Tales of Thanksgiving

            Well, the weather suddenly realized that it was December. It’s been an incredibly warm winter, for the most part; it’s only snowed twice, very briefly, and the weather has been in the fifties for the last couple of weeks. Today, though, the temperature dropped into the twenties, and I walked home in the snow.

            I was walking home from a ceremony where Harvard presented its Humanitarian of the Year award to His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General. I just heard about it yesterday, and I decided to see if I could get in. All you had to do was show up early - it was one of those things that only happens at Harvard. I was fairly close to the front of the line, where I met a couple of people while waiting to go in, and we ended up getting front-row seats (not counting the rows of reserved seats in front of us). The Secretary-General did, I think, manage to infuse us with some of his “sense of possibility”; however, I think he really won everyone over though his use of the word ‘helter-skelter’ and his well-wishes for our finals.

            It’s the second-to-last day of classes before reading period and finals start. Everything has gone by really, really fast. There’s only one more blog post, and then I’ll be done for the semester – although I’ll write an extra one with end-of-the-year reflections, so stay tuned for another couple of weeks! In about two weeks, I’ll be leaving Harvard, and I won’t be back until next fall, since I’ll be studying abroad all next semester. I’m still not sure how I feel about abandoning one of my few precious semesters at Harvard, but I know I’m looking forward to spending that time in Jerusalem.

            Thanksgiving break was wonderful. Wednesday morning I got up, packed the little I needed in my backpack, and headed out. My parents met me at the airport to drive me home, and we talked and watched Back to the Future (I’d never seen it) before going to bed. I didn’t have much time over the summer to see my parents at home; there was a lot to get done. It was a good summer, but I will enjoy having winter break to spend time with them.

            We had a pretty traditional Thanksgiving with my family; we met all the cousins and aunts and their families at my dad’s mother’s house, and we spent the day eating and catching up. There was an abundance of home-cooked food, especially in the dessert department – four pies, two cakes, and two half-gallons of ice cream!

            On Friday we went out to eat with my mom’s parents, and we had a good time talking. I pulled everyone into a good twenty minutes of trying to remember all the state capitals, which I’m sure everyone enjoyed, and afterwards my grandfather took our Christmas card photo. I won’t attach the actual photo here, since many of you will get it in the mail later, but I’ll give you a behind-the-scenes pick of our annual Christmas card photo session.

            Saturday we drove up to Houston and spent the night so that I could catch a direct flight to Boston on Sunday morning. The hotel didn’t have Wifi, which was surprisingly relaxing, and despite the briefness of the break, when I got back to Harvard I felt rested, and ready to get to work on the remainder of the semester’s assignments.

            There are a lot of assignment. At the moment we’re in that strange time when you need to work on projects and essays for the end of the year, but you still have regular homework assignments to worry about as well. Harvard has a full week of reading period before finals, though, so there will be time to work on projects – although my Arabic class extends into that time.

            In addition to my normal classes, ROTC finishes up this week, so after tomorrow I can wake up at a normal time every day. Under Construction is a lot busier than we were at this time last year, singing at various events and performing at a church next Sunday. I’ll let you know how that goes.

            I am still sick, but getting more sleep should help, and I’m feeling better than I was last week, so hopefully this will only last a few more days. In the meantime, I’m continuing my college trend of getting sick at the end of every semester. I took my Physical Readiness Test (PRT) for the Navy yesterday, and as usual, when I finished the run I started coughing and sneezing and sniffling uncontrollably. I got several strange looks on the T; it probably appeared I was dying. However, I had enough time to take a nap afterwards, and when I woke up, I was back to my original recovery level.

            It’s getting to be that time of year where I can make a list of all the assignments I have to get done. Besides assorted other tasks, I have three essays, two big projects, one presentation, one test, and one final to look forward to. The projects are group efforts, and two of the essays are done, as of yesterday, so things are moving along nicely. Hopefully I’ll have enough time and energy left to get everything done well before the next two weeks are over.

            Now that I’m about to leave, I’m realizing once again how lucky I am to be here, and how much I’m going to miss this campus and the people in it. But end-of-year musings are for another time. We still have two weeks left – time to take the world by storm!