HAVEN’T MET YOU YET

This morning I woke up and for the first time in two weeks I got to sleep in and it was great. In the morning I worked on my previous blog post. At twelve o’clock I was supposed to meet up with a student from Boston College. We started our journey by going to our car (obviously) and we saw about twenty smashed pumpkins all over the street. We still haven’t figured out who or why someone did this. It’s a little early for Halloween to be smashing pumpkins.;) We got totally lost after that. We didn’t know where we were and in the end I was a half hour late. Once I got there we saw the library and we saw her dorm room which was a little small. All dorms get better once you get older somehow. There was also a friend of hers from her old high school in Miami. She was visiting all the colleges where former seniors lived now. She was a senior. And they both could have come straight from ‘The Hills’. They spoke the accent and they were totally into the same things. They were interested in the weed smoking in Holland (obviously) and the drinking and else. They were both party girls and according to Americans all Dutch people are partiers too. We had lunch at a cafeteria and I’ve never seen so much greasy food compiled in one place. People go crazy there on food and eat like five times a day. No wonder Americans sometimes are so fat. I wanted a sandwich, and when I got to the front of the line they were putting mayonnaise on by the liter! It was amazing how much they were putting on. I decided against the mayonnaise. They also put five pieces of ham on, which was really unusual for me.

In Holland you’re lucky if you can get two pieces of ham on a sandwich. After that we looked at the senior housing which was nice. And we hung out in the sun. It was really warm, warm enough for sunglasses!  I didn’t discover a lot about BC, but I did discover a lot about how some people at university live. They had gone out the night before until about five o’clock in the morning. Boston College is really beautiful though. The view from some places is utterly amazing and the buildings are really old and historical. With the sun shining between the buildings it was a perfect day to promote Boston College. I didn’t discover a lot, but I did discover that although it is a pretty catholic college they don’t enforce religion on you. I was worried about that, because religious American I always think of as really religious. Tomorrow I’m off to Providence to go and see Brown University!

See you soon!


HAVEN’T MET YOU YET - MICHAEL BUBLÉ

MANY THE MILES

I was really jetlagged yesterday. I didn't finish my blog. It's a lot of info, because there were so many experiences.

This is my post from yesterday
Today was my first day to look at colleges in the States. I was really tired, but I had 3 cups of coffee so I survived. :) Coffee is really big in college anyway so you get the college scene just by sitting in a starbucks. ;)

Tufts University

First I had an information session at Tufts. The woman was really great and nice! She actually summed up all my questions in one speech and it was really personal and it was a really open and international feeling. I felt that it was very liberal arts. You could design your own major and there were a lot of interdisciplinary courses. They have a whole department just on courses that don't fit in any major. They get teachers for one semester and teach the greatest and weirdest courses ever. That is really my thing. So they would be teaching the bone structure in the evolution of a certain kind of monkey from 1500 to 1590. Really specific or they would teach things like a documentary class where you all get a camera and you get one semester to make a documentary and as teacher you would get Tufts alumni who are well-known filmmakers in the US.

After the information session we rushed over to Boston University, which is a campus in a city. The campus was not really spread out so that was nice. Usually universities are really spread out all over the city. At BU the campus is in one district. First we had an information session and it was mostly numbers, numbers, numbers. I don't really remember any of them and it was such a bad info session. I've made it a tradition that I ask one question (minimum) per information session. Someone from the admissions office was there and a student from BU. It was like they were performing on stage. It was a little fake and not really genuine. So I wasn't really impressed.

Boston University (internet)

After that I was a little lost in translation, because I was really confused by that. Then we went for a guided tour around campus. The student that led us around was nice, but the campus wasn't great. The buildings looked kind of rundown and the school is divided in colleges (like oxford and cambridge). I don't like that, because you divide the school. We also saw a model dorm room. And it was sooo small. I have never seen such a small room in my life. You can't even walk around in it without hitting into someone. ;) The campus sometimes was pretty, but it wasn't mind-blowing beautiful. It was a big campus so I must say that after the tour it was a 'no'. I just couldn't see myself walking around there, walking to class. I could see other people walking around there, but not myself. And that feeling is stronger than anything. We had a bagel for lunch! My first bagel since I have been back! :) And the coffee so good here! I totally forgot how much I liked coffee in the States. Boston is a pretty city. It's the most historic city in the US, because it was built by the English. So all the revolutionaries have been buried here and the independence war started here. The first shot was fired here and Martin Luther King went to BU and the Boston Tea Party happened here. It really reminds me of a European city with skyscrapers just dropped in it at really strange locations. I went to the university bookstore and I bought a notebook with Boston University on the cover. Just to have something to write all my notes.

Tufts University

After that we went back to Tufts University just to look at the campus. It was really a beautiful campus. All the leaves were gold red and it was such a pretty place. I went to the college library (really important to me) and it was magnificent. I've never seen such a great big library and everybody had a macbook. Next to the library was the student union where you could sit and talk, drink a cup of coffee and study. We bought coffee and we sat down at a table where a girl was studying and we talked to her for a while. And she was really happy about Tufts and really genuine and really friendly. She was not negative about the college at all. After that we walked around campus and apparently it was coming out week, because there were gay flags everywhere!

We went out to dinner and got a full guided tour by a friend of my dad through Boston and it was really great to see all the historical buildings! I walked so many miles today. My feet were so painful. We're going to have a lot of good exercise on this trip. ;)

Boston University

When we came home I was so tired so I didn't finish my post. Today I'm meeting up with a student from Boston College (there are no tours on Sunday) and after that we're near Harvard University so we'll take a quick look there. Just to see the campus. I really liked Tufts because you had a nice campus feeling, but you're only ten minutes away from Boston. I'll keep you 'posted'. ;)

MANY THE MILES - SARA BAREILLES