Four months have passed since I came to study at the University of California Santa Barbara, respectively living in Isla Vista, and eventually moved to Los Angeles on July 1^st to take my internship at Arbor.

Four amazing months of partying, traveling, making new friends and unforgettable experiences.

I made it to San Francisco, Vegas, the Grand Canyon, San Diego and explored the beautiful Santa Ynez Mountains close to Santa Barbara as well as the streets and neighborhoods of L.A.

And of course, studying. But honestly, who the fuck goes abroad to study hard?

Not me! And I don’t know anybody else who does! I wanna see the world, I wanna meet people, I wanna tell stories about my life when I’m back home and not about what I read in a book.

I did all what’s necessary to not look like a lazy-ass bum, though, so I succeeded quite well. Worst grade was a B (so shut up if you wanna criticize me!). Maybe because I chose topics that touch my life and my passions: snowboarding and the environment.

So I took a couple of marketing classes to write a marketing plan about eco-friendly snowboard outerwear and Social Media Marketing and participated in a solar and renewable energy class. Who knows, maybe the basics for my future.

But the ratio of freetime/studying was more than acceptable. Got a lot of time to skate around, try to surf(until  I got sick from bacteria after being so stupid and surfing while it was raining due to being over-motivated), do sports in general, drink with people from all over the world and travel.

Things that I never expected to happen happened. I could tell a lot of stories now, about going to a punk rock festival in Vegas with random people I met just a few days before (which I call my friends now), adventurous sleepovers in parking lots in Downtown LA (obviously not the safest place at night), getting kicked out of bars for no reason (in my opinion ;)), hitch-hiking back from the Warped Tour at night and so on. It would take too much time to tell it all, though.

But to get to the point, one of those unexpected things was this internship at Arbor. Just another coincidence and another long story.

To make it short: The shop owner of Arbor Santa Barbara recommended me to the headquarters in Venice after I went to the Shop-Opening Party, they invited me for an interview and five days later I threw my suitcase, my guitar and my bike in the back of a friends’ pick up truck and arrived in Venice after a two-hour drive.

The next unexpected thing was the way I lived the first week. Hostels and rooms in apartments were too expensive and nobody answered on couchsurfing.org.

So I surfed the internet and found this old guy, apparently renting a room to students for an acceptable price. We talked it all over on the phone and as he told me that there will be two other students (one from Lithuania and one from Bulgaria). I thought it would be a spacious spot.

Well, in the end it was a one-room apartment and everybody was sleeping in that one room. One room, four people. Awesome. NOT! Those unexpected things are chasing me! I was the first of the students who arrived, so I could at least pick the biggest couch. The other guys arrived one day respectively two days later. The Bulgarian dude was just there for the weekend and slept in the closet on the floor. But he didn’t complain about it, as he used to sleep here already in the past.

So I made the best out of it and hung out outdoors most of the time, cruised around with my bike or skate, did sports or went to a nearby hostel, which I found  by accident and where I met two cool dudes from Finland. Both of them snowboarders, again some like-minded people.

And I had this nine-hour workday. But working at Arbor is not the worst thing at all and getting up at 8 in the morning is pretty luxurious compared to other jobs that I did in my life. The negative thing: Just two and a half hours left before the sun goes down after work.

The headquarters is a pretty sick location. Downstairs there’s a shop and showroom filled with snow-, skate- and surfboards as well as apparel. The office is upstairs on some kind of a balcony, so you can see what’s happening in the backroom of the shop.

And as I am the intern, I of course had to do what nobody else wanted to do(and what had to be done), but that was alright as I didn’t expect getting involved in a big project during a 3-week internship.

The atmosphere was so relaxed that internet research, filling out spreadsheets and making phone calls didn’t appear too boring. It was fun to join the photo shooting for the 2011 street wear and participate in meetings regarding the 2012 snowboard designs. I was pretty stoked to see how the 2012 boards are gonna look like, while most people don’t even know how the 2011 boards look. I was asked for my opinion and the things I said were accepted and even implemented, so I can say that I was part of the designing process. Sweet.

In the meantime I moved to one of my co-workers’ garage to sleep on the couch (so I got my own room now, finally), went to San Diego for a weekend, barbecued, partied and passed out on Independence Day and spent as much time as possible on the beach, which is quite hard when the sun shines only every now and then. It’s not always sunny, like in Philadelphia…haha. Bad joke? I don’t care…

But now, two days before I’m gonna leave L.A. for a 6-week road-trip, a horrible toothache is driving me nuts. Hope I will get well soon as taking painkillers every day in the next 6 weeks is the last thing I wanna do. Although getting drunk might be cheaper than…

Stay tuned…

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