Destination Irvine: Day 6 California Here We Come..

So, Vegas was a bit of a let down. The good news was that we were going to make one of my favourite journeys - out of Nevada and into California via the 15. I can't help but imagine wagons that travels through the Nevada desert, to come out of the mountains and see the L.A basin. It is an amazing journey.
We cruised through California's carpool lanes into Irvine. We set up a bank account and then tried to set up a cellular phone service. Unfortunately, we discovered that as Canadians we would need our Social Insurance cards to be approved for a phone. Who would have thought that cell phone companies would turn away potential customers? While we memorized our SIN numbers, we packed our cards with our movers. So we were refused a cell phone until we got our cards (five days later).
We checked into our hotel and went to sleep pretty early. I think we knew this was our last chance to sleep on a good bed before our furniture arrived in five days.
On Friday we moved into our place with little problems. The family housing complexes at UC Irvine are very pretty. Unfortunately, we got a scenic view of the ground floor parking lot. There's little we can do, so we will make the best of it for the next two years (At least we will not have to carry groceries up a couple flights of stairs).
While I went off to meet some fellow international students, Lindsey unpacked our few belongings and inflated our air mattress. That evening, the Merage Fellows met for a formal dinner with the Dean. This was my first introduction with my other peers. There is about 16 of us with international students consisting of approximately 50% of that number (maybe more - I haven't sat down to do an accuraate count). It is very easy to see in each one of the other Fellows something special. It seemed like I immediately knew why each person was chosen for the scholarship. I have no doubt they will set a high standard that I hope I can reach.
The dinner ended very quickly. There was little extra socializing because the school planned for the next day a early morning activity for all of us Fellows.
I went to bed on a crappy air mattress. It definitely was not my best sleep of this journey, but there was something about being in my new home that made me enjoy that first night.