On Pain of Death

Recently, in one of the few conservations I've had with a member of my family in the past two weeks, it was divulged to me that the lack of blogging would soon result in aggressive retaliation. Whether or not this was the exaggeration of the person on the other end of the phone (who is known, in some circles, for a special brand of storytelling) is unclear, I agreed that I should get on this, and as it seems, I need to start from some time back. It's beginning to be a pattern that reflects poorly on me.

Airplane rides cannot be compared to car rides with any accuracy. People say comparing apples to oranges: apples and oranges are very comparable...they're both fruit, they're both eaten by many people, one's round while the other's got a little foot-like appendage...This, good people, is all comparison. Airplanes and Cars? They go from Point A to Point B. It ends there. I will say however, that there is a certain thrill, equal parts fear and adrenaline, that is derived from watching layers of clouds beat down against a metal wing and be thoroughly repelled as pure force propels you above the reaches of other men.

Getting off the plane and going through customs was nothing what like anyone had told me. There was no harsh germanic barking, no sniffing dogs, no large man named Wilma with a pair of rubber gloves and a bottle of KY jelly. No one even looked at my bags. They stamped my passport, without saying a word, and I was free to go. The benefits of my grandfather's generous donation are more than mere transport, as his elite status provided my baggage with the same priority as his own would receive, and allowed me to catch it on the carousel literally as soon as I got there. The Kuxhauses were waiting for me just beyond that gate, and we were headed back to their house in Bann, a little suburb of Landstuhl, all of which is within the Kaiserslautern Military Community, or KMC.

More to come... On Pain of Death?

Long Time Coming

Seeing as how I haven't posted in almost two weeks, and people are badgering me, it's time for a blog update.

The U.S. Customs Service is some maligned, accursed creature, composed of equal parts bureaucracy, paperwork and flesh, spawned within the deepest, darkest pits where even the demons don't go. There's something exceptionally poetic, no, accurate, about the fact that the Philadelphia customs building was used in Ghostbusters. I can't remember the exact line, but it goes something like "a place mathematically constructed to be the seat of pure evil." I never even entered the building, merely stood outside it for just over an hour, and it's shadowy influence still hangs around me.
So, yes, after getting up at ungodly hours of the morning (while my classmates slept in, because, they too, were part of the Customs Agency's depraved plan to kick me repeatedly in the nads) and rushing out of breakfast (because, apparently, cellphones turn themselves off, or take a nap, or simply become inoperable, as they feel like it), clenching the handle of the car with a white-knuckle grip as I contemplate the horrendous possibility that we won't make the appointment, to get lost three or four times, to stand in a line with three hundred other people, they too have a nine-AM appointment, for naught. About 15 feet from the door, a phone rings. A cellphone, my father's. He picks it up, and by some unquantifiable mix of divine providence and wholly unnatural mischief, my mother's voice announces that "The UPS guy was just here. Michael's passport is here."
I don't really know if your blood can boil from frustration while you heave a sigh of relief. I tried, though.

Thursday night was a good time, and it really pained me to think that, despite our promises of reunions and re-uniting, there was and is the possibility that we would not be together this way again. Of course, that's true: we wouldn't be together in this environment ever again. That's what made it important, that's why it was special. My understanding is that there are already plans for a November reunion, but it'll be interesting to see if that actually happens. Eric and I created paper plate awards for the whole group, which, if you're unfamiliar, are mock awards. Stuff like "Most Likely to Force a Cripple to Dance" or " I Bring My Pillow to Lecture Award". That was a lot of fun to make, to present, and we were well-recieved.
Thursday was also the internal closing ceremony. We were brought to the Field House, instructed to don our blindfolds and link hands and to close our lips. For a good fourty-five minutes we marched, arms extended and eyes blinded, in silence. While our professors were nearby to help prevent us from colliding with things, we still managed to run into things and off the paths, but seemed to devise a mechanism to aid others... after hitting an object, the person ould drag their feet, making it easier for us to follow the sounds around the obstacle. Eventually we stopped moving and it became apparent where we were. Gentle crackling, smell of smoke, and light bleeding in through the edges of our blindfolds foreshadowed the bonfire we saw when we removed them. We were told to pick up a stick from a stack near the fire, and to announce one thing we brought to the program, and to place our stick in the fire. Afterwards, we each claimed a small stone and announced what we were taking from the program. Then we sat around and made smores for a bit, before returning to the dorm, where we threw a huge party for Michelle. Thursday was Michelle's birthday, and the dance party that pervaded four bedrooms and the hallway certainly seemed like a celebration.

Graduation was good, but longer than it had been planned. Though we practiced that morning, we still managed to botch the coordinated rise and sit maneuvers, and through self-correction made ourselves look even worse. However, Alex's poetry, Dan's violin performance and the drum ensemble's performance were all amazing, as usual, and made it worth it. Air Conditioning would have been nice. From there, we packed up and left rather quickly, despite some other parents' inability to park. We got home by six o' clock, and my always-awesome friends Paul, Will and Duane came. We had a good time as usual. Sam wasn't able to come, but she sent her mother over with a GIGANTIC bag of candy, which was, as always, incredibly sweet of her. Thanks again, Sam.

I'll put up another post in the next 48 hours about the flight and the recent stuff in Germany.

Passport: The Burninator

There is a direct relationship between how much I write, and how strange things become...

The night after my last post we had the pleasant intervention of the obnoxious fire alarm. Unlike previous instances, the alarm began at a most inopportune time. Around, eh, oh, one thirty AM. That is my absolute favorite time to be woken up abruptly. When standing outside in the coldness and humidity, waiting for the "alarm to be resolved" ( an exercise through which they confirm the pre-existing thought that the alarm has gone off due to excessive heat on one floor, and quite nothing to do with any actual combustive force) people reflected that I looked "angry" or "pissed." The responses to such a statement are suprisingly limited, and consisted primarily of pointing at a clock and grunting the current time... I guess the number of options dwindle as the hours do.
It's somewhat shocking to see everyone's faces in the mornings, and realize that the times I will see them again are conspicuously numbered. I've got a Note on the side of my Desktop (wee Vista?) that has the countdown until the Arts Festival, the Reseach Paper due date and Graduation all prominently displayed against my wallpaper. Today being the second to last day of Seminars, and the last day for History and Literature, we are all beginning to feel the exhaustive effects of a world coming to its close. We are struggling to maintain our vigilance in the work still forthcoming, and yet are filled with the sweet, grinning satisfaction of trials overcome, as the most direct work portion of the program comes to a close. Late at night we find ourselves saying very little, but smiling very much from behind our computer screns at each other. The onslaught of take-out food, however, has not stemmed in the least. The chinese food guy lets himself in at this point...talk about convenience food.

Great trepidation comes with great treks. I'm looking with open eyes and open arms on the rest of the summer, and the stark difference between this experience and the one I am, as mentioned before, swiftly speeding towards. However, the passport agency is totally screwing with my plans.
(You hear that Passport Agency? Yeah? Good. Twerp...) The passport that I applied for several months ago has yet to come, and, according to testimony from the highest order (Read: Mom), their instructions are "If you don't have it by Thursday the 26th (3 days before the trip), come in to PHILADELPHIA on the 27th. Now, getting my passport two days prior to the trip would be troublesome as it is... but that is, to be cliche, "the tip of the iceberg." Friday is my graduation from NJSP, and Thursday is the day Paige leaves for TLW. Having to spend the day in the Passport Office in Philadelphia (Read: Ninth Level of Hell) would require one of my parents to pick me up Thursday night (thus depriving them of seeing my sister off), which is an hour and a half drive in its own right, to drive two hours into Philadelphia and back Friday. This sticky situation would only be worse in actual practice, as it would require me to get the whole of my things packed Thursday and would bar me from spending much time with my friends here as they, too, prepare to leave, myself being in a greater rush.
At this point, I can only hope for some glimmer of salvation within the labyrinthic depths of the passport agency's telephone system (Read: endless amount of time onhold (again, testimonial)).
Finally, good people, I leave you with this wisdom:

Cankersores. Suck.

Continuum: Getting Hairy

Last week I had the pleasure of a short week, which seems suspiciously like a calm before the storm. Last Tuesday my group had a free period in the afternoon, which allowed me to get a bit ahead on the work as well as to take a long nap. Wednesday, on the other hand, was as hectic as it was enjoyable. We were released from class at 3, but several of us, myself included, had to be ready in dress attire to escort arriving Trustee's and friends of the program to the dinner hall. Each year the program hosts a dinner that allows the members of the Board and friends of the program to meet the Scholars and talk with us. Unfortunately, last Wednesday was a dark and stormy night, and we ran across campus, again, in dress attire, umbrellas in tow, to the meeting place. We were pleased to find out that the escorting idea had been nixed, and trustees would be driven in campus cars to the dining hall, but somewhat less excited to realize that our now-free hands would be helping set up the catering trays, etc. I had the fine pleasure of arranging 80 half-chickens in sterno trays by hand. I wore gloves, calm down. The dinner was fun, and the food was good. I had the opportunity to talk with my Environment professor in a more casual environment, and the Trustee at our table was actually kind of funny (lampooning a fellow Trustee who announced " You're the brightest, most interesting people I've ever met", to which he responded "She doesn't get out much...").
After the dinner with the Trustees, the majority of us had chartered a bus, and went to a nearby movie theater to see the fifth Harry Potter movie. I won't spoil it, except to say that it was good, but not great, and as usual, will never compare to the movie. Great FX though.
Thursday we had to get up HORRENDOUSLY early, to go into New York. It was a long drive, lasting about two and a half hours, as a result of driving in a giant chartered bus and driving directly into rush hour traffic. It was actually in our best interest, in truth, because it later turned out my shoes do horrible work to the back of my feet, and by the time I got on the train, I was eager to put on my sneakers despite being in a full suit.
We first visited the Museum of Natural History, at which most people focused on getting their sketches, essential to our field trip-based assignment, done despite the endless tides of people going through the exhibit. Over the course of doing my two drawings in public, I evidently became something of a spectacle, gaining some spectators. A Chinese family and a fair number of children became watching, chattering in their language which I didn't speak a word of, but nodded to. I was also told that my drawings were "mad phat, dawg." Exciting :)
The train ride home was a fiasco. There were five of us all taking the Midtown...something. We went to a help desk to find out which train, specifically, would allow us all to get on, and it was explained to us that two of us would have to go on one and three on another. So, me and my train-companion, Meghan, headed to our train. I asked the conductor if the train would stop in Dover, which I always do as a precaution, to which he responded

"No. The one on the other side of Penn Station does though. It leaves in three minutes."

As I'm sure explanation here is unnecessary, I'll keep it short: I got to the train. This train, the one that leaves in three minutes and was on the other side of Penn Station and that I did manage to get on , was also the same train that the three others were on. I ended up walking all the way to the back of the train before I called one of them to find out where they were, and if I could find some company. They sent one of their number all the way to the back of the train to find and lead me back to them and, upon arriving, I realized that they were only one car forward of the one I had originally walked onto. I also found that there was actually a fourth scholar with us, and the trainride was alot of fun.
I was greeted by my mother and my dog at the train station. They've pretty much become my post-train welcoming crew at this point, and there was a palpable feeling of being back within my own space, a town and area that I'm familiar with. We went home, where I changed out of my suit (which after 10 hours, 6 of which were spent walking, I was truly done with,) and left to go and get food for my visit (apparently mom's trying to starve out dad and paige?). I managed to hold off opening my new laptop (from which I am writing), until about 8 o clock. The machine is great, and =D better than my dad's PC! It took a while to get everything set up (World of Warcraft wasn't ready until 11 AM Friday morning...) but it's a great machine and works wonderfully.
My weekend was full of visitors, with Crystal and Homcy joining me Friday night, and then Duane and Will Saturday into Sunday. Crystal was supposed to join me for breakfast Sunday morning but she made some excuse to sleep in or whatnot. I left later Sunday afternoon and had dinner with Mom and Aunt Heidi, which I really liked. Upon returning to school I was reminded of how oppressively hot my room is, and set to working on my laptop in the common room, which is much cooler because it is on the first floor. Over last night and Sunday night I've managed, not only to stay abreast of the work this week, but to get ahead. I am, however, a bit behind on my arts festival project, which is due for Saturday, and requires a great deal of focus on my part. This was problematized by a massive headache last night, and everyone seems to be experiencing spells of extreme fatigue. I intend to finish off all reading and deadlined work tonight, so that I can focus whole-heartedly on the necessity of overcoming the Arts Festival project. I'm really happy with the concept, and am looking forward to putting it on the paper... but time haunts me.

Continuum: One Hundred and Sixty Eight Hours

It's been a whole week since I've posted... What does that mean? Does it mean that the network here is a pain to work with, or perhaps it means that I've been swamped in "schoolwork" that is unpredictably checked? Perhaps it means I blacked out and was unable to re-establish my connection to the English language; or maybe I just slept ALOT.

I'll let you decide.

Now I'll take a few moments to reach back into the memories of the week that has just passed, and yet seems so long ago.
On Sunday Mom came up, bringing Paige and Crystal with her. We had a great time, even though they arrived late due to a serious of unforeseen and unfortunate events, and Dad wasn't able to come... We went into Princeton and had a good time, once Mom managed to parallel park. On her fourth try. As a learning driver, I think I need to find a new role model for that particular skill. Oh, and on that note- one can tell how expensive a restaurant will be by the percentage of the menu that is taken up by a wine list. We also stopped in a bunch of shops throughout Princeton, notably Ricky's, from which I procured a two-pound bag of mixed candy that makes great company while studying.

Monday I got another visitor! Grandma came up and brought me another fan, for which I am very grateful. I've got my two fans oscillating across the room from opposite sides, creating a really nice cross draft... Coupled with leaving my room-light off and leaving the window open, for light and air, I've managed to keep my room pretty cool. We explored Lawrenceville and Princeton (read: got lost) and then went to Nassau St. and the surrounding and found some places to eat. We finally settled on Japanese, which I haven't had good experiences with in the past, but I was pleasantly surprised! Usually Japanese places carry seafood to near-exclusivity, and I am not fond of the fishie types, so I'm usually at a disadvantage, but this place had a variety of dishes. I got to try beef negimaki, pork shogayaki and chicken teriyaki, all of which was great :) I'm glad we tried it.

Wednesday there were plans to have a barbecue and to see the fireworks at nearby Ryder college. However, I was misinformed about the time of the barbecue and slept through it (I ordered pizza instead) and the forecast predicted rain, which prevented the fireworks. All in all, a rather uneventful Fourth, but I got to catch up on my sleep and had a good day nonetheless.

Thursday was a godsend! Our lecture was rescheduled to be that night, instead of that morning, allowing me to sleep in to 10:30! Normally this is something reserved for the weekends, but it worked out really nice to have it after the Fourth and was nice to get to rest and not worry about working *and* getting up at the crack of down. Thursday night, however, was a different story. As I was laying in bed, reading and preparing to sleep, the rythmic screeching of a fire alarm dashed that plan against the rocks. I rolled out of bed, in my boxers, colliding (in what I imagine was a rather slapstick display) with the fan that I had mounted on my chair. I rushed to pull on pajama pants and a t-shirt as I half-walked half-fell down the stairs to the outside. As soon as we were outside, the sky promptly decided to open up upon us. While this normally would not have been that bad, the greater portion of us were in sleepwear, packed like sardines under the less-than-full coverage of the front awning, constantly pushing against and into one another trying to avoid the rain. Also, because of the timing of the alarm, the front door locked behind us and our Housemaster had to call Campus Public Safety to open it for us.

Friday night Sam, her mother, and her sister Sydney, all came down to Princeton to look around and visit me. I had a really good time with them. We walked around both sides of Main Street, looking at some of the buildings and shops, etc. That family is so generous :) I just want to thank them again for the great evening, and their company and generosity. It was great to see them. Later that night the whole dorm got together to watch Fight Club. I was my first time seeing the movie, and I'm not sure what I think of it yet. I didn't like the forced "romance", but the production values were high, so I've got to think about it more...
Until next time, be safe, drop a line, and I hope everyone is having a great time!

Maybe next time I'll post something about the program...

Bizarro World

He may be mad, but there's method in madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical.
-G. K. Chesterton

A night or two ago a had a really unsettling dream/nightmare. Usually I can either make (relatively) clear sense of my dreams, or they are simply too far beyond me to even take a stab. This is the latter.

I start on a street, during some sort of event, because there are trailers and bicycles and a mix of people around. It's not an absolute throng, the kind of condensed human mass that takes a concerted effort to move through, but it clearly wasn't just the average, unoccupied street. I'm with a bunch of people, probably two or three dozen, composed of people from my home life, my school life, and kids here at the program. There's the tangible feeling of an elephant in the corner, like everyones mind is on something, the same thing, and they all are about to open their mouths to speak hushedly about it, but force themselves not to. They exchange cautious glances, and I step closer into them and they begin to speak.
It seems someone has been kidnapping and poisoning some of "us" (though its never at all clear what commonality we share). They've taken two already, and everyone seems perfectly aware of who they were, and in what order they went, but they refuse to say their names. The understanding at this point is that the person doing these things knows us, and our work, and activities, and thoughts, with disturbing intimacy and accuracy. He captures someone, injects them with a slow acting poison, one that slowly makes you sleep more and more (until you die, I presume) and releases them out into the world again. I don't understand why people can't seek help at this point, why they cannot do something or tell someone, but there seems to be a paralytic fear amongst them- there were even two of the currently infected at this streetside discussion. Apparently, exactly fourteen days prior to your death he reclaims you, locking you into a room, and allows you to write letters to your friends and family.
At this point, as we're all discussing this trend, and trying to support the two who are currently dieing (who seem somewhat resigned to their fate), one of them decides to simply go back to this person under the premise that hey, he's dieing, theres nothing worse he can do to him, and to try and understand him as best he can before he dies, and to write to everyone he knows prior to his er...shuffling of the mortal coil. After the group concedes and this person leaves, one of the remaining group says, startled and very much like she's had an epiphany "The Food!" Without saying as much, I now possess the knowledge that the food this kidnapper has will kill you instantly, and far more painfully.
We rush off on bikes to intercept our friend, but, as far as the dream is concerned, we are instantly in the foyer of a large mansion belonging to the kidnapper.
The mansion's expansive and cavernous. The floors of made of immaculately maintained white tile, patternless and pure, seamless and ongoing. The walls are made of glass and mirrors, and they almost all bent sheets. The mix of transparent and reflective seems to make the place, at once, both fold in on itself and expand infinitely outward. There is, distinctly and uniquely, a single door made of gold set into one of the glass walls, but it seems that the part of the wall within which the door lies is actually below the surface of the floor. I think we can only see it because of it's reflection, but honestly, its a dream, and if you haven't realized that it doesn't make sense yet you should probably just stop reading now. It only gets worse.
There are less of us now, about half as many as before, but we all immediately notice that our friend who left us earlier, resigning himself to this fate, is on a large glass dais. The dais is shaped like a bean and rests, unmovingly, in midair about 25 feet above the floor of the massive foyer. Smaller bean-shaped panes of glass weave around the room and up to the dais. Upon the dais he is shackled, and a large desk made of impossibly white wood sits atop it. He is writing, taking, one at a time, sheets of paper from a stack on one side of the desk, writing slowly and consistently, and then placing it atop a stack on the opposite corner.
At this point, A man in a white suit with silvering hair and a small beard walks out, adjusting a strange orange tie. He doesn't open his mouth, but gestures around as if he's saying something, and I know I'm in trouble. The rest of my friends disappear, and the one writing on top of the dais doesn't even seem to notice what's going on. I'm confused, trying to look at the man talking to me, but without his voice to hear direction and the refracting mirrors, I just end up spinning around.
I'm in a dark room, and the man is sitting at a desk, his face lit by the blue glow of a single computer monitor. Now he's speaking, in a voice that is controlled to a fault and a sound that vibrates just over a river of anger. He says "Did you not say 'and their depiction shows the newscaster in a despicable, godless light'?". I respond "Yes, but their depiction was inaccurate, and I go on to-" and at that point my ability to speak is suspended as he returns his gaze to the computer screen.
I'm in a glass room somewhere and I'm sleeping on a single pillow. As I sit up I feel a definitive soreness in my bicep that tells me my days are numbered. For some reason, I'm not outside, being allowed to exist for some period before I die, but I'm not on the dais, writing. I don't understand, but I feel the need to use the bathroom and instinct guides me. From the bathroom I'm able to escape through a window, and the bikes we used remain outside in a heap. I pick up the nearest outlier and speed off down the roads, leaving the house behind me. The mansion seems normal from the outside, and not at all composed of self-inverting glass, but who knows?
As I pedal I'm nauseous, wrestling with whatever this person *must* have over me that means I shouldn't have tried to escape and shouldn't call for help, and the throbbing power of instinct that forces my hand into my pocket and pulls out my cell phone. I call my parents, and I'm trying to explain myself while I pedal towards a police station or some safe haven. Just as begin to make headway and the people on the other line begin to understand the situation, A silver SUV drives from a copse of trees onto the lawn of the house I'm cycling past. There are stickers on it that say COMMERCIAL ABC, and I know this somehow refers to the television station. The man in the suit walks out of the passenger side door, holding a red trunk delicately between his palms. I drop the phone from my hand and fall off the bike, reaching for a loose brick in the curb.
And then I'm awake and totally shocked to find that I am, in fact, not on top of a bike, or on a lawn, or anywhere that I had recently been.

So, that was weird and inexplicable and just had to be shared.
On a more realistic, but equally bizarre note, last night we had a toga party. It became infinitely clear to us why the Roman Empire fell- togas are really easy to trip over, and incredibly difficult to put together...and wear while dancing. We had a good time, even though we all wore clothes under the togas (of varying degrees). There was a bit of an inbalance as far as male-female participation (alot of the guys forced themselves to go, and all save for about four girls were touch-and-go). It was kind of irritating that the self-appointed DJs refused to let any song actually finish, but it was a good time all in all. Afterwards, we took a half hour shower break (because dancing, wrapped in bedsheets, in a relatively small room sans Air Conditioning is a recipe for such massive amounts of BO) and then came back together to watch Animal House. I'm not sure if the movie inspired our party, or the party inspired us to watch the movie, but it was a great opening to the weekend.

Continuum: Rising To The Challenge

Writing this as of my fourth academic day, and my fifth day here at the program, I have experienced most of the phenomenon of the program. I've had at least one lecture with each of the professors, some I've had two or three in a row (a pattern which provides my seminar group with an issue unique and not present amongst the other two.) My professors are:
Dr. Aja Boakye-Boaten, History and Politics
Dr. Solomon Losha, Art and Architecture
Dr. Khadiadatou Gaeye, Literature
Dr. Benjamin Neimark, Environment

All of them provide lectures (cycling), that the entire group attends. Then the group splits into three, equal, smaller seminar groups to get more specific education and discussion. Aja's seminars have been very interesting, and have had some really thought-provoking discussions (not all of which have been wholly depressing, which History and Politics can be). At this point, I really feel as if my knowledge of the complexities of the continent are expanding. Dr. Gaeye's class is also of paramount interest to me, because it alone has provided specific information on the cultural and religious atmosphere's of Africa, both pre- and post-colonization. Religion and Mysticism is very interesting. Losha's seminars provide a paradox: the diversity of the cultures of the continent is too great to really examine the specifics of art and architecture, as pertaining to empires, nations, or clans, while at the same time using only the commonalities or general understandings of the culture is what provided the Western world with an inaccurate point of view in the first place, not to mention the conscious need to avoid discussion of specific customs is boring and leads at least a third of us to fall asleep during his seminar. I also like Dr. Neimark's (who, by the way, is the only non-African professor) contribution, though he clearly has a political base in some areas. Unfortunately, when many of my classmates talk about development, its often at the conscious expense of the environment...which seems incredibly short-sighted, even for the human race. Perhaps you can trod on the environment in order to develop, but will the continent adopt sustainable practices after modernizing? Guessing by the trend in the rest of the world, not really. So, more paradoxes. At this point, I am simply going to start taking the paradoxes, and use them to build houses. Paradox bricks, paradox mortar, paradox wiring, paradox shingles...you get the picture.
One startling and disturbing characteristic I'm noticing about my classmates... The discardment of the value of the culture, especially literature, as important to the development of the society. They seem focused on modernization at the expense of all the rich cultural history created so far. Personally, the cultural facets of a civilization are the products of years and years of human achievement. If the products of individuals meeting their potential isn't worth preserving, than what is?
The work has been manageable so far, and I'm attempting to stay at least one seminar ahead of what's necessary, so that when I get visitors or an opportunity to do something fun I don't have to avoid it for the sake of work... But that's somewhat hard when you have the same seminar three days in a row, and no syllabus. You have no choice but to do the work that night, and make it your first concern... At least I will always be a head in literature, since Dr. Gaeye is the only one kind enough to give us a syllabus.
The last two nights have given us tremendous, bellowing thunderstorms. They were really rather beautiful. Coincidentally, the tallest tree on campus is about ten yards outside our dorm, so we saw lots of lightning. The rain has given way to an inexplicable smell of manure across the campus, which is somewhat troubling, but has lowered the temperature, humidity and air pressure, which is a godsend!
The past three days were like walking in a sauna everywhere you went. Good for the skin, bad for the hair and totally no fun.
I did try and take pictures of the storm last night, but did so through my window screen which seems to have..er...prohibited me from getting a real image. What I did get is cool looking though, so I'll provide it...

EDIT: So, okay, the pictures really aren't that interesting. The thumbnails looked cool but the rendered versions look like, well, screens. So I guess I'll have to take good pictures of something tonight.

As We Begin

"It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

As I write this I am currently on my third day of the New Jersey Scholar's Program, the second academic day. It remains yet to be seen exactly what our environment will become, as we get deeper into topics and our work, and spend more time together. It's hard to predict standing at the 72nd hour, what life will be like when as much has passed, or three times, and more. What can be sure is that journey will be interesting, and the company excellent.
As far as our lectures go, we've had one on pre-colonial/ancient african history and politics, which soon evolved into a discussion of what is and is not considered developed, how correct that assumption is, why the public understanding of African peoples is what is, and how that was used (or abused) for political convenience throughout history. This morning we had a lecture from our environmentalist teacher, who spoke a great deal about soil.
Seminars have been an interesting task- our first was a library orientation which lasted only thirty minutes of the alotted our and a half, which gave us some free time. Our second was with our literature professor, who outlined the somewhat demanding workload ahead and lead us through pre-colonial religion.
When I say "somewhat demanding", I mean a 200+ page book in the span of 2-3 days.
In talking with the Art & Architecture and Environmental professors we found out that we, uhh, don't have all our books yet. So the workload may become greater... I tingle with excitement.
First two days were cool, weather was nice. Today is hot, and it sucks. I'm glad I keep the light off in my room when I leave because every extra source of coolness matters at this point.
I found a nice place in the village that sells soda and actually carries the likes of Monster, Vault, and Jolt, for when the workload makes me need some Popeye-like rejuvenation. A buddy showed me the coffee machine in the cafeteria, which would be all I need if not for the fact that the cafeteria has very strict hours (to the point of a giant cage-like gate at the main entrance to prevent the oppressive swarm of tiny little sportsfans.)

Don't trust seafood from any school, no matter how much the students pay to go there.

On another note, the campus is beautiful. When I get homesick, taking a walk around the campus is my first line of defense against malaise. Its quite obvious which buildings preceded which, and you can see an almost wave-like pattern in the architecture and arrangement. The local animals (read: squirrels) have become so accustomed to humans, that they do not become skittish or aware of your presence until about four or five feet. More than that, the famous black squirrels, native to Princeton, can also be found here. I've seen one or two, and managed to catch some shots.