Where are you going, where have you been

Where are you going, where have you been DID YOU KNOW? One of the sister cities of Hiroshima, Japan is my hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The title is taken from a short story by Joyce Carol Oates that we read in AP English. When I read it, I thought that it was the most obvious thing in the entire world that the whole narrative was supposed to be a dream that the main character was having while listening to the radio, but nobody else in the class understood what I was talking about at all, and Mrs. OBrien told me I was totally crazy. A year later I e-mailed her with a peer-reviewed paper supporting my conclusion, and she told me that Joyce Carol Oates called that paper ridiculous. I ended up passionately hating Joyce Carol Oates for like two years until I read Everything is Illuminated and found out that she taught Jonathan Safran Foer how to write, and then I realized she couldnt be all bad. MORAL OF THE ENTRY: Read Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Sorry for the lack of blogging over the past week, I just got back from a long, long, long trip across Italy which I will describe to you tonight after I go to Mr. Chicken and upload some pictures. But first I want to tell you about the most exciting part of the tripgetting home! No, really. I was in four different countries in one day! I was all excited about that until Ling 07 pointed out that last month we train-trekked across the width of Germany and basically all the way through Switzerland and France, plus a hundred miles into Spain, all in 22 hours. Move over, Anthony. But back to my other story. The dreadlocked Kendall 07 lives in Aachen, about an hour west of Ling 07 and me in Leverkusen, and despite that fact I have never been out to visit her. So, on our way back from the D??????sseldorf-Weeze airport in the middle of the afternoon, we decided to put our 15 ??? « ® NRW Bundesland ticket to good use and take a visit over to Kendalls place. One thing you should know is that the D??????sseldorf-Weeze airport is nowhere near D??????sseldorf, and its going to cost you a bundle to get to or from there. So dont think Ooh, la la la, discount tickets! Woohoo! unless the tickets are at least 15 ??? « ® cheaper than the next best price, or unless you have something else to do with a Bundesland ticket, like we did. But Aachen is really nice, and I kind of wish that I had worked there instead of the sprawling industrial shrine of Leverkusen. There were lots of hills and cows and playgrounds and sculptures of sheep and quaint little European houses. Aachens major claim to fame, kind of, is its proximity to the Dreil??????nderpunktthe junction of Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. They have a labyrinth there for no apparent reason. I love Labyrinth, but it was closed by the time we made the hike up there. What they also have is a monument marking the highest point in the Netherlands. Germans and Belgians are apparently always, Ha ha Netherlands when they walk by because this point is seriously not even that high. Also, Flemish is like the weirdest-sounding language of all time. So they probably laugh at that, too. BONUS: Check back tonight for an exclusive Turkey vs. Spam picture and video of the Dreil??????nderpunkt! My blogging will be a little sparser in the near future because Im a little tired from our whirlwind tour of Italy, hitting Venice, Florence, Pisa, and Rome in the space of four all-too-short days. And then tomorrow night Im leaving work a little early so that we can get over to Paris before nightfall. But thats it. One more weekend in Germany, and then I get back to where I once belonged at MIT. We do have plane tickets to London, but we decided that were a little bit hosed from 13 straight weeks of European travel, so were just going to eat the cancellation fee instead of spending four times that much to half-heartedly see a few sights in London. OH WAIT! I also came up with another commercial idea while I was in Italy. Kendall 07 was letting me listen to some German music on trains through Italy, and one of them was by the great pop-punk-ish band Wir Sind Helden. One of the songs, Monster, had the unstoppably catchy chorus of Kannst du mein Monster halten? Kannst du mein Monster halten? Kannst du, kannst du? (Can you stop my monster?). And images of German youths biting into crispy chocolate bars while Wir Sind Helden sings, Kannst du mein Hunger halten? (Can you stop my Hunger?) just popped into my head. Okay, its not grammatically correct (should be meinen Hunger), but once you listen to it, youre going to want a candy bar so bad that you dont have time to correct Wir Sind Heldens grammar. I tell you, Im a natural at this thing. Why did I go to MIT? I have wasted my life. - Okay, as promised, a bonus half-entry on the Dreil??????nderpunkt. So Ling 07, Kendall 07, and I did take the obligatory lets stand in 3 countries holding hands at the same time picture: There is also a playground right next to the Dreil??????nderpunkt. And as you probably all discovered in high school, teenagers at a playground designed for 8-year-olds is the most fun thing EVER. Now, also, you have to realize that playground safety is a huge thing in the US. Not so much in Europe. So the playground was basically just a sandy patch covered in spinning metal implements of doom and trees that 8-year-olds could easily crack their heads on. And if theres one thing I really like to do, its spinning. So, good MIT students that we are, we spent the next hour conducting a lab practical in moments of inertia. I like spinning so much that when I was young, I used to play this game with myself called Scrambler, where you pretend youre on the Scrambler ride at Hersheypark. Basically, it involves running around in a circle while also spinning in circles at the same time. Sometimes I played it with other people too, if they were around. But nobody was quite as good at it as I wasafter all, I had the most practice. I demonstrated the game to Kendall and Ling and invited them to join in. They thought it was interesting, but decided that playing it would be inadvisable after our macaroni and cheese dinner an hour beforehand. After taking 550 pictures, I had like 8 seconds of video left on my memory card, so I said, Hey, Ive never actually seen what Scrambler looks like. Could you take a video of me playing it? Well, sure. (13.4 MB .mov file) I really start to wonder what kind of family lets their child run around doing that in the front yard for hours at a time. But I got into MIT, so Sams Mom must have done something right. This entry is brought to you by the European Union, whose formation meant that I did not have to check my passport 5 times in the above video. Where are you going, where have you been Prelude. In light of the halfways, quarterways, three-quarters-ways done with MIT posts that have been popping up left and right and the all-around mayhem of everybody waxing poetic about their life experiences hoping someone out there is reading, learning something, or just caring out of the corner of their heart a little bit from time to time, well, heres my announcement that Im throwing my hat into the ring with the rest of them. Nobody is startled. Im sure. But Im going to do it anyways. Ive lost the element of surprise, alas, but Ill try to make up for it in thoroughness. Seeing as how I have two weeks of free time between now and graduation, and Ive broken many, many promises of various entries on this and that in the last years, Im embarking on a multi-part project called Where are you going, where have you been named after a rather creepy (but incredibly good) Short Story, the context of which has absolutely nothing to do with what I will be talking about (unless youre a lit major or you have a particularly sinister view of what Im trying to do here), I borrow the title because its beautiful. Its ambiguous. And it pertains to these entries on a superficial level precisely so I dont have to make justifications like this along the way. Go figure. Anyways, I thought Id put this up tonight, because its 6:40am and Im not sleepy yet, because a thunderstorm has brought in the day, because everything is so still except for the low constant rumble of the city, because my mom called to say that she was proud of me, because everything has to go, everything, because nothing is real but what you take with you, but mostly, because if I didnt get this up now, I will probably lose the motivation in a couple of days, and this will never happen, and I think I will be sorry if that is the case.