General Life Review

I figured I'd been up to some other things recently, nothing too profound, just thought I'd list some events.....

-Got to visit Greg again in Mass. First day we went to Boston, met a couple of his friends and his older brother for dinner. It was really great to see the city with Mike's native tour-guiding skills, getting to see what they thought about the area.....and getting to enjoy "real" Italian food. I admitted I thought a lot of Italian food was bland.....bad thing to say! It did taste fairly similar to the kind of Italian I had in actual Italy though. I lost points with Ben (Greg's bro) for not getting a cannoli and opting for carrott cake instead.

-Got to see my first "rocky" beach with Greg. Ducksberry(sp?), Mass. Of course only after visiting the cute sub shop across from his high school (small town Mass, Greg knows everyone...or at least they know him, from the subway to the sandwich shop, it was fun). Turns out my perception of rocks was that it would be much more similar to rocky clifts. Actually a "rocky" beach has lots of pebbles. It was a little chilly as well, but just a nice, foggy New England afternoon......and an entire trip out there without a stop at dunkin doughnuts!

-Back late Thursday afternoon, went to Gallery Night in Providence with another RA girl. Gallery Night is the night in Providence when all the art galleries in town (like 25! wow!) are all open for free, there's free food and wine everywhere, buses run for free and celebs give tours! Wow! It was really neat. We probably made it to half the galleries--many are small, modern galleries or shops really that were easy to browse very quickly, but it was wonderful to see the diversity of the arts scene in this town! I feel like such a nerd sometimes around here.....I suggest events around town to the RAs regularly, sometimes people come thankfully.......oh yea, and just to show myself to be the ultimate tourista......we walked into the John Brown House Gallery Night (historic house), and I knew the woman giving the tour (historic society, I'd been on another tour she did......)

--On that note, I am seeing people I recognize more and more around town. Its pretty encouraging, weird none of them seem to say hello. Some are people I've had work interactions with, people who I've bought things from, a guy I met a church, the saxophone player from the street, etc. Providence grows more and more on me everyday.

-In true Providence tourist fashion, I ventured to the farmer's market downtown Friday morning, I'd made it up to be this big thing (the flyers and website made it look that way.....), but as many things I read about, it was a bit of a let down, though overall it was a great experience. This is the practical way to buy organic, local, etc. Even contrasting it with the market I saw in Boston today, I noticed all the produce was local, whereas in Boston it was definitely imported (all the gas costs for that almost make it pointless, environmentally-consciousness-wise).

--Friday evening Rachel Berryman and Nate Nichols came into town. It was so great to see Rachel again, chill out with her in the afternoon on Thayer, gather more supplies together (apparently Rachel was a wine connoisseur! the woman talked about her choice for like 5 minutes....we just stared and acted like we had any idea at all what she was saying....). Nate came later in the evening and I took them down the the waterfront for a picnic! It was great to share the city and the campus. Getting to see the two of them and just have a great dinner together was wonderful, hopefully I'll get to see them both again soon.

-Saturday I took the high school program's free bus into Boston for the day--basically 10am-3:30pm in Boston. It was enough time for the colonial-dressed Freedom Trail guide which was super-fun, touristy as it is. I wandered around several markets for the afternoon, had a great fast mexican-stand experience (my mom had a horror story of carrots on top of nachos instead of cheese in Mass, so I was a bit wary to say the least). It started to rain fairly severely. But I wandered the commons area some, got some ice coffee (grown on me, dunkins of course), and made it in time for the bus back.

Overall, good day.....definitely just an intro to the city. I honestly can't say I love love Boston like I love love new york, but I remember new york took me a few days wandering by myself figuring out the layout and parts I really enjoyed before I really fell in love (the reason I can't seem to pass up a trip to nyc).

I have to say there's something somewhat annoying about not being able to find places to sit (it was wet) or public bathrooms anywhere (including restaurants, well dunkin doughnuts, but come on people!). Kind of annoying, speaks to a place in my mind---nyc is like this too---that is not only incredibly fast-paced, meaning take food and go........but also largely says "we don't even care enough about you to have a nice place to sit or use the restroom, even when you pay for stuff." Just not so hospitable is all. Guess I'm still searching for "my city," or at least a place that calls out to me and provides everything---walking accessible, not so pretensious attitude, public green space, etc......the list goes on, search for perfection? maybe. Thoughts?