I’ve had a pretty great week, as a matter of fact. I spent most of the weekend in and around Boston, but I actually traveled a lot more than I had initially anticipated.
My new friend, Jesse (the one who taught me how to play darts last week) is from Providence, RI and he was there Friday night helping his friend renovate his loft to use as a workspace. As I was doing nothing Friday after class and had never been to Providence, I decided to hop on the train to hang out with him for the night. When I got there, I got to hear the whole tragic tale of the lead paint. Apparently they had the loft tested for lead in the paint, and a healthy level is 30. Six walls were tested, and there was anything between 300 and 14,000. Which is rather, um, deadly. Jesse literally threw away the shoes he was wearing because he didn’t want to kill his cat when he went home and walked around on his own floors. Obviously his friend will not be moving into that loft, and all the work he spent in the last two months making improvements was for naught. I expected both guys to be pretty tragic, and they were a bit, but somehow we still had a great time telling jokes, drinking, and making fun of Providence.
I had always thought Providence was supposed to be this really great city, lots of culture, cool people, etc. No. It’s actually sort of sketchy and full of obnoxious and rather trashy people. Luckily, I was only there for a few hours until Jesse drove us back to Boston. It was absolutely pouring by the time we left, so we had to literally pull off an exit and sit in a parking lot for 20 minutes until it cleared up. Of course it was already 2 am and we were both exhausted and just ready to go to sleep. Ridiculousness. We still managed to hardcore bond. It’s really crazy how many cool people I’ve met in this city in the short time I’ve been here. I am going to miss Boston A LOT.
Saturday afternoon (after sleeping in and doing some serious lounging) Mary and Kyle picked me up to go to Tanglewood for a picnic and a John Williams concert. Now, before I go on, let me tell you that Mary and I have been planning to do this for weeks, but all she really said was that it would be live classical music with the Boston Pops, so it was a pretty big deal, and that it was outside of the city. It’s actually a good 2 1/2 hours away (2 exits from the New York state line) and is a HUGE DEAL. Let me tell you about Tanglewood. When I say a John Williams concert, I mean that the man was conducting. Now, I would not particularly call myself his biggest fan, but to see him live and conducting his own music was pretty freaking cool. And the food people had! It’s an outside event, but there is a covered area where you can get the expensive seats. It’s all surrounded by a huge lawn where people frolicked and ate wine and cheese and REALLY ELABORATE MEALS. These people were busting out the tables and candlesticks and like, really intense hors de vors (I know I spelled that really wrong, don’t judge). We brought some tasty food ourselves - pasta salad, 7 layer dip, mozzarella & tomato, fresh fruit, etc. It was NOT this kind of place to grill red hot dogs, I can tell you that.
Tanglewood is located in the Berkshires, which is a part of the northern Appalachian mountains, and I wasn’t really thinking and forgot how cold it would get at night. I wore a sundress, which was perfect until the sun went down. I was huddled under a blanket and was still cold, and I think Mary and Kyle felt sorry for me because they bought me a souvenir sweatshirt, and I will thank them for that until, well, forever. I had such a great time and the music was great, as were the classic film clips they played along with the live music for a LIVE MOVIE MONTAGE, and if you know me at all, you know movie montages are pretty much my favorite part of any given awards ceremony, so.
On Sunday I met up with my fellow Harry Potter geek to go see another film, 500 Days of Summer, which was super cute and funny. The movie was playing in Cambridge (where Harvard is located) and even though I take the bus there every day to catch the train, I never actually stop and look around. We walked around Harvard yard and I drooled over the library and the trees and the people lounging on the lawn with their books. Boston is such a reading city - everywhere I go people are reading books! I’ve actually gotten to the point where I can read on a train, standing up and jammed up next to people!
After the movie, I went over to my roommate’s boyfriend’s house for a barbecue, which was a lot of fun. He just bought this great townhouse in Charlestown, with a great little backyard perfect for relaxing on a summer night. After some tasty eats, we walked over to Bunker Hill for and looked at all of the fancy houses. I took some more photos, and not only that, I actually posted them on facebook. The shock.
As far as school is concerned, I’m almost done! I am literally leaving to go home a week from tomorrow! WOW. It seemed like we had 300 things due this week, so I spent a lot of time in the absolutely gorgeous library downtown, typing furiously and churning out lesson plans. I’m starting to really feel confident in my abilities as a teacher - I don’t get as nervous and it’s a lot more fun. Of course I’ve still got a lot of things to work on, but it’s a whole lot better than the first week :).
I’ve been going back and forth in my head a lot about whether I want to save money and find a short term job in Georgia for a while, or just take the plunge and go straight to Europa. Today I’m leaning toward the latter - I’m so just ready to get started! I don’t have a ton of money, but I still have a good chunk saved up and apparently Frankfurt is the ideal place to look for a job (lots of business people looking to improve their English), so I’m going to aim to maybe go stay with Maria and do just that! I can mooch off some different relatives for a while ;).
That is about all for now. I could tell you how I sang “Cecilia” at karaoke the other night, or how I sincerely like all the people I have classes with, or how I went on this ridiculous blind date with a really pretentious guy who was trying to impress me with all the money he had and all of the intellectual celebrities he knew, but I will not, because this thing is already insanely long and I’M ON A BUS TO NEW YORK CITY, where I will be in AN HOUR. So my next update will be about my brilliant weekend with Hannah.
Hope you all are well! xoxoxo
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