By PATRICIA YOLLIN, San Francisco Chronicle

In San Francisco, where many people, it seems, can't stand the sight of President Bush, they won't have to look at him much longer.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Nzadi is one of the most obscure tongues in the world. That's exactly why a University of California, Berkeley class has embraced it."There's nothing like the joy of discovering a language from scratch," said Cal linguistics Professor Larry Hyman.

BERKELEY, Calif. -- The University of California Berkeley is 7,450 miles from Baghdad -- a long way by any measure. For veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that distance pales compared with the chasm between military and student life. A new class at Cal is trying to help bridge that gap.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A koala is kidnapped. Sheep are molested by a human intruder. An elephant does a headstand on a technician, breaking her pelvis. A tiger ravages its keeper's arm.