Saturday, August 27, 2005
Beach school
This morning we had class, and before class I got up to run with Candice, but Candice slept through her alarm (NPR is quite soporific sometimes) so I ran by myself, over on the other side of the river, which was nice. There was this guy running with his dog and I passed him, and he kept trying to catch up to me, but he didn't.
I had cornflakes with blueberries again before rushing off to class. Class was Jim Carlton talking first about what we should bring on the boat, and for the rest of the time about the various species of living creatures that we would encounter in the sea (or that existed in the sea even if we would not encounter them). He passed around examples of such things, which was neat, but much of it slipped through my ears, because Latin names of various species is not something I retain easily. However, we did learn that the Loch Ness Monster actually has a scientific name -- "Nessiteras rhombopteryx" -- and the guy who gave it that name did so in the journal "Nature," which is highly respected. However, that name is an anagram of "Monster Hoax by Sir Peter S." (Try it out yourself -- I did, and it's true.)
When class ended, Hilary, Candice and I went over to the boathouse to take out kayaks. We found the kayaks, and the life jackets, but the paddles were nowhere to be found, and the kayaks were locked to the building. We found two paddles, but in order to get the key, we would have to have been checked for proficiency in paddling, and we had not been checked. So we left.
After a lunch of PB&banana, Albion house and Candice and Julie went to the beach (see at left Ashley, Candice, and Julie). It was behind the YMCA, and the had it so that the swimming area was all about three feet deep, which did not make for much swimming. But we did find these jellyfish-like gelatinous animals floating about that we had learned about this morning in class, which was pretty neat. They don't have any capacity to sting, so they're perfectly fine, although kind of strange, to swim near. They are about 1/2 inch to 2 inches, at least the ones that we saw, and when we picked them up they were like clear jelly. I swam just a bit, and also sat on the sand and read some more of that book, Cod.
When we got back I let Candice take a little break, and then instead of letting her take a nap in her house, I called her up and we went to the boathouse to take out a boat. We wanted a sailboat, but I wanted one with a mainsail and a boom, because this would be my first time sailing this year, and I would be sailing with someone who'd never sailed before, and there was quite a bit of wind. The only sailboats they had left were gaff-rigged, so we took out a rowboat instead, and rowed to the bridge and back twice in the hour or so we had it. I was all right at rowing. Candice coxed me in to the dock but she coxed it so that the bow went in, whereas I was going to go in parallel to the dock. There was a volunteer there to catch us anyway, so it didn't much matter.
On the way back, we heard this strange noise, so we went to check it out, and they were doing a demonstration where they were running an old engine in the back of the shop where the make the circular hoops that hold the sail to the mast. The engine turned a shaft, which turned all of the machines in the shop. It was pretty neat, and also pretty loud. Then we spotted Hilary in the shipsmith shop, so we went over and watched her heat up iron and then bang on it (see at left). She was making a feather shape on the end of an iron rod, which would eventually turn into a coat hook hung on a feather-shaped piece with a hole in it. The other day she made a coat hook, but without the feather-shaped piece with a hole in it, just a flat piece with a hole in it. In the picture she is pounding on the other end to make it sharp, and she will eventually curl it over to make the part of the hook that pokes into your coat. You can see a flat part near the end of the tongs; that is the feather.
Here are some pictures of where I am.
This is my house. That's me waving in the lower left corner. It was a millworkers' house when there was a velvet mill in Mystic. Four of us live in this house, including me, Hilary (above)...
...Ashley, seen here boiling rice...
...and Valerie, seen here eating eggs and toast.
We had omelets for dinner, because Hilary made lots of salsa for last night's chicken, and we had lots left over, so we put it in the omelets. I made the frying pan too hot so my omelet cooked in literally 10 seconds, but that was all right; at least it was an omelet instead of having to turn it into scrambled eggs.
I said "beach school" because I went to the beach and went out on the water in a small boat. But it is a Saturday, after all, and after we start having classes in earnest and have homework and such, I will not be able to do such things. (Well, I hope I will, but probably not.)
Also, you people should leave comments. If you got all the way to the end of the post, then you should leave a comment. Really, it took me a long time to write this whole thing and post and format pictures, so you can write just a little something.
I had cornflakes with blueberries again before rushing off to class. Class was Jim Carlton talking first about what we should bring on the boat, and for the rest of the time about the various species of living creatures that we would encounter in the sea (or that existed in the sea even if we would not encounter them). He passed around examples of such things, which was neat, but much of it slipped through my ears, because Latin names of various species is not something I retain easily. However, we did learn that the Loch Ness Monster actually has a scientific name -- "Nessiteras rhombopteryx" -- and the guy who gave it that name did so in the journal "Nature," which is highly respected. However, that name is an anagram of "Monster Hoax by Sir Peter S." (Try it out yourself -- I did, and it's true.)
When class ended, Hilary, Candice and I went over to the boathouse to take out kayaks. We found the kayaks, and the life jackets, but the paddles were nowhere to be found, and the kayaks were locked to the building. We found two paddles, but in order to get the key, we would have to have been checked for proficiency in paddling, and we had not been checked. So we left.
After a lunch of PB&banana, Albion house and Candice and Julie went to the beach (see at left Ashley, Candice, and Julie). It was behind the YMCA, and the had it so that the swimming area was all about three feet deep, which did not make for much swimming. But we did find these jellyfish-like gelatinous animals floating about that we had learned about this morning in class, which was pretty neat. They don't have any capacity to sting, so they're perfectly fine, although kind of strange, to swim near. They are about 1/2 inch to 2 inches, at least the ones that we saw, and when we picked them up they were like clear jelly. I swam just a bit, and also sat on the sand and read some more of that book, Cod.When we got back I let Candice take a little break, and then instead of letting her take a nap in her house, I called her up and we went to the boathouse to take out a boat. We wanted a sailboat, but I wanted one with a mainsail and a boom, because this would be my first time sailing this year, and I would be sailing with someone who'd never sailed before, and there was quite a bit of wind. The only sailboats they had left were gaff-rigged, so we took out a rowboat instead, and rowed to the bridge and back twice in the hour or so we had it. I was all right at rowing. Candice coxed me in to the dock but she coxed it so that the bow went in, whereas I was going to go in parallel to the dock. There was a volunteer there to catch us anyway, so it didn't much matter.
On the way back, we heard this strange noise, so we went to check it out, and they were doing a demonstration where they were running an old engine in the back of the shop where the make the circular hoops that hold the sail to the mast. The engine turned a shaft, which turned all of the machines in the shop. It was pretty neat, and also pretty loud. Then we spotted Hilary in the shipsmith shop, so we went over and watched her heat up iron and then bang on it (see at left). She was making a feather shape on the end of an iron rod, which would eventually turn into a coat hook hung on a feather-shaped piece with a hole in it. The other day she made a coat hook, but without the feather-shaped piece with a hole in it, just a flat piece with a hole in it. In the picture she is pounding on the other end to make it sharp, and she will eventually curl it over to make the part of the hook that pokes into your coat. You can see a flat part near the end of the tongs; that is the feather.
Here are some pictures of where I am.
This is my house. That's me waving in the lower left corner. It was a millworkers' house when there was a velvet mill in Mystic. Four of us live in this house, including me, Hilary (above)...
...Ashley, seen here boiling rice...
...and Valerie, seen here eating eggs and toast.
We had omelets for dinner, because Hilary made lots of salsa for last night's chicken, and we had lots left over, so we put it in the omelets. I made the frying pan too hot so my omelet cooked in literally 10 seconds, but that was all right; at least it was an omelet instead of having to turn it into scrambled eggs.
I said "beach school" because I went to the beach and went out on the water in a small boat. But it is a Saturday, after all, and after we start having classes in earnest and have homework and such, I will not be able to do such things. (Well, I hope I will, but probably not.)
Also, you people should leave comments. If you got all the way to the end of the post, then you should leave a comment. Really, it took me a long time to write this whole thing and post and format pictures, so you can write just a little something.
Friday, August 26, 2005
A couple of adventures
This morning we went running again, and we didn't have a good idea of a place to run, but we had heard that there was this nice loop called River Road. We didn't know where it was, though, so we just went running. Then we encountered a runner and asked her if she knew of any nice place to run, and she described one, and what do you know, it was River Road! We realized that it was too long to do the whole thing, because we had already been out for 15 minutes and we couldn't be out longer than an hour or so because we had class. So we got to the I-95 bridge where it crosses the Mystic River, and decided to climb up there and go along the bridge to cross the river. This is illegal, and there was poison sumac where we were climbing up, but I was careful not to touch it and we haven't gotten arrested (yet).
We had a three-hour public policy class today, describing what marine public policy is and the structure of the U.S. government and court system. During the 20-minute break in the middle of the three hours a few of us went over to the museum exhibit "The Art of the Boat" which is beautiful black and white photos from the 1930s of boats, mostly heeling over quite a lot.
After a lunch at home (the first time I have ever come home for lunch in the middle of anything like school or work) we went for a talk by the captain of the tall ship we'll be on about the parts of the boat and sort of how things work. It turns out that we'll leave and go south around Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, then go out to sea and then end up in Rockland, perhaps anchoring close to Rockland the night before we have to be there in the morning, but otherwise sailing through the night with night watches. All of the pictures in the talk were sunny with people wearing shorts and bathing suits, but it very well might be cold out there. I have also heard that while we are out at sea, you can track our location on the SEA Web site; more on that later if it turns out to be true.
In the afternoon we took a bus and drove around to three sites of interest and Jim and Glenn talked about the oceanography and history of the sites. They made submarines 540 feet long with 24 missiles that each had eight nuclear warheads in them, in a particular warehouse on the Mystic River. It just came out that they are not going to close this shipyard (they were about to); apparently it's good to keep people at work making submarines even if they're not needed, because then if we ever need them again, we'll have a trained group of people.
Then we went to the Joseph Conrad, a two-masted tall ship, to climb the rigging. This was an optional event. We climbed up on a sort of rope ladder where we had to step on the horizontal parts and hold onto the vertical parts, no exceptions, and we climbed up that until we got to a platform, but the rope ladder came to a point there and it was attached to the mast, and the platform came off of the mast, so when you got to the top of the ladder, the platform was above your head. So there was this ladder that went out from the mast and you had to sort of cling to it hanging backwards off of the mast until you could get to the top of the platform. Then you could climb up another rope ladder type thing, but there was no platform up there, and I didn't do that (only one person did). It was not that high, but we were on that little platform. I held on very tightly. And I did not fall off. It will be much better when we are out at sea, because then you can look down into the water. When I was hoisted up the mast on our sailboat to put the rope through the pulley, the water looked neat from up there, and on a tall ship I would be up higher than that. Today I suppose I was maybe 30 feet above the water? I don't know. It's hard to tell. People took some pictures of me, I hear, but I don't have them. That's all right.
We made a nice dinner of chicken, rice (leftover) and homemade salsa with ice cream for dessert. I also had cornflakes with blueberries for breakfast, which was delicious, because blueberries on cereal is delicious in general, although I was a bit rushed eating breakfast because I had read the Williams-Mystic book that they made on the 25th anniversary of the program after coming back from running for a while, because there was an interesting bit about how they threw out bottles with messages, for science, to see how the currents worked, and they got picked up on the west coast of Florida, and in the middle of the Atlantic, and in Europe, and that was much more interesting than taking a shower, though I eventually did that, too.
So you see, two adventures (the bridge and the rigging, in case you missed them).
We had a three-hour public policy class today, describing what marine public policy is and the structure of the U.S. government and court system. During the 20-minute break in the middle of the three hours a few of us went over to the museum exhibit "The Art of the Boat" which is beautiful black and white photos from the 1930s of boats, mostly heeling over quite a lot.
After a lunch at home (the first time I have ever come home for lunch in the middle of anything like school or work) we went for a talk by the captain of the tall ship we'll be on about the parts of the boat and sort of how things work. It turns out that we'll leave and go south around Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, then go out to sea and then end up in Rockland, perhaps anchoring close to Rockland the night before we have to be there in the morning, but otherwise sailing through the night with night watches. All of the pictures in the talk were sunny with people wearing shorts and bathing suits, but it very well might be cold out there. I have also heard that while we are out at sea, you can track our location on the SEA Web site; more on that later if it turns out to be true.
In the afternoon we took a bus and drove around to three sites of interest and Jim and Glenn talked about the oceanography and history of the sites. They made submarines 540 feet long with 24 missiles that each had eight nuclear warheads in them, in a particular warehouse on the Mystic River. It just came out that they are not going to close this shipyard (they were about to); apparently it's good to keep people at work making submarines even if they're not needed, because then if we ever need them again, we'll have a trained group of people.
Then we went to the Joseph Conrad, a two-masted tall ship, to climb the rigging. This was an optional event. We climbed up on a sort of rope ladder where we had to step on the horizontal parts and hold onto the vertical parts, no exceptions, and we climbed up that until we got to a platform, but the rope ladder came to a point there and it was attached to the mast, and the platform came off of the mast, so when you got to the top of the ladder, the platform was above your head. So there was this ladder that went out from the mast and you had to sort of cling to it hanging backwards off of the mast until you could get to the top of the platform. Then you could climb up another rope ladder type thing, but there was no platform up there, and I didn't do that (only one person did). It was not that high, but we were on that little platform. I held on very tightly. And I did not fall off. It will be much better when we are out at sea, because then you can look down into the water. When I was hoisted up the mast on our sailboat to put the rope through the pulley, the water looked neat from up there, and on a tall ship I would be up higher than that. Today I suppose I was maybe 30 feet above the water? I don't know. It's hard to tell. People took some pictures of me, I hear, but I don't have them. That's all right.
We made a nice dinner of chicken, rice (leftover) and homemade salsa with ice cream for dessert. I also had cornflakes with blueberries for breakfast, which was delicious, because blueberries on cereal is delicious in general, although I was a bit rushed eating breakfast because I had read the Williams-Mystic book that they made on the 25th anniversary of the program after coming back from running for a while, because there was an interesting bit about how they threw out bottles with messages, for science, to see how the currents worked, and they got picked up on the west coast of Florida, and in the middle of the Atlantic, and in Europe, and that was much more interesting than taking a shower, though I eventually did that, too.
So you see, two adventures (the bridge and the rigging, in case you missed them).
Stars and food
This morning Candice and I went running, actually across the river and back again before the drawbridge opened (yes, we have a drawbridge, and it opens). It's really nice outside early in the morning, because the air is so fresh and the boats and the water are so beautiful. We hope to get checked out on our boating skills so that we can take out kayaks or rowing shells or something in the morning when the water is so calm and lovely to go boating on.
We filled out a lot of forms in the morning, and then got house money to go shopping. Our advisor (we have an advisor for the house) told us to go to one grocery store for everything except produce and meat, and to the other for produce and meat, so that is what we did. In the end, we had about $15 left over, which was enough for us to buy lunch (the grocery store has a place to buy lunch). I had sushi. It was delicious. I haven't had sushi in quite a while, especially when you consider that the last sushi I had was some freeze-dried stuff that the snack bar tried to sell for $6.25 and ended up having to give away because it had the consistency of styrofoam. (I got a whole box of it for free. But it had the consistency of styrofoam.)
Then we had to rush over to get facebook pictures taken. So watch the mystic site, because my picture will be going up soon, and you might forget what I look like. I read a book, and then I took a 12-minute nap before going to a navigation class. We used a chart and plotted bearings and measured distances to get "ded reckonings" (not "dead" reckonings, because the "ded" comes from the word "deduced") and then made lines from things that we had compass sightings on and found a fix of our point and saw how far off we were, that sort of thing. Then we went to the planetarium and the same guy who taught us the navigation (he has been at Mystic Seaport for 44 years) showed us how the stars move during the night and how you can navigate by them. This was only a brief lesson, of course; those who want to actually learn how to do it using a sextant and such have to take the marine skills class.
We got out of the planetarium about 45 minutes later than the schedule said, so our advisor was coming over for dinner 45 minutes after we got out of class. So I made cookies while the others made chicken and rice, and actually we were ready for her to come when she arrived. We had a nice dinner, and we were actually quite ready when she came, except that I had to keep checking the cookies to see if they were done while we were having dinner. But she was quite impressed, and decided that we will do just fine.
I think it will be quite a good thing for me to learn how to make my own food and live with other people and share cleaning and such. One unfortunate thing is that we cannot have any fish or seafood of any sort even in the house, because one of my housemates is very allergic to all of that stuff. This is unfortunate only because we are by the sea and could thus have seafood. But it is certainly not the end of the world. We will just be having an awful lot of chicken.
Tonight we were coming out of the house and we looked up and there were all these stars in the sky. "Oh look, there's the summer triangle!" someone said, pointing out something we had learned in the planetarium. Then we found the north star, and determined where the Big Dipper was (it was behind some trees), and I found a W-shaped constellation that, as the sky "turns" throughout the night, goes upside-down and becomes an M, so that it is the Williams-Mystic constellation. So you see, we are already applying our knowledge.
We filled out a lot of forms in the morning, and then got house money to go shopping. Our advisor (we have an advisor for the house) told us to go to one grocery store for everything except produce and meat, and to the other for produce and meat, so that is what we did. In the end, we had about $15 left over, which was enough for us to buy lunch (the grocery store has a place to buy lunch). I had sushi. It was delicious. I haven't had sushi in quite a while, especially when you consider that the last sushi I had was some freeze-dried stuff that the snack bar tried to sell for $6.25 and ended up having to give away because it had the consistency of styrofoam. (I got a whole box of it for free. But it had the consistency of styrofoam.)
Then we had to rush over to get facebook pictures taken. So watch the mystic site, because my picture will be going up soon, and you might forget what I look like. I read a book, and then I took a 12-minute nap before going to a navigation class. We used a chart and plotted bearings and measured distances to get "ded reckonings" (not "dead" reckonings, because the "ded" comes from the word "deduced") and then made lines from things that we had compass sightings on and found a fix of our point and saw how far off we were, that sort of thing. Then we went to the planetarium and the same guy who taught us the navigation (he has been at Mystic Seaport for 44 years) showed us how the stars move during the night and how you can navigate by them. This was only a brief lesson, of course; those who want to actually learn how to do it using a sextant and such have to take the marine skills class.
We got out of the planetarium about 45 minutes later than the schedule said, so our advisor was coming over for dinner 45 minutes after we got out of class. So I made cookies while the others made chicken and rice, and actually we were ready for her to come when she arrived. We had a nice dinner, and we were actually quite ready when she came, except that I had to keep checking the cookies to see if they were done while we were having dinner. But she was quite impressed, and decided that we will do just fine.
I think it will be quite a good thing for me to learn how to make my own food and live with other people and share cleaning and such. One unfortunate thing is that we cannot have any fish or seafood of any sort even in the house, because one of my housemates is very allergic to all of that stuff. This is unfortunate only because we are by the sea and could thus have seafood. But it is certainly not the end of the world. We will just be having an awful lot of chicken.
Tonight we were coming out of the house and we looked up and there were all these stars in the sky. "Oh look, there's the summer triangle!" someone said, pointing out something we had learned in the planetarium. Then we found the north star, and determined where the Big Dipper was (it was behind some trees), and I found a W-shaped constellation that, as the sky "turns" throughout the night, goes upside-down and becomes an M, so that it is the Williams-Mystic constellation. So you see, we are already applying our knowledge.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Now everyone is here
Today I went running again, a nice run in the cemetery and then some (8) hill repeats on a short (35 second) hill right by Labaree. After breakfast I started running about and meeting the new people who were arriving. I helped carry stuff up to several people's rooms from their cars, and met their parents. The two remaining members of my house arrived in the morning, so we all met and all of that. They seem like nice people. I talked to Christine's parents for quite a while -- Christine is the one that I tutored in the math resource center last semester who always had perfect homework and came in anyway (she denies that it was perfect, but it was).
Candice came after lunch, so I helped her carry up her stuff and unpack her room a bit. Actually I just set up her computer. I was happy that she brought a toolbox, because I decided not to bring mine. (I decided that anything I hadn't used all summer, I wouldn't bring, and I didn't use my toolbox all summer, although I had it along.) Her hammer came in very handy for installing her chinup bar (I am also glad that she has that) and fixing one of her drawers. Someone had previously tried to fix it by putting cardboard under it, but we fixed it by hammering on it.
We had a tour of the seaport museum with our future history professor, and then after a short break, we had a 90-minute cruise on the only working steamboat in existence in the USA. We went under a drawbridge and all the way out to the ocean (Mystic is on an estuary) and around lots (probably 500) sailboats and some motorboats moored in the harbors. It was interesting that I guess because of the different depths of the water in the channel, sometimes the boats would be moored in the middle and the channel with the red nuns and green cans would guide the boat towards the shore. So it would be boats on the left in the middle, and shore on the right side of the boat. That was interesting. Also, the boat (the Sabino) was powered by a steam engine that took coal, so it had this great working engine inside with big pistons and oil all over, and it ran very quietly.
After that we had a dinner at picnic tables under a roof at the museum, which was nice, and everyone introduced themselves and they gave us journals to write in. We returned home (actually I went back to finish connecting Candice's computer to the Internet, installing her printer, and installing her external hard drive -- be very impressed with my technical skills, yay, I can put cords into matching color-coded ports) and had a long house meeting during which we discussed all of the foods that we like and those that we are allergic to (I am not allergic to any foods). And I am getting up to run at 7:00 (first required appointment at 8:30) so I had better go to sleep soon.
Candice came after lunch, so I helped her carry up her stuff and unpack her room a bit. Actually I just set up her computer. I was happy that she brought a toolbox, because I decided not to bring mine. (I decided that anything I hadn't used all summer, I wouldn't bring, and I didn't use my toolbox all summer, although I had it along.) Her hammer came in very handy for installing her chinup bar (I am also glad that she has that) and fixing one of her drawers. Someone had previously tried to fix it by putting cardboard under it, but we fixed it by hammering on it.
We had a tour of the seaport museum with our future history professor, and then after a short break, we had a 90-minute cruise on the only working steamboat in existence in the USA. We went under a drawbridge and all the way out to the ocean (Mystic is on an estuary) and around lots (probably 500) sailboats and some motorboats moored in the harbors. It was interesting that I guess because of the different depths of the water in the channel, sometimes the boats would be moored in the middle and the channel with the red nuns and green cans would guide the boat towards the shore. So it would be boats on the left in the middle, and shore on the right side of the boat. That was interesting. Also, the boat (the Sabino) was powered by a steam engine that took coal, so it had this great working engine inside with big pistons and oil all over, and it ran very quietly.
After that we had a dinner at picnic tables under a roof at the museum, which was nice, and everyone introduced themselves and they gave us journals to write in. We returned home (actually I went back to finish connecting Candice's computer to the Internet, installing her printer, and installing her external hard drive -- be very impressed with my technical skills, yay, I can put cords into matching color-coded ports) and had a long house meeting during which we discussed all of the foods that we like and those that we are allergic to (I am not allergic to any foods). And I am getting up to run at 7:00 (first required appointment at 8:30) so I had better go to sleep soon.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Another day, two more students
This morning I woke up with the sun and went running. I ran to the left and then cut towards the ocean and ran back along the ocean. Then I ran to the right to make sure I could find the grocery store again, and found a really nice cemetary. It has a very tall arch as the entrance, and I thought it was a cemetery, but I couldn't see any gravestones from the entrance, and then there it was over the entrance -- I AM THE LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION -- so I guess it's too bad if you're not Christian and you want to be buried. It was a really nice cemetery, with lots of trees to shade it.
My housemate and I had breakfast and I took a shower, and then when I went over to the office to turn in a form 1.5 months late, I found a third student, Abby, who was just moving in, so I helped her move her stuff in, and then we collected Hilary and we helped -- well, no, essentially just watched Abby put her stuff away. Turns out Abby knows Emily Starr-Phillips because she has transferred to Smith, but that does not interest anyone else because no one else knows Emily Starr-Phillips. She took French with me at Exeter.
In the afternoon I read some of a book, Cod, that we will be reading in class, and then Hilary and I went over to the seaport museum because they were singing sea chanteys. ("Chantey" is pronounced "shanty," apparently. I did not know this. Am I just being dense?) And so we listened to this guy talk about and sing them.
We went over to the office to get Christie because we were going to get ice cream, and it turned out they were organizing Mystic T-shirts from years past, so we ended up putting them all in order, eliminating duplicates, and photographing and cataloguing them all. That took a while, and it was neat to see all the designs that the classes had thought up. After that we did go to get ice cream, and it was yummy.
So, the house has a mail thing on the outside. It's a plastic box attached to the side of the house. I was under the impression that in order to mail mail, you would place it into this box, and then when the mailman came, he would take out your letters that you were mailing and then put the ones that you were receiving in. This is not how it works. I returned today to find my envelopes still in there, and another new one added (mailed to someone who no longer lives in this house). Apparently this is not so much a mailbox as a receiving box, and in order to mail a letter, you have to take it to the blue postal service drop box in front of the seaport museum entrance. I suppose if you put it on the doormat, the mailman would also take it? But maybe this is not so much a mailman as a man who delivers mail. Well, that's interesting, isn't it.
We ate the pasta last night, so I suppose we will be having PB&J or PB&banana for dinner. Yum.
Oh right, and in the middle of when we were cataloguing T-shirts, a student came with his mom, and we met him. Yup. But he's not moving in yet, so he's not really here yet. Tomorrow everyone will come.
Pictures will come sometime.
My housemate and I had breakfast and I took a shower, and then when I went over to the office to turn in a form 1.5 months late, I found a third student, Abby, who was just moving in, so I helped her move her stuff in, and then we collected Hilary and we helped -- well, no, essentially just watched Abby put her stuff away. Turns out Abby knows Emily Starr-Phillips because she has transferred to Smith, but that does not interest anyone else because no one else knows Emily Starr-Phillips. She took French with me at Exeter.
In the afternoon I read some of a book, Cod, that we will be reading in class, and then Hilary and I went over to the seaport museum because they were singing sea chanteys. ("Chantey" is pronounced "shanty," apparently. I did not know this. Am I just being dense?) And so we listened to this guy talk about and sing them.
We went over to the office to get Christie because we were going to get ice cream, and it turned out they were organizing Mystic T-shirts from years past, so we ended up putting them all in order, eliminating duplicates, and photographing and cataloguing them all. That took a while, and it was neat to see all the designs that the classes had thought up. After that we did go to get ice cream, and it was yummy.
So, the house has a mail thing on the outside. It's a plastic box attached to the side of the house. I was under the impression that in order to mail mail, you would place it into this box, and then when the mailman came, he would take out your letters that you were mailing and then put the ones that you were receiving in. This is not how it works. I returned today to find my envelopes still in there, and another new one added (mailed to someone who no longer lives in this house). Apparently this is not so much a mailbox as a receiving box, and in order to mail a letter, you have to take it to the blue postal service drop box in front of the seaport museum entrance. I suppose if you put it on the doormat, the mailman would also take it? But maybe this is not so much a mailman as a man who delivers mail. Well, that's interesting, isn't it.
We ate the pasta last night, so I suppose we will be having PB&J or PB&banana for dinner. Yum.
Oh right, and in the middle of when we were cataloguing T-shirts, a student came with his mom, and we met him. Yup. But he's not moving in yet, so he's not really here yet. Tomorrow everyone will come.
Pictures will come sometime.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Here I am
Well, here I am in Mystic, CT. We saw the seaport museum this morning, my family and I, and then I moved into my room. There is one other student here already, who just so happens to also be living in my house. So that's neat. We walked around the seaport museum together. Four people live in this house, all female, no others from Williams (there are five Williams students, four female, out of 18 students in the program).
I have a neat Mystic Seaport badge that has my name and "student" that lets me into the seaport museum for free. The main entrance is right across the street, so it's really convenient and close.
There are five Internet jacks in my room and one phone jack. One (exactly one) of the Internet jacks works. But one is certainly enough.
It's really hot, over 90 degrees. Luckily there was a fan in the closet, since I gave away my fan from the summer, so I can use that. It is a very small fan, though.
Everyone else will come on Wednesday, which gives me a while to explore everything.
That's all for now.
I have a neat Mystic Seaport badge that has my name and "student" that lets me into the seaport museum for free. The main entrance is right across the street, so it's really convenient and close.
There are five Internet jacks in my room and one phone jack. One (exactly one) of the Internet jacks works. But one is certainly enough.
It's really hot, over 90 degrees. Luckily there was a fan in the closet, since I gave away my fan from the summer, so I can use that. It is a very small fan, though.
Everyone else will come on Wednesday, which gives me a while to explore everything.
That's all for now.
