We Real Cool.

Just another Monday night in Matthews 209 ...

Literally everybody at this school plays chess. I LOVE IT.

... And Sea Monsters

Who's actually doing work? Angela's actually doing work! Though, of course, indulging in a Jane Austen novel can hardly be considered work.

English 157: The Classic Phase of the Novel, taught by Phil Fisher. I'm loving it already!

Other novels I will be reading for this semester-long class: Buddenbrooks, The Brothers Karamazov, Madame Bovary, Middlemarch, and Anna Karenina. Somebody informed me that this does in fact add up to over FOUR THOUSAND PAGES. Thank goodness the rest of my workload is mostly problem sets (whoo!).

Arrivals

I was just kidding about that last post. You know I wouldn't return from a three-week absence only to tell you about the weather! (Well ... given my lack of reliability lately, this actually isn't so far-fetched.) Anyway, it's going to be terribly hard trying to summarize what's been one of the most amazing experiences of my life, so I'll be brief. Harvard has been, in five points or less:

• A lot of sweeping the first week. My pre-orientation program was called Fall Clean-Up, i.e. paying naive freshmen to do janitorial work under the guise of "making friends" and "learning more about the campus". Genius!
• Many, many, many amazing people. (Of course!)
• A week of delicious restaurant food (we had to pay for our own meals during FCU), followed by the start of four years of completely average dining hall food.
• Heat. Heat. Heat. If you've followed my Twitter in the past, you may just have unsubscribed yourself last week because the only thing I talked about was the heat. Waking up today without sweat pooled on my body was a positive luxury.
• Classes? What?

I wish I were cool enough to do a photojournal, but the reality is that I pretty much never remember to bring out my camera and as such have the most haphazard collection of photos ever. Here's a sampling, beginning with an original Gutenberg Bible ...

This is one of the first 23 books ever printed!

And followed by a shot of some really great people in Science Center B, which, as we discovered two weeks later, is where I'll be suffering through Life Sciences 1a for the rest of the semester.

... like we premeds won't be spending enough time in the Science Center as it is.

Other things I've learned so far? Indian guys are really awesome no matter where you go,

From left to right: Rohit, Vish, and Sidd!

dining hall food will be dining hall food, even if the building you eat in looks like Hogwarts,

This is Linxi, one of my suitemates!

clothing makes for a really good makeshift privacy curtain,

Actually, I just ran out of room for my clothes. And yes, I do sleep in there.

even concrete walls are bearable if you plaster a bunch of couture all over them,

Mood lighting! Eyy!

dinners on Sunday are by far the best meal of the week,

SUNDAE SUNDAY!

it is possible to be totally happy even when it's 99 degrees and you're melting out of your skin,

This is Kemie, another of my suitemates!

people at Harvard know how to keep talking for a really long time when it's 99 degrees out and you're melting out of your skin,

Freshman Convocation. Only at Harvard.

and ... er ... I'm sorry what POLAR BEAR HAT!

I bought this today. I am very ready for winter.

Some of you may be wondering what Koala's been up to amidst all this. But that, that ... is for the next entry. Until next time!

Lazy Afternoon

It's a beautiful day in Cambridge!

They should make movies about this place. Oh, wait ...

A Valediction Forbidding Overpacking

I've lived for nearly twelve years in a fairly affluent community, with lush green drives and beautifully manicured lawns. Never in all my time living in Walnut Creek have I ever come across a sight like this, which greeted me as I drove out of my neighborhood this morning:

Can I get a collective WTF?

Turns out, some rowdy teenagers were driving at insane speeds late at night, hit a curb, and smashed straight into the grand old sign that has proudly announced the entrance my subdivision for so long. I'd like to see it as a sign (hah!) that it's time for me to go.

And time for me to go it is. My possessions have all been miraculously packed into five boxes, I've said goodbye to all my loved ones, and my driver's license has been surrendered—yes, you heard right.

Koala was sad to see a fellow denizen of my ridiculously messy bag go.

Since I will not be driving for the majority of the next four years, and since my super-high insurance cannot be cancelled unless I simply do not have a valid license, my mom thought it prudent that I give up my license so that she won't have to pay insane amounts of money to atone for my multiple crashes and traffic violation tickets. I got a temporary photo ID from the DMV today, which I will not post here because it is so terrifyingly unattractive. Ew.

But anyway, yes! My flight leaves at 2pm tomorrow—or today, really, given the time. It's been a surreal last day in Alpharetta; I've told so many people that I'm leaving, and yet it hasn't really sunk in. At all. I'm not the type to get emotional before the fact, I suppose? But rest assured that a month from now I'll be sobbing into my pillow from missing all the wonderful people I've left behind.

Goodbye, Alpharetta. You've been good to me, for the most part. I'll miss you more than I know.

Super-Late Post!

One last scenic photo. I'm going to miss such beautiful water!

I've been home from Hawaii for a few days now, which means I've had a little while to reflect on the time I spent in the southernmost state of the union. (Trivia is great!) Hawaii is absolutely amazing—but everyone knows that, so I won't attempt to trigger your jealous impulses by rhapsodizing on its sheer awesomeness here. Instead I'll provide a different list, one with a few reasons why I'm glad I'll be spending the next four years in New England!

Reasons why Hawaii is not so awesome:

Everyone is beautiful. While eye candy is great, it has the tendency to make everyone else feel inferior. Not only was I constantly hating on myself for not being adequately tanned and toned, but I also had to listen to my mom sololiquize how everyone there was skinnier than her. Which is, for the record, UNTRUE. She's tinier than Koala. 

Sporadic raining. The tropical weather makes for some beautifully lush plant life, but it's also a royal pain when you walk everywhere. Because even though the climate is absolutely wonderful, for some reason the rain feels like little needles of coldness piercing through your pores and dropping the temperature ten degrees within the space of a minute. It happens randomly throughout the day, and you never know whether you're going to get a light drizzle or torrential downpour ... and dammit, the rain makes my hair look bad!

Humidity. Ack.

Sun, sun, sun. Have I mentioned before that I hate sunscreen? By the last day in Hawaii, I was ready to give up a day at the beach just so that I wouldn't have to wear sunscreen. I KNOW. I am an ungrateful, sunscreen-fearing child.

Too many Asians! I liked this at first, then realized that I kinda liked being a minority. Granted, I think Harvard's Asians compose some 30% of the total student popoulation by now ... but still. The one good thing about this was that there were so many Japanese people that the bookstores' manga sections are gigantic beyond belief. WHOO MANGA!

Everything is expensive. Well, it is a giant tourist trap ...

I'm keeping this list short, because rumor has it that my mom will be moving to Hawaii permanently in half a year or so—which means that on school breaks, I get to come home ... to Honolulu. And despite the humidity and sunscreen and overabundance of Asians, I'm pretty sure that's actually the greatest thing ever.

I move up to Cambridge in less than two days! Packing has been surprisingly painless; it's saying goodbye that's hardest. Still, I'm not sure there are enough words to describe how excited I am—I can't believe I'm actually going to study* at Harvard University. 

*Well, only a little. I'll surprise myself if I study more in college than I did in high school. :)

Wicky-Wicky Wacky Waikiki

(The title to this post is actually taken from the lyrics to the song "Pineapple Princess" by Annette Funicello. It's so adorable!)

Koala has been upset with me lately, as I've been spending too much time with another inanimate object - namely, my mosquito bite medicine. I'm sorry, my dear. You know I'm just using him for his cruelty-free itching relief; I love none other but you!

Er. Moving on ...

Yesterday was a grueling day, lemme tell you. The itinerary went something like this:

10:00am: Suntanning on a beach in Waikiki.
12:30pm: A lunch of French desserts and delicious Japanese grilled steak.
2:00pm: Napping in the shade of a tree next to the ocean.
6:00pm: Eating delicious food while watching hula girls and half-naked guys in skirts dance with fire.

So, as you can see ... exhausting!

My mom and Doug call this place the "office," presumably because this is where he used to go to get work done. I am so jealous.

Caught during a moment of peace between waves! A minute later, a giant wave completely soaked the ground where I stood to take this picture.

PIG ROAST! WHOO!

But all things good must come to an end, as today I was dragged along to go hiking. I am all for braving the outdoors and squishing through ankle-deep mud and suffering mosquito bites, but -- oh, wait. I'm not. So we can all guess how well this venture went!

The mud covered up where I'd gotten my favorite band to autograph my Converse ... :'(

As a budding photographer (hah!), I figured it was a good time to maybe take a bunch of photos as part of a series. I call these next four pictures "Doug the Explorer" ... creative, right?

 

But Doug the Explorer would be nothing without his faithful partner, Boots the Monkey -- I mean my mom.

I actually looked up Dora the Explorer on Wikipedia so I could find the name of her companion. If that isn't dedication to blogging, I don't know what is.

We're going to the market at Hale'iwa tomorrow -- that's right, shopping! Cue giddy and excited Angela bouncing off the walls after a day spent sloshing around in muddy Converse. Although, given the voracious appetite I've developed on this trip, I'll probably spend all of my money on food before I even get to the real merchandise ...