Random Scrap:
One of the conditions of being accepted into Berkeley was that my semester was not going to start until Spring. I did try to negotiate by writing an email from Santa Monica Library but the response had never come. I didn't want to seem ungrateful so I humbly accepted the offer. That meant that I was going to spend the next three months in Poland and not come back to California until early January. The autumn in Poland was rainy, dark and cold. I spent the days between reading the Count of Monte Christo in Tomek's old room (mine had been converted to a bedroom) and the living room. There I attended a daily ritual of drinking coffee with my parents and reporting on the daily movements in the stock price of Google. The TV was filled with the pictures and sounds of Ukraine's Orange Revolution. I was lying on my bed staring at the bill that had just arrived from Berkeley. [Fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty two] dollars. Tomek had volunterred to lend me the first ten thousand and there was an option of instalments which meant that at least I could survive for the first few months.