1.	Contact Berkeley University to get details of the Fraternities which often rent cheap rooms to J1ers!	1
2.	Make sure you check out El Rio's on Mission St in San Francisco, every Monday night is $1 drinks!	0
3.	You will end up using the BART a bit, and it can be expensive. If you go to a supermarket you can buy a BART red ticket, which is for kids, and it costs $6 for $24 worth of rides! Don't get caught using it though!	0

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Before we arrived in Berkeley in the summer 2004 we had our accommodation arranged. One of the girls had contacted the university and they had given her a list of all the fraternities in the area. We arranged to stay with Alpha Delta Phi, which had a pool and a downstairs bar! it cost about $600 dollars a room per month, we had 3 per room but could have easily had another.

when we arrived we only one of us had a job arranged, that was in the university book store, on our fist we days we tried to suss out how easy it would be to get jobs - it seemed having a social security number was vital to even apply in some places. it took about 3 weeks to get our cards in the post which wasnt bad.

By the time we got our SSN there weren't many jobs in Berkeley, so we went into San Francisco, at the Powell BART Station is the San Francisco Centre which houses a lot of clothes stores including Abercrombie, American Eagle, Old Navy and Diesel. Two of us managed to get a job in Abercrombie alongside 3 other Irish. Two of the other boys got jobs a security in the Moscone Center. In the end one of the girls got a job in the University book shop, another worked in a foot locker type store in Berkeley and another in a clothes store. Starbucks were also hiring but you couldn't tell them you would be leaving in 3 months. The guys at Blazzing Saddles at Fisherman's wharf also hire J1ers.

There were 2 good bars to go out to in Berkeley, the Bears Lair and Blakes, both are generally full with students from the University most nights. You can also head into the city but BART finishes at 1am so be prepared to get a taxi back, about $50 between 4. ID's are required and we had some dubious ID as we were all 19/20, if you are under 21 it is ideal to stay in a frat, as the frat guys can buy a keg for $70 and that'll do a house for the night.

At the end of the summer rush begins, this is where all the fraternities try to woo new members and is a great source for parties for a couple of weeks.

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