You know it's that time of year when front yards turn into graveyards, skeletons hang upside down from trees, and you spot a plastic rat gnawing away on a bloody hand in the bushes...
Happy Halloween!
Our big campus Halloween party went down on Saturday, and since I was still coughing and sneezing, I lay low and went to bed before midnight. I was told I missed a downright orgy. I tell you I didn't miss a thing... I take a cup of tea and a good book over half-naked sweaty bodies and bad music any day.
Today I could tell it was Halloween because I saw professors wearing 17th century cloaks and students with their faces painted green. But most of all, it was the "Fright Night Dinner" at Trim Dining Hall which rocked the party. Skeletons, cobwebs and jack-o-lanterns everywhere, a corpse-shaped cake for dessert, pirates wiping tables and horror movie soundtracks instead of the usual U2/Dave Mathews/Jack Johnson mix.
Half the school is out clubbing in costumes, but I am a) royally sick of college parties and b) buried in work, so my I ditched plans to go to the witching town of Salem and wrote papers instead.
I have to say, I'm dying to wrap myself up in my bedsheet and go out for some trick-or-treating. But college life doesn't always allow for all that fun. Instead, I'll go dream of monsters.
Coming to the United States, I expected to encounter all kinds of things that would need some getting used to. The food, the shopping malls, dorm life, et cetera. The one cultural particularity that I have not managed to get used to to this day are cultural differences connected to the language.
During my first days here, I was constantly being greeted with a friendly smile and the question: "How are you?" - "Fine", I answered. "Still a bit jetlagged, but I like it. And you?" At best, my lengthy response would earn me a puzzled look. In the worst case, by the time I had gotten to "fine", they were already around the next corner. And so I learned my first lesson: "How are you?" is not a question. It is a statement. Then again, people make their stories sound like a series of questions. "The other day, I went to the mall? I looked around and saw this realy cute sweater? And I thought, oh my gawd? I think I need to have this?" Con-fusing.
My other favorite: Fillers. Those useful little words and phrases can turn the smallest comment into a real semantic beauty. Take this example: "So OK, I was totally like, you know, 'I have no idea' or something!" Wow. Talk about adding spice to the phrase "I said 'I have no idea'." The other day, my friend Alvin took a little tally counter to class, and we kept track of the amount of times that people used the word "like". We got to 115 in an hour.
And finally: Abbreviations. Why bother articulating words if a couple of letters do the trick? A few of my favorite examples: DTR. Define The Relationship. The uncomfortable conversation between a boy and a girl to figure out "where they are at". Happens frequently and is hated, above all, by the male half of the pair. BYOB. Bring your own beer/booze/bottle. Especially in a dry town like Wellesley, where bars and liquor stores are illegal and restaurants are not allowed to serve alcohol, people bring their own bottle of wine when they go out to have a pizza. AWOL. Absence Without Official Leave - originally used in a military context for deserting soldiers, it is now used for people who have been gone or out of touch for a long time. The best part: It is actually pronouced! "She's been ay-wall for weeks now." FYI. For your information. I knew that one before - what I didn't know is that it's actually a word. "Eff-why-eye, I am not coming to work tomorrow."
Photo shoot at the UN One tends to forget that Manhattan is an island (Can anyone spot the Statue of Liberty?) Meeting Sascha (UN buildings reflected in the background)
Other highlights (as usual, mostly related to food):
Fajitas and margaritas at Mi Cocina
Breakfast at Pain Quotidien
the Frick Collection
getting lost walking around Lower Manhattan
a day in Central Park
LOTS and LOTS of quality time with Papi
I loved every minute of it and was sort of sad to say goodbye. After all, the next time I'll see anyone of my family is more than four months away! However, I really needed that dose of family time.
Back at Babson (drove back with Jo and arrived at midnight on Sunday), I woke up on Monday with a vicious cold and spent Tuesday morning in bed. A little down time and Jo's homecooked pasta a la puttanesca got me back on track and, though coughing and sneezing, I can face the load of work that's coming my way. And a load it is - November is so full of due dates, I don't even know where to start. Speaking of which, I have a ton of work to do until tomorrow... Buona notte to all.
Why squeeze in between dusty bookshelves at Babson when you can jet (or rather fung-wah) to the Big Apple and do your reading in a beautiful marble reading room at the NY Public Library? While waiting for my father to arrive from Washington for a father-daughter reunion weekend, I decided to spend the rainy afternoon in here with my Babson-supplied laptop and Sandel's "Liberalism and its Critics", a book I need to read for Social and Political Philosophy (I am not that nerdy). Maybe I am just imagining things, but somehow it is a lot easier to wrap your brain around theories of entitlement and distributive justice in a place where many a great novel has been written.
Alright. It is past midterm, and I still haven't introduced the people that I share all my joys and sorrows with on a daily basis. Everyone.... meet the gang.
Julian, also known as Pappa Peters, the King of Bavaria, or the Governator (because he not only looks, but also talks just like him). He lives down the hall from me and has become my favorite lunch and dinner company and closest buddy on campus. A self-proclaimed misanthropist, it's sometimes hard to get him to smile, but he is always the first one there to cheer me up, calm me down or just provide for hours of heated discussions - on every topic from football to monogamy. He and Cameron are the stars of the rugby team, so when it's pub night, I've got my personal squad of bodyguards to keep me safe.
Cameron, or Gramps, is the oldest undergrad on campus at age 29, but age does not stop him. He managed to get a job at the Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, the university's most prestigious institution, interviewing in a pair of old pants and a smelly old T-shirt. He can pull off tight running shorts and a red ribbed tank top at rugby training and rides his race bike to a from his off-campus home every day. He knows everyone on this planet and manages to get exactly what he wants just because he is never too shy to ask. Running two businesses in Australia via Skype and Internet and taking a full course load here, he spends his (seemingly extensive) spare time goofing around campus on his longboard, shooting pictures for his photography class and partying the nights away with Julian, his wingman. The big question is - when does the guy do his homework??
Montse, or Monchito, is a little Spanish lady with the biggest smile. She is 5 foot (or, for those among us who use the normal metric system, 1,50m) tall and weighs no more than 100lbs (45kg). She's an absolute beauty, as you can see, but so frail that when a big guy hugs her, I am always afraid that her bones might snap. Her strong Spanish accent and uncontrollable squeals of laughter always provide for a good time, especially when she shakes her head in utter desperation over an insurmountable cultural difference between Spain and the States. Favorite quote: (munching on some raw broccoli:) "Now I know chhow feels my rrrrabbit!"
Ah, Francesco. He refers to himself as "italianissimo", and since he is a real Sicilian from Palermo, no one dares to disagree. However, if the Cosa Nostra depended on him, it would be a lost cause - he is the gentlest, most friendly guy in the world. Always complaining about American food ("Ma che e questo - questo si chiama pasta!!?? Ah, gli Americani, incredibile!!"), he piles tons of salad onto his plate at lunch and shuns the American-style Italian specialties offered at the cafeteria. Francesco is a man of culture - if someone gets him started on the Latin origin of Italian words, he'll gladly lecture you for 20 minutes. However, his facial expressions when he is in "professor mode" are priceless, so I just sit there and enjoy lo spettacolo. (Which, incidently, comes from the latin word spectaculum, spectaculi, meaning sight, show, or spectacle...)
I've always liked autumn - but the colors of the leaves in New England are just nothing short of spectacular! I had been marvelling at the bright red, orange and green for days, so I decided on the weekend that it was time to go on a little trip to see the Foliage. It turns out that we headed straight for the region where trees were just beyond their peak, but the landscape what beautful nevertheless.
A little cultural gem on the way: The all-American conveniece store.
A stunning road trip and a good hike were topped off with delicious Spanish tapas, Sangria and Rioja, and an excellent movie called The Bycicle Thief (or, rather, the first 15 minutes of it before we all fell asleep). On Sunday night I accompanied Kitt, my friend from Wellesley College, to a conference on Feminist Sexual Ethics. I wasn't too sure what to expect, given that my past experiences with feminist events have been more on the terrible side, but it was surprisingly interesting and a nice little knowledge boost.
When I got back to campus and heard all the stories about crazy rugby parties, boys drinking from beer bottles taped to their hands, and others getting stoned in the car, I couldn't help but think that my weekend had been a helluva lot more enjoyable - and my head, compared to the others', felt just fine.
I love it when the weekends are longer than the weeks. Monday was Columbus Day, which provided for four wonderful days in... take a wild guess... New York! Is this getting old? Maybe. But if you ask me, one could spend many more weekends there.
I took off around noon on Thursday, thanks to my brilliant class schedule. This time the long trip (an hour from campus to the station, an hour's wait and 4.5 hours in the bus) was drastically improved by Ee-Ling (Australia) and Kris (California) who happened to travel to the Big Apple on the same bus, and some dubious Chicken McNuggets and Mustard Sauce at the mini-stopover in Connecticut. It is strange that while McDonalds is still quite a big deal in Europe, it really is pretty disgusting here. You're talking to an expert - we are served burgers, chicken nuggets and the like on a daily basis at Babson.
Thursday night was spent with Sascha on the roof of his Noho apartment house. We snuck past the landlady's door with a bottle of sparkling wine, two glasses and a camera and enjoyed the view of the lower Manhattan skyline. A glass and a half made us feel adventurous, so we climbed across a couple of ledges to the neighbor's roof garden. The comfortable lounge chairs looked like a grand idea until we were caught red-handed by the owner, who screamed at us and then called her boyfriend to stand guard while we guiltily retreated.
Looking out on the Big apple from Sascha's roof
On Friday I met up with my cousin Sophie, who is currently painting murals at some ridiculously luxurious mansion in the Hamptons. We did some shopping (well, she did, and I watched), checked out some design, contemporary art and photography the MoMa, had a hot dog and a coffee and just generally enjoyed each other's company. I then joined Bill Grace and his sister Mara for dinner in Greenwich Village, where I was treated to some fine food in order to, as Bill put it, cure my cafeteria-induced scurvy.
On Saturday I met Colin at Grand Central Station in the early morning and we caught a train up to Tarrytown for some hiking (actually, strolling) with Scott in the Rockefeller State Park.
Can you tell we had been up early...? Some Canada geese and a hawk on the pole that sat motionless in this exact same position for 20 minutes
Scott in the greenhouse
After coming back on Sunday afternoon, I went for an evening stroll through the beautiful neighborhood of Chelsea with Sascha, who was trying to find a house that had once been inhabited by his favorite designer Robert Brownjohn. We peeked through windows at classy livingrooms and stylish kitchens and felt very New York.
On Monday I walked a dozen blocks south to visit the Ground Zero site for the first time since 2002. I felt strange, like an intruder, as I aimlessly wandered around between thoughtful tourists and Chinese souvenir salesmen, looking at larger-than-life photos of terrified businessmen and devastated firefighters. The afternoon was spent in Central Park, reading and napping, before I took off to Yonkers to meet up with Jo who, after serving me a fantastic beef chili, gave me a ride back to Boston and spent the night on an air mattress in my dorm room.
Next week is midterm, and the semester is halfway over. I am enjoying all my little adventures and trying to make each day special, but somehow I don't entirely feel at home here. For someone who has never been prone to homesickness, I think about my family surprisingly often and miss many things that made life so comfortable in Vienna. Luckily, it's only a week and a few days now before I return to New York to see my father, who will be there for some UN business.
I always thought that only old people say that. But in fact, ever since I've arrived at Babson, time just seems to slip by. Weeks feel like days, months like weeks, and sometimes I find myself lying in bed at night thinking: "Where the heck has this day gone?"
Between figuring out basic campus survival rules (like, don't stick your favorite jeans or delicate T-shirts into the dryer if you want them to fit afterwards), making friends, good old homework, classes, group meetings, and the odd bit of fun, there hardly seems to be a minute that I am actually idle.
Again, I need to incorporate a list of highlights into this post for the sake of brevity. Almost Famous. Last Saturday, Montse and I went downtown to meet Meaghan for a bit of Latin dancing at Havana Club in Boston. It turned out that MTV was shooting an episode of Made at the club that night, so if you look carefully, you might be able to see a little Spanish girl and a tall Austrian girl samba-, mambo- and bachata-ing in the background.
Rudderless on the Charles. Four men and a lady in a canoe - sounds like Pocahontas, minus the rowing skills. While we were happily zig-zagging from bank to bank, we rammed nearly all Harvard Rowing Team boats that were training on the Charles River. "Keep to the right hand side!" was about the nicest comment we got.
The crew: Moi, Jesper (Sweden), Aaron (Texas), Steve (Massachusetts), and Bjorn (Sweden) filling out the required test pre-takeoff
You better know what to do with your paddles...
Slaves on the galley
Academic tidbits. Wrote my first-ever philosophy paper: "Pity or Power - The view of human nature at the heart of Berlin's concepts of freedom". It required me to wreck my brain like I had never done before. There is just no way you can wing it when your work will be subject to the merciless scrutiny of a philosopher. They might say there's no money in philosophy, but there's definitely a lot more brain than in business. On the not-so-nerdy side: When going through one of his assignments with Francesco last night, I had a good laugh at the Italian way of using metaphors even in a business context. On business incubators: "The group should have evaluated venture proposals by identifying the seeds, nurturing them as long as necessary, and eventually sometimes spinning them off. They had to hatch the eggs, as an incubator should do. It’s not so easy like for a chicken." And a couple of lines down: "So we can consider this a great move in order to hatch the egg, because from the egg should arise a new chicken."
Plans for the weekend. Monday is Columbus Day, so I am taking off for yet another long weekend. Saturday and Sunday we'll go to upstate NY to do some hiking in the Beaverkill Valley, and the rest of the weekend is yet to be determined.
