Deadlines and Dorm Rooms: Exciting Events

My apologies for being so late this week – I completely forgot I needed to write this, and Tuesday and Wednesday are my busiest days, so I haven’t had time until now. Still, I’m here now, and lots of exciting things have happened for me to tell you about.

The most exciting event was the Medal of Honor ceremony held at Harvard this past Friday. About 64 of the 79 living Medal of Honor recipients gathered at Memorial Church at Harvard to memorialize recipients who have now passed on – fitting, as the church was built to memorialize Harvard student and alumni who fell during World War One. I was part of the color guard (the Navy flag, of course) for the occasion, which took the larger part of the day and mostly involved standing at attention in the heat.

After the ceremony itself, though, we had the honor of leading the recipients to the Harvard Faculty Club for the following luncheon and joining them for lunch. It was a fantastic experience to sit with and talk to more Medal of Honor recipients than most of my ROTC instructors have met in their lives. I was very glad I participated, even though I had to go back to my dorm and crash for several hours afterwards.

I also attended a luncheon at church this past weekend, where I was able to meet some new people and have very good homemade spaghetti and brownies. In addition, yesterday night I went to a forum at the church. I’m getting more involved with church this semester, now that I have more time to get involved in. I also have more time to meet with friends for meals or just to talk, which I also did several times this week.

I attended another forum as well, or at least part of one, last Wednesday night at Harvard, dealing with Just War theory, which was very interesting and also allowed me to reconnect with a couple of fellow philosophy majors/minors whom I hadn’t seen in nearly a year.

As you can see, the week has been a little hectic, but it’s been fun, and I’ve done quite a bit. In addition to all these extra events, my music class was treated to a live performance of Montiverdi’s L’Orfeo, using as close to the original instruments as the Music Department could manage.

It was amazing, but it looked kind of eccentric – on one side you had the regular string players from the Harvard Chamber Orchestra, and on the other side were the geeky professor types who had learned how to play Renaissance instruments. It came together beautifully. Now we’ve moved on to Handel’s Messiah, which is also quite exciting.

I’ve gotten used to driving in Boston, at least earlier in the morning when I have someone helping me figure out where to go. The zipcar* parking space, though, is right up on the edge of a parking garage, and when an SUV parks next to you and a truck parks behind you – well, it took a few wiggles to get in the space, but I managed. It takes a lot of stress off now that I can arrange my own transportation.

Like I said, I’ve been a little ‘off’ with work over the past few days, but I think I’m about back on track; nothing major went wrong. I got full points on my Arabic quiz from Tuesday, thankfully, and once I turn in my philosophy essay for tomorrow I’ll be done with the week’s major assignments. Everything is humming along like a fairly well-oiled machine. It’s strange after so long being out of the country to just be in the US, studying like a normal person, but it’s also pleasant and relaxing. Happy holidays to all my Jewish and Muslim friends, and a good week to everyone!

*zipcar is a company that has cars parked around campus; you can reserve one for any length of time so long as you put it back where you found it. Since we use them for ROTC events only, Harvard pays for the rentals.

Pictures:

From the first time I made it into this parking space: