Graduated Learning

warning, long post! questions answered and update on life

So much to talk about! First, answers to your questions you posted (thanks Laila and Saad). The first answer: I live at Next House. I really like living there! The second question: how do u spend weekends at MIT, and how often can I go to New Jersey per month. I'll answer the first part first. There's lots to do on campus and around Boston. Usually, though, I'm kinda lazy on the weekends if I can help it. Basically Saturdays I'll sleep in, and then clean my room a little, look at my homework a bit (yeah, I know, BORING!) Sundays are usually my busy days. I usually have Resonance rehearsal, attend Church at the MIT Chapel. The chapel is really great to be in, if you haven't visited it yet. A lot of different religions have services in there, and even if you're not religious or anything, it's really nice to just see (architecturally and acoustically). There are actually concerts held there as part of the MIT Thursday Noon Chapel Concerts Series.

Okay, so I've realized that I start to ramble when I start thinking about stuff to talk about. Anyways, besides tooling and attending meetings, I do try to have fun! Many fraternities have parties on the weekends that you can go to. I often visit Theta Xi, one of the fraternities that many of my friends are members of. It's kinda funny, me telling you all this, because there's often a difference between what I want to do, what I should do, and what I end up doing on any given weekend! Let me think. I mean, a lot of weekends (or weeknights if I'm really lucky) I will hang out with friends, maybe order in some takeout, or go out to eat. And now that the Student Center has Anna's Taqueria, it's easier to get cheap, good food on the weekends (dorm dining halls are open for dinners Sunday through Thursday, and Lobdell is only open for lunch on weekdays). I mean, there's also a lot of other options, but I can go into those at a later date if you want.

So there I've gone again, rambled on about a topic that I meant to only talk a little bit about. I think that's the usual with me. lets see, I mean, there's lots to do. sometimes I'll watch movies with my friends, or just spend time alone in my room cleaning, arranging songs for Resonance, or singing along to music. Of course, I do work sometimes too, but I try to have a little fun while I'm at school! Oh, one more option (actually I have a ton of options, but I can go into those at a later date, too) is to go to LSC. LSC stands for Lecture Series Committee, but most of the time they show movies. The tickets are $3.00 a person (last I looked) and you get to watch the movie in a movie theatre-type atmosphere (big screen, good sound system, etc.). Usually, these movies are shown in 26-100. And they're actually good movies, recently shown movies, so you know that you can see something that you didn't want to pay $10 to see at a local movie theatre. A few other options for stuff to do are listed in my "fun links" section to the left.

Oh, and about going home to NJ. I do that occasionally. I come home for holidays, and if there's an important event happening at home. I usually take Amtrak to NY Penn Station, then NJ Transit from there to home (because it's cheaper to do the rest of that, and it gets me closer to home than taking Amtrak all the way home. Some people will also take a bus to NYC. There are the Chinatown Buses, which take you between Chinatown in Boston and Chinatown in NYC, as well as Greyhound. The most famous Chinatown Bus (that I know of) is the Fung Wah bus.

I still haven't updated about all the fun stuff from this weekend! Let's go in order:

Friday night I went out to see a movie with my mom. It was a really cute movie, Après Vous. Even though it was made in 2003, for some reason it was showing at this little theatre about 20 minutes away from my house. Definitely a good movie (as long as you don't mind reading subtitles!). After that, my mom treated me to ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery.

Saturday I got a haircut. I think I took like 6 inches off, and it looks a lot better than it has looked in quite some time. When I find my digital camera (or someone else with one) I'll post pictures (because I know Katelyn wants to see them!) I also bought a laptop Saturday evening. It's a Compaq Presario Notebook. I spent the rest of the night setting it up (and by setting it up, I mean downloading all the software I needed!) It's giving me a bit of trouble, freezing up every once in a while, but I'm going to look at it later and try to figure it all out.

Sunday was Father's Day! We went to Lancaster, PA and the surrounding area (Amish Country). We shopped a bit, then had dinner at Miller's Smorgasbord. Oh man, that is some good food! Afterward, we went back to NJ and gave my Dad his presents. My little sister and I got him tickets for "Whad'Ya Know?", a quiz show that is broadcasted on NPR. They're taping it at the Trenton War Memorial, and we figured since he likes the show, we would take him. So yay. My older sister and her husband got my dad the Spamalot CD (and a promise to take him to the show!). My mom got him something MIT-tastic! My dad went to MIT way back when, and we've been looking for plates for a while. There are special MIT plates (like, good china) that have different images on them of different places around MIT. So, my mom got him a bunch of those. So cool! There was a picture of Senior House, and the Gray House (president's house).

Whew. I talk way too much about stuff here! okay, well, you all can let me know if you have any more questions.

-Stephanie