Thursday, July 9, 2009

Boston Trip ~ Days 13, 14 & 15: Our last days

Um, okay. This is going to be hard for me to recount. Why did I not write more notes?! The details of it are slipping slowly out of my head, like the trip was all a dream! Still, I'm gonna try my best to get all the last few days out of my way. This is definitely a good lesson for me for when I go on future trips. ALWAYS WRITE NOTES! (Or at the very least, find some time to blog every day so I don't get too bogged down. Or maybe I should stop being so awfully prolific!)

July 5: Okay, so obviously this was after all the Independence Day excitement had gone down a bit. Strangely, I think we woke up pretty early, like at 7:00, despite our late night. (Though I could be wrong. No notes. >,<) We touched base with Benny, Shira and Adam to tell them what a fun weekend we'd had so far. That was great. Then Annette and I started making plans for the day. Since it was Sunday, we decided to get bagels from Kupels again, only this time we would take them to the beach. Yeah. Turns out there's a beach in Boston! How cool! You have to go nearly all the way down the Blue Line train, to Revere beach.

So we bought the bagels, and stopped by at the three parks just for a little while. We wanted to go on the tire swing for a ride just once before we had to leave soon. There were still people at the park, so it was a little weird just waiting for our turn after those little kids. Then finally Annette got on and I tried pushing her to make it spin fast, but the swing squeaked and made an awful racket. Unanimously, Annette and I decided we were just too old to be doing this sort of thing (at least with everyone watching) so we left without me getting a try. I was alright with that.

It takes quite a while to get to the beach, so Annette had ample time to teach my the song. If you've been reading up until now, you know the one I'm talking about. I knew the first verse very well, though I kept tripping over the words "Republic Dominican." Oh my gosh, wait a second!!! I completely forgot an important detail about the previous couple of days! My voice was a little hoarse, so the Independence day concerts didn't really do anything to improve my condition. I don't know what caused it, but I was only able to whisper and talk like the Godfather or something. So my singing was completely off. So that added to my trouble of memorising Yakko's World. But thankfully, on this day my voice got steadily better and I was able to memorise the last two verses surprisingly fast! I mean, I didn't get it all in one go. I kept tripping over words and forgot some countries, but I got them in my head.

Let me say that the beach was nothing short of amazing! Well, then again, maybe I'm exagerating. It was a beautiful beach, to be sure. The water was calm, the sand was soft, yellow and fine, and the wonderful blue sky added to its beauty immensely. But... it smelled very fishy. Literally, like fish. There was lots of brown, icky seaweed on the shore that gave a weird odor. But it wasn't so bad, easy to ignore. I didn't let it spoil the day. We enjoyed making bagel sandwiches and talking and enjoying the day. You know, it was really fun because it was the first time Annette and I had ever come to any beach completely by ourselves! All the other times had been with our family. Huh. We changed into bathing-suits and tried out the water. You would probably expect it, but nothing can prepare you for how cold the ocean is!!! Even dipping your feet in! Brr-r-r! Still, I was determined not to be a wimp, and so was Annette.

We went in up to our belly-buttons, and I spotted a bee drowning nearby. Maybe you'd find it extremely weird, but I love all animals and creatures, so I saved that bee. I scooped it out and stood very still. It was a little on the big side for a bee, and I didn't want to bother it and let it sting me. The bee buzzed its wings a bit to dry itself off and started cleaning his face and legs and, well, have you ever seen an insect do its little cleaning routine on an educational movie? It's fascinating. I stood frozen like a tree, even though the water was still very cold and my inaction made it a little harder to bear. I would estimate with my logical mind it took ten minutes for the bee to get dry, but it sure felt like forever. Finally it seemed to feel well enough to fly off of my hand and far away.

I felt really good about saving a life, even a seemingly insignificant one. In my imagination, I bet the bee was pretty grateful to me and will probably tell his bee buddies never to sting me, because I saved him. But then again, I don't think I've ever been stung by a bee anyway. Oh well, it's good to make sure. (Mosquitoes, on the other hand, is another matter entirely. I've been bitten plenty of times by them. Oh wait, I'm going off on a tangent. Darn.)

Um, let's see. We ate bagels, I repeated the song over and over, I went into the water up to my neck (oh, my arms felt like they were absolutely on pins and needles, it was so freezing!) and later we packed everything up and went for ice-cream. The last part was pretty spontaneous. We both got it in a bowl this time. I had Reeses flavor and Annette had strawberry-banana. (Those who know me well might wonder why Annette went for the pink flavor and I didn't. Interesting pattern here... I had carrot cake and candy flavors and Annette's had fruity flavors. Huh.) I think that was kind of it for the day, 'cause I don't remember anything else.

July 6: So on this day, the big thing I remember is that we went on another college tour. Berklee College of Music. (Not to be confused with the Berkley from California. It doesn't have a "y.") My dad Benny went to this school, so we wanted to visit it. Even though I'm not all that interested in a musical career, Annette and I thought it would be cool to go see it.

And I'm glad I did! I would have to honestly say that, since this was the last college tour we went on in this trip, out of all the schools we visited (excepting maybe Emerson), Berklee had the best tour ever! The two tour guides were both guys, for one thing. (Well, the MIT tour guide was a guy, but he doesn't count because he was handling a huge crowd. And I guess one of the tour guides at Emerson was a guy, but we didn't go with him, we went with those two girls, remember?) One of them had a cool hair-style, but spoke a little quiet, though he was still nice. The other one was really friendly and had a clear voice, confidence, and a sense of humor. Unsurprisingly, this guy stands out in my memory. His name was Alex, and he said he liked Mountain Dew a lot. (I just go with regular water myself. I just noted his Mountain Dew addiction because an interesting trait makes for interesting people.)

These guys sure showed us what a cool school Berklee is. I'm sure that if I was at all interested in music, this would be the place for me. Fun facts: Did you know that music is the second most lucrative business after computer related stuff? And that Quincy Jones and Alan Silvestri went to Berklee? Pretty neat. When the group separated, I was glad that we went with Alex. Near the end of the tour, he took us to this neat recording room, and a friend of his talked about her experience at Berklee. She was kind of into business and production. Really a nice personality. (I think later Alex said that he had a crush on her that she'd never know about, but I don't know if he was telling the truth or teasing.)

After the tour, Annette and I went to a pizza place we remembered going to one time with our family, Little Steve's Pizza, or something. We just ordered plain slices. It was weird though. The guy running the place was a big Italian guy and had... I don't know, a gravelly voice? I'm not sure how to describe it, but he had a voice kind of like the Godfather. And it wasn't like my voice was, because I was sick; this guy had that Italian sound. I don't know, for some reason after leaving that place, I was pretty relieved to get out. The guy scared me a little. (Don't worry, I didn't show that I was in front of him.)

I'm not really sure what we did after that, but I know that later that night Annette and I started seeing Michael Jackson's old music videos on YouTube. I hadn't seen any of them before besides Thriller. He is really a great entertainer. Er, sorry. Was. I mean, I knew it already because I love his music, but it's so cool to see how he danced and acted in those short movies. He pretty much invented MTV! Um, I don't really have a closer for this, so I'll just go to the next day.

July 15: Er, he he. It looks like I'm unintentionally being extra prolific in this post. Well, why should I be embarrassed about it? This is my blog, isn't it? And I'm sure I'm not the only one who writes blogs this long. (Of course, I haven't really read any of those. I'm not sure who would, come to think of it...) But lucky for you, I can honestly barely remember this day.

I do remember that Annette and I had wanted to go back to the Arnold Arboretum, but for some reason it looked very gloomy and rainy again, just like how we'd come there. We didn't want a repeat of last time, so we didn't end up going. ~,~ Too bad.

One of the things I know we did was that in the evening, we went to Presto's Pizzaria, and instead of pizza we ordered their spaghetti. The servings were very generous! And they gave us yummy garlic bread too! I love Italian food so much! Especially pasta! Give me pasta any day and I'm happy. (Though not every day. I like variety.) And during the day, I finally got the whole Yakko song and Annette and I had fun seeing who could do it faster, like Yakko does.

I also think Annette and I climbed up our special tree some time in the day and sat on a thick branch, just talking. Like now that our adventure was soon to be over, what were we going to do with our lives? Very deep stuff like that. I love those kind of talks with my twin. Oh, and while we were talking, this guy came by with his dog, saw us up there and gave a chuckle, saying he didn't see a lot of kids climbing trees anymore. Pretty inspirational, he said. Then he went away. Huh. Maybe he's right. I love climbing trees. Too bad not many other people do too.

Besides those things, I can't be sure of anything. The whole day was like a dream. Um, we got a little started packing for the way home, putting away all our clothes, except for the ones we were going to wear tomorrow. That's it. Now give your eyes a rest before you have to read my next post. You deserve it. (Especially if you read this whole thing in one go! ^,~)

2 comments:

Q said...

I love climbing trees! Especially with a book. That's the greatest.

Rainy said...

A Mountain Dew addiction huh? The same way I'm addicted to orange juice :^)

I've never got stung by a bee. I never want to! I'd rather just watch them in a distance, I never go to close. That's cool what you did.

Good-job on getting the song right, I know most of it, but I always get mixed up when he goes to Africa! After that it's just a few words here and there. I think my baby brother knows all of it by now! Little genius. . .