our university in Finland. Well, U.S. is the home of capitalism so these guys know pretty good how to make money on pretty much everything :)

Monday was the game day! We rented a minivan which actually was a 2011 GMC Yukon with a V8. I think that car is one of the coolest rides I've ever driven and I don't even want to think what the price for that one would be in Finland... So, we continued to San Jose to see Sharks vs. Ducks. The game was pretty neat, atmosphere was awesome and the HP Pavilion sold out. Ducks won 2-3, Selänne 2+0, Koivu 0+2, Lydman 0+1. It was a good day to be a Finn.

On thursday we decided to visit Santa Cruz, because we had heard a lot of good about it. On thursday morning we went to Enterprise to get a car. A 2011 Dodge Avenger, which we got a 10 percent discount because the previous customer had tried to cover his/her smoking with pretty cheap perfume... Cars here in the U.S. are not comparable to cars we have in Finland. For instance a basic VW Passat has usually a 3.0 V6 engine here. Most of the cars are pick-ups. And those things are big. If you put a BMW X5 next to Ford F350 it basically looks like a Toyota Yaris.

We took the legendary Highway 1 which goes next to the Pacific Ocean all the way Los Angeles. Santa Cruz is approximately one and a half our south from Hayward. The views on the Highway 1 are something you cannot believe before you see them with your own eyes...

Santa Cruz was a bit of a disappointment, though it is a very nice looking place. It seemed to be a tourist attraction and because the schools were already started, there was not that much of people. We booked a hotel room from Super 8 and continued our trip to Carmel by Sea. A funny detail in our hotel was the coffee. This small single-portion coffee had all the text in english such as "brewed for the...", but the only text to express what the bag contains was written in finnish "KAHVI".

Carmel is a small town approximately 45 minutes from Santa Cruz to south. As a little nice-to-know-information, Clint Eastwood is the former Major of the town. The legendary Pebble Beach golf course is also right next to it, on the north side. The town was pretty small, upscale apartments, nice cars, luxury shops. If you go by, I suggest that you quickly visit the place.

On friday morning we continued our trip to San Jose. Since we were in Silicon Valley, we just had to type "Google" and "Microsoft" to our navigator. I think we didn't even found the real headquarters, because the whole area was so big.

We got a midterm in organizational behavior this wednesday. Lots of reading, but fortunately the whole subject is in my opinion pretty interesting.