How a Mid-Western Girl Became an East-Coaster

Well, here we are. I've been in Concord for a week and a day, and man, was that an overwhelming week! Two Friday's ago my parents and I drove down the impressively charming Main Street of Concord, MA. I successfully got the key to my apartment and just like that, we were moving my stuff in. It was dank and dark at first, but once there was a steady flow of air from the continuous opening of the door, the stuffy feeling soon cleared. The reason for the dank came from my apartment's location: it is in the basement of one of the boy's dorms (called "houses" at CA, so that is what I will now refer to them as), and called the "garden apartment," since that's more palatable than "basement apartment." It's quite nice, actually; just two rooms, a bedroom and kitchen/living room sorta divided by a bar-type thing. It used to be the school bookstore, so shelves line almost all the walls. It's nice for displaying pictures and small decorative items, but when it comes to storing clothes and the like, it's a bit irritating. I've gotten used to it by now, though. The place has truly become my own, though at this point I still lack a comfy chair or couch. I'm working on it.

Other than making my apartment livable, I attended several meetings, all of which lasted from 9am to 5pm. The first was the new faculty orientation meeting; I was surprised to see that there were three other young ladies joining the crew this year as well, in addition to a new head of school. We spent the day trying to process several tidal waves of information, ranging from emergency procedures to campus diversity. I staggered to my apartment for dinner, struggling to comprehend everything that had been thrown at me that day while attempting to prepare for the next day's all-day meeting. Suffice to say, the next three days were fairly overwhelming; full faculty meetings, house faculty meetings, one-on-one meetings with the deans...all in addition to dealing with the fact that I was now far from home and all things familiar, the fact that I now had to deal with just about everything on my own, that when anyone said, "The adults deal with this.." that meant me, too. I'm not too ashamed to admit I spent a fair amount of time trying not to cry, especially since I had no internet and no cell reception in my apartment and thus felt truly and completely isolated from everything I knew.

Things have settled down a bit now; new boarding students arrived on Friday while I went into Boston to visit Bryne and Scott at their lovely apartment in Somerville. Classes start on Tuesday and I am both excited and terrified. I am teaching two classes, Latin I and Latin II, one section of each. I have one class on Mondays through Thursdays, and two on Fridays. Not much, but enough for someone with no experience whatsoever. In addition to that, I have house faculty duties, which means that on Thursdays, I am responsible for the boarders who live in Hobson House. It should be interesting, since it's basically a parenting job, and that's something I have no experience with either. hmmm...

I'm looking forward to the coming days very much and will definitely be giving a detailed report of how much first few days go, so stayed tuned!

Quick Update

I know I'm loooong overdue for a post here, but I am completely swamped by meetings that require all of my brain power. Who knew that becoming a real adult required this much work?!?! Oh wait...

I will, however, provide a brief summary of my trip to Singapore. The only thing of note we did was go to the Botanical Gardens, which were, I will admit, quite beautiful. I really enjoyed the piece of rain forest that is preserved there; it was amazing to walk through this bit of jungle and see these ENORMOUS trees. Stunning.

Other than that, Singapore was quite boring. We flew back to Bangkok for roughly a day, then flew home. The highlight of my trip home was the 4 year old who say next to me on the flight from Tokyo to Atlanta. She was incredibly talkative, something not terribly desirable on a 12 hour flight, but she was too adorable for me to get overly upset. It was her cuteness (and, I suppose, her age) that saved her when she asked me if I believed in the True God.

Needless to say (??), I told her I did, and let her tell me all about Noah's Ark and Jonah and the whale.

I promise that I will find some time this weekend to write a quick post about my move to Concord and all the exciting meetings I've been to over the past few days. Students start coming on Friday and classes start on Tuesday! eek!

First Impressions

I have to say, the first thing I thought when I stepped off the plane in Singapore was, "My GOD, this place is clean." Which was a very accurate first impression. As we whizzed down the highway towards the University guest house (but definitely not over the speed limit), I felt my amazement grow as I saw well manicured medians full of flowers and beautiful, clean streets and sidewalks. It could not be more different than the grimy, dirty, polluted, Bangkok. My dad remarked, "It feels like we're in Southern California." And it does; I do not even feel like I am in Asia anymore. Except for all the, well, Asians.

A Culinary Cabaret*

I am in Thailand, at the beach in Hua Hin, which is on the western side of the Gulf of Thailand. It’s quite gorgeous here, with beautiful beaches and shady palm trees. The highlight of my time in Hua Hin has not been, however, my time spent on the beach, but my time spent at restaurants. In fact, most of my time in Thailand in general revolves around eating. My mother makes plans to meet a friend for lunch, and since traffic is so bad in Bangkok, we leave two hours before she arranged to meet her. Once we’re all met up, we eat a spectacular lunch, and, since we don’t have time to go home before our dinner appointment, we shop around until its time for yet another meal. Even our time in Hua Hin, which is purely our own (no lunches or dinners with friends), has been based around food. What should we do for lunch? Where shall we go for dinner? Do you want to go get mangoes and sticky rice?

I don’t mind making food the focal point of our trip. Thailand is, after all, known for its exquisite cuisine, and it would be a shame to let a little thing like my caloric intake get in the way of eating as much of my favorite foods as possible. And at Hua Hin, all my favorite things seem to be right here, in one town. Well, all my favorite sea food, at least. I adamantly refuse to eat sea food in the United States. Call me a food snob, but what little sea food I have eaten Stateside never, ever, compares to what is available in Thailand. One might say, “Well, you are from Ohio,” but I have sampled lobster, crab, etc, in states that are not completely landlocked. And my verdict remains the same: Thailand has the best sea food. Period.

Last night, we went to a small restaurant right on the pier, with seating out over the water. As it got dark, we could see the green lights of the squid boats as well as the highly lit naval destroyers that guard the King’s summer palace (he happens to be there right now, which explains the presence of the destroyers). Our order closely resembled what we’d been eating every night: spicy steamed squid, deep fried fish (no breading though, which makes it a million times better than fried fish in the States), mussels, and 2 kilos of crab. I’m fairly certain all this came right out of the ocean we were sitting on, and it all tasted great. Our waiter even made fun of us for ordering so much crab, but we ate all of it and wiped that smile off his face.

I comfort myself with the fact that sea food doesn’t have that many calories, and if this isn’t true, please don’t tell me. Besides, I’m only in Hua Hin, only in Thailand, once a year, so I might as well indulge.

* I should confess that the title for this post came from the song “Be Our Guest,” from Beauty and the Beast. I’d hate to take credit for creativity that I do not in fact possess.