Stress

Classes haven't even started yet and I am incredibly stressed. I like the house I am in within New House, and I like my roommates, and I like the other people, but we got the loudest room in the place, right next to the lounge and I am the one who probably needs to go to bed the earliest because of rowing. Then someone told me that German House has an opening and now I have to consider that. The pros are that they cook everynight and it's quiet, but only like one or two actually speak German. I haven't met everyone, and one guy is uber annoying, but most of the others seem nice. This is just causing me crazy stress. I feel like German House has a lot of things to offer, but it wasn't what I wanted. And I don't really want to leave New House 4, but I feel like having trouble sleeping and having to worry about dinner everynight could be bad. If I was staying up on the same sleep schedule as the people in the lounge, it would be fine, but with rowing, I have to get sleep. We probably should have put that we wanted a quiet room on the sheet, but there weren't things to check and we didn't even think about it.

The other thing I'm stressing out about is classes. I really want to take this globalization class, but I can't if I'm in my seminar, which seems okay, but I'm not sure. I'm more interested right now in the cultural part that comes with globalization than with the development part, but maybe that would change with development experience? I talked to Donna Friedman who is like the head of UAAP and she sounded like changing was possible, but she didn't seem very happy about it. She said I could do the seminar as a listener, but I'm already supposed to be taking Czech as a listener once or twice a week at Harvard. I'm just worried I am stretching myself to thin, and nothing's even started yet. I really don't know what to do.

FPOP/Orientation

I have never been so busy in my life. FUP was really fun. I met 50 awesome people, and we may not be best best friends, but I have probably 45 people I am comfortable going up to and talking to. It would take a really long time to explain it all, and it's midnight right now, but I'll try and post it later. But to say we did community service, skits, late nights and it lasted from 7am to 1am.

Orientation is also crazy. Events happening around the clock, at every dorm and more than that. I think I am going to enter the housing lottery for Burton Connor, and if I don't get it, I'll stay in New House. I was excited about looking at German House, but it isn't that exciting, and all the freshman who speak German are leaving because no one speaks German. Seriously like 5 out of 24 people actually speak German. But anyway, this is just a small update, more to come later.

I'm Here

So it's really strange to actually be here. On the plane I was kind of freaking out that I'm not ready for college- I'm not old enough, I haven't spent enough time at home, but right now I'm okay.

I haven't actually met any other freshman yet, other than a girl who I got lost at the airport with because I'm the only freshman in New House 4 yet (I think, or so I'm told). I went in and registered, and then played Rock Band with 2 upperclassmen and then ate pasta with some others and now I'm back in my room.

The room is kind of typical dorm room. It has ugly wood furniture and a linoleum floor. It's actually a triple, but I'm the only one here, so I took the single bed, partly because I know one other girl is getting here Friday, and I don't know if the other exists, and I really don't like bunk beds. I made my bed, and the rest of my luggage is still unpacked.

Leaving

I leave for the airport in about 15 minutes, and I don't know what to think. It wasn't quite this bad when I was leaving for Czech for a year. Now this is the end of when I can really call home, well, home. I feel like everything is about to change and I don't know if I'm ready for that. Boston suddenly seems very far away.

FAS Results

So I kind of have mixed feelings about the FAS results. I got into 16.A48, the iHouse seminar. But I'm not in iHouse nor have I had any intention recently of being in iHouse. I did put it on my housing application, but since then, nothing. I thought you could only get into this if you were in iHouse and I put it on my seminar app because I was interested at that time in being in iHouse.

I am still interested in international development, but the other three FAS I signed up for are all completely hands on and I was so looking forward to trying something completely new and doing projects. To say the least, I am sort of bummed. I emailed someone at iHouse to ask about whether I am supposed to be in the seminar because I'm not in iHouse nor do I want to be a social member, but I just wasn't expecting this one.

Nonetheless, I am still looking forward to MIT, but I am starting to freak out. I'm nervous about meeting people, getting dorm stuff (traversing the city to various stores), where I'll end up living, how classes will go, whether I'll be able to take Czech, how I match up in rowing, everything I guess.

Schedule

So this is basically what my last week looks like:

Monday- work work pack
Tuesday- row work pack hang (Hannah gets home)
Wednesday- work pack hang
Thursday - Waterworld pack
Friday - work pack hang
Saturday - volunteer hang movie/dinner
Sunday- fly far far away

And the Days Disappear

I was just looking at my calendar to see when I could work at my Mom's office next week, and I realized, I LEAVE NEXT WEEK. This is crazy.

I've been looking forward to going to MIT for so long, but as it gets closer, I get more nervous. I'm still excited about the possiblities, but it's more the logistics I guess- how to get dorm stuff, what to eat, how to meet people. I guess I'm also sad that I will probably only get to see my parent's a couple times a year. I've done it before, but the realization that this could be the last time I ever really live at home is really daunting. I mean, I'm only 17, and this could be the last 2 weeks where I can ever really call my house, home.

Skull

So today was day 1 of my Moab trip. What did I do? Go through three of the biggest rapids in Westwater Canyon with 6 other inexperienced rafters without a guide. We survived. And it was awesome.



Whitewater rafting is amazing. The best though is in a paddleboat where you have to actually listen to the guide in order to not slam head on to a 12 foot slab of rock sticking out of the middle of the river (i.e. Tully River near Cairns, Australia). But today's was pretty good. Probably a 7. Granted, the little guideless experience definitely lifted that number up a bit, but still.



The story? So basically this river is in the middle of nowhere sort of off of I-70 with only two places in 15 miles where you can drive up to the river. It's about 5 miles of floating, and very small rapids, then maybe 5 miles of awesome rapids, and then 6 more miles of floating. If you have every been to real rapids, you know that sometimes the boat can go a bit...squif. So we were going down not so huge a rapid, and the front went up, and I guess the back when under water, and 3 people fell out- my dad, and the 2 guides (we had two guides because one broke a boat, and all the other people were distributed, and he was the only one who wanted to go on a paddle boat as opposed to you having no paddle and the guide having sculling oars). I was in front, and didn't actually realize that anyone had fallen out until after the next rapid. So we were down three, and then someone else started calling out commands. People seemed to be following them, so I did two. So we very quickly decided the best way to go over rapids is straight through the middle. At least you won't flip. So we went through the first one, and it went well. Then me and the other guy in front realized we were sort of missing people.



Apparently while this was happening, the three missing were picked up by the boat behind us, and there was suprise and amaze and screaming that we were still going. We went through the next rapid, and realized we kind of had no real control because we no longer had anyone acting as a rudder. And this was when the Skull rapid came into our view. The person closest to the back ended up as the rudder (apparently the conversation went "You're a Boy Scout, you can do it. Go!") This next rapid is apparently the most dangerous and biggest out of any of the ones on the river. And it was quite a wall of water. So the 7 of us, finally having discovered the power of the rudder, headed straight for the wall, paddling and hoping for the best. We went up, and then down the other side and then the bigger wall came into view. With the raft going up, and lots of water and lots of running into people we finally made it through, and stopped to pick up our lost guides.

Skull rapid is apparently the most dangerous rapid on the river, with a giant hole and then next to it is a place called "Dead Man's Vortex". My Dad of course, after we got back, researched it and found that someone died there a couple of year's ago after the raft flipped and their body came up in Dead Man's Vortex 5 weeks later.

It was a lot of fun to go through the rapids alone and have the guides utterly amazed that we made it through all three without flipping, but the fact that it really is, well really, dangerous.