Hello
again! I’m settled in at Harvard and ready to expound on my first-week
experiences and how it feels to be back. First things first, though – I need to
wrap up the rest of the summer.
After I
arrived back home from Jordan, it was my pleasure to participate in the wedding
of a very good friend. After that, I traveled with my parents to North Carolina
(my dad had a conference to attend, and since I was only home for another week,
he took me along.) Finally, I had a day to say goodbye to Texas until
Thanksgiving, and then I flew back here to Boston to start the new year.
I must say,
the weather here is exactly like the weather I left in Texas – hot and humid.
Except that here, my room doesn’t have AC – only heating. I’m sure it will cool
down in a couple of weeks, though. The biggest challenge in Pforzheimer (Pfoho), my new dorm, or
“house”, as we call them at Harvard, is that it’s a twenty-minute walk from the
main campus. There are shuttles, but they don’t run all the time, and either
way, it adds in a lot of time for transportation. But I like my room; it’s
bigger than last year, and I have more decorating stuff. Pictures are attached!
Coming in,
I was planning on getting to the airport at six pm and then taking the Subway
to Harvard, where I would then half to walk or take a taxi to my dorm while
hauling all my luggage around, all after dark. Thankfully, God provides, and I
found, to my delight, that one of the graduated seniors from my a cappella
group, who is now interning with CI*, was picking up one of my friends from
last year’s Bible study at the airport at the same time.
Thus,
instead of attempting to lug all my stuff through Boston after dark, I walked
out of the airport and into the (literally) open arms of the Christian
community at Harvard. I was picked up by friends and driven to an actual home
for a welcome-back event (with food they ordered for me without my asking!),
dropped off at my dorm and assisted in getting my key and carrying my stuff in,
and then invited to yet another event to meet the freshmen. It was a very long
day, but it was great to have someone to come back to.
That’s what
it is, even though I’m twenty minutes away from where I was last year. It’s not
exactly coming home, not quite yet, but it’s coming back. It’s still hard being
away from my family sometimes, but not as hard as it used to be. I have friends
who even before I said goodbye to my parents were texting to find out when I’d
get back, and I have a suite-mate** who bought me a chocolate bar as a welcome
gift, complete with a welcome note. And after I’d unpacked all nine of my boxes
(and my suitcase) into my room, I felt I was indeed beginning to make myself at
home.
I’m also a
lot more confident that I was last semester, I think partly because I’m older,
partly because I know my way around better, and partly because being in Jordan
gave me a lot more experience navigating unfamiliar situations. In America,
even when strange things happen, you get to speak English to solve them! When
I’m given things to organize or get done, I don’t feel as annoyed or
overwhelmed as I used to; I have begun to take them in stride.
In fact,
instead of feeling tired and unready to start, the way I’ve felt the last
couple of semesters, I find myself wanting to go to class and study. That may
be partially because I’m taking more classes related to my major, classes I
want to take. At the moment, I’m taking Leadership and Management for ROTC,
Hebrew (a film and literature class), second-year Arabic, Physics, and a
Philosophy course. I’ll post more details next week, when I’ve had more of a
chance to feel them out, but I finished four-and-a-half hours of class today
energized and ready to go.
It’s a good
thing, too, because ROTC took off running before I’d even hit the ground. It’s
much better as a sophomore, knowing one’s way around and not being at the
bottom of the totem pole, but that also means that I have more responsibility,
especially as we try to help out all the freshmen who are just beginning their ROTC
experience.
Freshman
are the main concern in a cappella, too. We are doing recruiting now, and soon
we’ll be doing auditions. That, combined with trying to put together a budget
and figure out recording costs for our next CD as treasurer, puts quite a bit
on my plate at the moment, completely independent of my academic
responsibilities. And of course, there are all the moving-in concerns that
still have to be taken care of, and the usual paperwork to be filled out.
Well, this
post is quite long enough, and I’m going to make it quite a bit longer with a
bunch of pictures I hope you’ll enjoy. I hope everyone else had a good start of
school as well, and thank you for coming back to read my blog for a second
year!
*Christian Impact, or Cru, formerly Campus Crusade for
Christ
**She’s not exactly my suitemate; she’s my blockmate, which
means we were placed in the same dorm and filled out our housing forms
together. As it turns out, we have interconnected singles, which is very nice.
But interconnected-single-mate, while fun to say, is a little clunky on the
page. So I settled for suitemate as the closest approximation. In case anyone
was really interested in that little explanation.
PS - Wow... that was a lot of pictures...
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