I moved into my new room yesterday in the graduate apartment block at CalArts. As you can see from the photo, it is designed with a certain functionality in mind. Though since I have downsized my belongings, there is actually plenty of space and the view, as detailed in the other photo above, is very pleasant. Fiona and Amy were kind enough to drop me off and help move my suitcases. As we came up the driveway a little shiver of excitement rolled through my old bones. It was so choice to see the buildings in the flesh and to step onto the grounds where I will spend the next three years.
The area where the school is located, Valencia, is a planned community, part of the city of Santa Clarita, about 30min drive from some of the more well known parts of L.A. It is an amazingly repetitive (and huge) neighbourhood, with roads that spiral off the main drags into dead ends, driving all business back into the vast strip malls that have every chain store you could wish for. The buildings that house these shops are all the same and there seems to be no opportunity for a small collection of independent stores to spring up. Virtually all of the homes are replicas of each other, taking the concept of suburbia to a whole new level. I would find this all terribly depressing if wasn't so absolutely fascinating.
Tonight I went with some new friends to play glow-in-the-dark mini golf, one of the few things to do here at night time. There was a fine selection of country music on the sound-system to accompany us through our fiercely battled competition. I came a respectable 3rd, with 4th and 5th trailing miserably behind me.
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