average summer day

Today after French Briallen and I went to Olives, got food, and went to eat it in the park. I had gazpacho and orzo; the gazpacho wasn't as good as at Small World Cafe, though.

After we finished lunch we went to SWC and started reviewing for French. It was a fairly productive afternoon. I made it through chapter 5 before I ran out of steam, as well as flash cards. We stopped by the U-Store on the way back to buy more.

When I checked at the mailroom on the way back, my Handspring GPS device had come. I spent half an hour or so figuring it out. It should be good fun to track my way to Boston tomorrow. I'm looking forward to that. Hopefully that will help distract me from the heat. It's supposed to be over 90 by the afternoon.

NYC adventure with Marius

This weekend I went to NYC to spend some time with Marius before he left for Germany. We met at the Greyhound bus terminal late Friday night, had dinner at a little Italian place in Greenwich Village (porcini mushroom ravioli! lemon sorbet in the peel!), and then went back to Princeton.

I misread the train schedule, unfortunately, so we missed the last Dinky from Princeton Junction to Princeton. It was only two miles back to campus, so I thought we could just walk it, but it was poorly lit, and very wet, and in places there was no sidewalk at all. And people drive very fast, rather recklessly, in Princeton.

We had gotten about a mile away from the train station, crossed a freeway into a residential area, and were hesitating at a pitch black bend in the road when a passing taxicab took pity on us and stopped. It was a good thing, too, as just a little further down the road there was a narrow bridge with no lighting at all. We were both dressed in black and it was 2 in the morning and pouring rain. We probably would have gotten run over.

So the next day after our adventure we did not wake up as early as we had hoped.

I took Marius on a quick tour of the campus (the "It looks like Oxford!" tour) and then we headed back to NYC. Walking across town from Penn Station to our YMCA hostel was an adventure. First of all, we got completely soaked. (I went through three pairs of socks that day.)

Then when we got to our hostel on the East Side (midtown), dripping on the carpet, they told us that they had switched our reservation to a different YMCA hostel, on the West Side (uptown). We were having a bit of trouble feeling suitably charitable Christian forgiveness by that point. It took us at least another hour to get there.

Finally we secured a private room on the 10th floor, room 1050, with bunk beds. It has been a long time since I had a bunk bed. I picked the top one. It felt like being a kid all over again. Or maybe just a freshman in college.

Although I had eaten an entire package of cookies during our trek, we were both starving, so we wandered out to Columbus looking for a place to eat dinner (first we went to someplace out of the Rough Guide, but I wasn't inspired, so we went on looking for something better).

I spotted a little restaurant just off Columbus with an inviting front painted in slick red, with small panes of leaded glass. It was called Epices Du Traiteur. Inside the walls were plain brick, with miniature paintings of food hung all over. I ordered the pressed duck, and a glass of Margaux. Both were fantastic. I was so enthralled with my dish that I don't even remember what Marius had. Lamb, maybe? In any case, I think we both left the restaurant with our mood much improved.

Next we tried to meet up with his friend Dirk and company at 86th and Lexington. We were early, so we sat at a cafe and I had a fruit tart, which was quite nice. Isabella, Grace, Dirk, and another guy (whose name I have forgotten) met us around 11, and then we went to someone's birthday party nearby.

I enjoyed the party immensely; everyone was very friendly, and so much French and German was being spoken betweeen puffs of smoke by beautiful black-clad people illuminated in the flickering light of candles mingled with vases of roses that I almost felt I was in Europe. Or an romanticizing American movie about Europe, anyway. We walked back to the hostel and crashed around 3 am. I didn't even bother to change.

We got up at 8 and headed for the bus terminal, stopping briefly at Starbucks for a coffee en route. It was very sad to see Marius go, knowing that he would be leaving the country almost immediately after arriving in Boston. I hope we manage to meet again someday soon. He is already back in Halle as I write this, which is strange to think about; somehow in my mind he must still be in Cambridge.

maintenance

I have been doing blog maintenance. I took down all the older photos to conserve space on the server. If you miss any of the pictures and want a copy, let me know and I can send you one.

ethernet, at last

So I finally have in-room Ethernet access! The blogging can begin again.

Today I made an expedition outside of Princeton to Wal-Mart: on foot->on train->on bus. It took up most of the day.

limited access

So here I am at Princeton, and I would like to be doing a lot of blogging, but sadly, they won't give me internet access in my room to any site outside of the princeton.edu domain until July 1. I can blog out of the library or the NGC computer lab (where I am right now), but it's not as comfortable blogging at a public terminal, and plus it's a big pain downloading pictures.

So there will be minimal blogging till July 1. Sorry, folks.

My room turned out to be much better than I expected. It is small, but there is a lot of shelf and drawer space, which helps me make the most of what I do have. The carpet seems pretty new, and there are 4 different light fixtures and a reasonably large window.

It has been about 80 degrees the past couple of days, and although it can be a little stuffy in the afternoon, it is quite livable with the fan on. By the evening the air has cooled off and I can open the windows and lean out to watch the squirrels playing in the grass. In any case, there are a lot of other places on campus that are air-conditioned where I could study if it gets too hot.

The bad news is that the NGC kitchen is closed. The good news is that it is closed for renovation, so that when it reopens in the fall, it should be much nicer than the two kitchens in the OGC, which are small, smelly, dirty, and in the basement. I have to wonder how stupid an architect would have to be to design dormitories so that the kitchens were stuck underground.

The other bad news is that they won't give me a Princeton ID card till July 1. This means that I have no long-distance phone access, no access to my postal mailbox at the NGC, no internet access (like I said before), no access to the NGC DVD collection (which is quite good, for a free service!), and no circulation or access privileges at the library. I think there were more things I couldn't do besides those, but I have gotten so tired of hearing "No, you need a Princeton ID to be able to do that," that I have given up keeping track.

So all I can do for now is study French and watch the squirrels at play.

Well, I guess I can't really complain. It's a good life.