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! ^,~)

Boston Trip ~ Days 11 and 12: Independence Day Celebratin

Again, let me remind you that I don't remember every little detail that happened to me because I didn't write reminder notes for myself, but I'll do my best to relate all the important details.

July 3: I remember really looking forward to this weekend, with it almost being Independence Day and all. It looked like a beautiful day, which was pretty lucky and miraculous, because all of our first week had been so rainy (plus we'd heard that Boston had experienced the rainest summer in years!). In Boston they make a really big deal about this holiday, and every year they have this awesome concert thing at the famous Hatch Shell. You know, that big dome thing? Ever hear of it? Well, that night there was going to be a sort of preview concert, so Annette and I made a batch of spaghetti and packed it in some tupperware for picnicking later.

Now before we went to the concert, we went to the Museum of Science again. (Remember, where we saw the IMAX movie?) Annette and I were really excited, because we were going to catch two shows in one day. One a cool planetarium show (planetariums are so cool!), and the other some sort of laser display show that would play to Beatles music. (If you know the Beatles, then you're one of my best friends!)

Unfortunately, the train went very slow and we were actually stuck somewhere for half an hour, so we missed our planetarium show. *pout* We actually had to wait around for about 3 hours for the Beatles show. Well, we occupied ourselves as best we could. We'd made sandwiches, so we didn't go hungry, only they did get a little squished and messy. *bleh* We also looked around the gift shop, which at a museum is always fun to do. ^,^ To kill some more time, Annette and I walked around this nearby park and came upon a cool playground that had cool spinning structures. They were more fun than a tire swing! Don't worry, soon I'll post some videos of the trip for you to enjoy.

Oh, I nearly forgot! That morning Annette somehow got obsessed with the Animaniacs song "Yakko's world," and she thought she could memorise the entire thing! Well, she did get a good start. She was even able to teach the first verse to me! It was fun singing it over and over. Well, it's a fun song! But it sure was hard. At that point, I considered anyone who could sing that without looking at the lyrics to be a genius.

Eventually it was time for the laser show. Let me say that it absolutely rocked the hay-ouse! I was so impressed with the show, even more than the IMAX! Just so many blinking lights, and they made psychedlic patterns and solid looking shapes, and even made pictures of Beatles characters! And all the songs! Oh, I loved it. Both Annette and I wished at that moment that our dad, Benny, could have seen it with us, because he's a really huge Beatles fan (which is where I get my love for them from).

When the show was finally over, the Hatch Shell was pretty close, so we walked all the way there. Let me tell you, though, that even an hour before the show was to begin, there were literally thousands of people already there! It was sooo crowded! We were pretty hard-pressed to find a good place to lay down our towel, but we got a good view of the stage in the end. Oh, and when we tried getting in, the security guys confiscated our spaghetti forks. We weren't allowed to bring in sharp, pointy objects. I mean, I can understand their concern for safety, but how were we supposed to eat the spaghetti? With our hands?! Actually, that's exactly what we had to do. LOL! Lucky think it was angel hair! Man, our fingers got sooo stained with sauce! But we had a great time anyway. At least this would make it that much more memorable. Plus, funny story, no? ^_~

The concert itself was amazing. Neil Diamond (do you know him? I don't know him really, but I like his music) came on and sang a couple songs for us, and the crowd went wild. We took lots of movies of the show, don't worry. At one point later in the show Annette and I got hungry again, so I left to buy us some pretzels. I got to the concession stand quick enough, but then I got awfully and almost hopelessly lost and had no idea how to get back in! It was dark and confusing with the bright, shiny lights and such huge crowds of people in my way! I asked directions from a couple guards, and thry tried pointing me in the general direction, but I could never find the way! Too many people were blocking it up. Finally, unable to take it anymore, I decided to take a chance and jumped the fence when no one official-looking noticed me. I found our spot easily, and Annette was glad to see me. It turned out I'd been lost for a heart-pumping 20 minutes. To me it had felt so scary, like I'd been lost for hours and hours! I hate being separated from my twin. >_<

Anyway, the rest of the evening was very lovely. I'd missed a lot, but Neil Diamond came back and sang a couple more songs for us, though he messed up on the second one, so he did it again and all his fans sang along with even more gusto then the first time. It was so much fun, plus by that time Annette and I knew the refrain. We thought there might be fireworks in the end, but there actually weren't. That was fine. We went to bed around 11:00 anyway.

July 4: Obviously, the day of the actual Independence Day celebration at the Hatch Shell. Since we'd had such a hard time getting a spot the night before, and since we heard a rumor that the gates would open as early as 4:00 (4 full hours before the show starts! Imagine that!), Annette and I made some meticulous plans for the day. We would spend most of the day at Faniuel Hall (We only passed it on the Freedom Trail, remember?), and then buy a pizza pie at the Famous One as well as some fruits from the Hay Market to snack on. We also made some more sandwiches as back-up. To occupy ourselves, we brought our iPod and a piece of paper on which Annette had written all the words to "Yakko's World." She wanted to learn the whole thing. ^,~

Faniuel Hall was fun. For some reason, there were large crowds of people there. Maybe everyone had thought along the same lines as Annette and me and decided to hang around here before the concert. I don't know. But we window shopped and walked around, enjoying all the hubbub. At one point we sat and had a nice sandwich picnic on the grass, and Annette tried teaching me the second Animaniacs verse. I don't think I concentrated very well, because I was thinking about all we had to do. We got our caricatures drawn afterwards. Don't worry, you'll see a picture of it in another post sometime soon. But I look fuh-nee!

Now unfortunately, not all of our plans went quite so smoothly. When we went to the Hay Market, we saw absolutely no tents or stalls. No one was selling that day. Plus the Famous One was closed, so no pizza pie. ~,~ Well, I guess we couldn't blame them, since it was the 4th of July, but still! We'd been a little bit stupid not to have considered that! However, we went to that burrito place, Boloco's, and got this good deal with a coupon we ripped out of the Metro newspaper. For $3.00, you get the burrito filling in a bowl, without the burrito part. You eat it like a salad. Very tasty. So Annette and I got 2 of those, instead of the pizza.

So we walked to the Hatch Shell, and it was 4:15. Just a quarter of an hour after the gates had allegedly opened. We thought we'd get a great seat this time... but nooooo! Thousands of people were already there! It seemed as if the same amount of people that had showed up an hour early yesterday had shown up 4 hours early today! Just unbelievable. But at least we did get a better spot than last time, something just slightly closer...

So yeah, we spent 4 long hours sitting there. It was actually pretty fun. There was cool music playing while everyone hung out there, real crowd-pleasers. We ate our other sandwiches and these cookies we got with our burritos very slowly. And Annette repeated Yakko's World to herself over and over again. I told her she could teach me the rest of the song when she knew it absolutely by heart. I had fun observing all the types of people that had come to the concert. When it was about an hour to showtime, Annette and I finally broke out our burrito bowls. Man, they were tasty and filling!

Let me say that this concert was pretty much the same as the one from last night, so we didn't see much new. Neil Diamond sang the same songs. But I did see what I'd missed while I was hunting for the entrance. A girl doing the Pledge of Allegiance and some sort of memorial for Abraham Lincoln. Also I think this show was actually televised, so there was more of an exciting energy in the air. And finally we saw the fireworks. How awesome! We picked up our spot and had to get a good spot to see them, but so did everyone else! It was hard being stuck in the middle of a bustling crowd, everyone shoving for a good view. But Annette and I saw them fine. I took plenty of movies of them. They were the best fireworks I'd ever seen, I think. The music that went with the finale was cool!

Then, when it was all over, everyone went home! It was kind of funny in a way, crowds and crowds of people tiredly walking the streets in a huge group after seeing such a show like that. We walked to the train station almost in a dream state, though I wasn't necessarily tired. But I sure was when we got home. We went to sleep at the latest time ever on our trip: 1:00 in the morning!

Boston Trip ~ Days 8, 9 & 10: I can't keep up!

Alright, this is simply ridiculous! It's so hard to write down absolutely everything that has happened to me on my Boston adventures, especially if I have to include each minor detail and have separate posts for every day. My sister and I will be going home in a couple days *yay!* and I'm not really doing a lot today, so I'll take the time to blog a little and paint my adventures in broad strokes. (Metaphorically, you understand. I don't have any real paints with me. That would be messy. ^,~)

June 30: This day was cool because it marked the first entire week we'd spent in Boston, plus it was the last day of another month. Man, how the year is going by! Anyway, I'll skip the mundanities about what we had for breakfast and stuff and say that we visited Mass Art that afternoon. It was the earliest tour we'd gone on yet. Again, we got slightly lost, but lucky for us we came in just as they were about to start the info session. (Funny that it was the first time we were able to do that. BTW, I was right. Info sessions are boring.)

I liked the look of the school a little better than AIB from the day before, but I didn't enjoy the tour very much. Our guide seemed nervous and inexperienced. Her voice quavered constantly, and I thought she was going to cry any second. She just didn't sound very enthusiastic about her school. But that's just my opinion. Anyway, I was glad when the tour was over.

We spent some time at a nearby Barnes and Noble again (though it was a different kind than the one we'd visited before) and I gobbled up 3 more chapters of Dark Infinity. I am soooo loving that book! I could only read three because our week-long train passes ran out at a certain time, so we had to go home. For lunch we bought pizza from Pinos, got new "T" passes and saw more Animaniacs cartoons. Those guys are so funny!

In the evening we took another walk around the reservoir where Annette and I split up, only we went in the other direction from last time. Then we got ice-cream from a new store I'd never been to before (it hadn't been there when we'd gone all those summers). It's called Chill (fitting name, I think). Annette got mango flavor and I got carrot cake with pieces of Reeses chocolate on top. At first my order was mixed up because they thought I wanted it in a bowl, but I eventually got it in a cone like I wanted. It was tasty!

That night we continued to watch Animaniacs (can never get enough of them!), even seeing their entire feature film, Wakko's Wish (except for the first part. For some reason, we couldn't find it!) That was a really good movie, especially since it starred the Warner brothers and sister. I couldn't how great and funny the whole thing was. After watching it, Annette and I stayed up to talk about how much we'd loved it and which parts were our favorites, just as if we'd stepped out of a movie theater! Of course, the ending was a little so-so, but it still made it into my favorite all-time movies list! I can't wait to see it with Adam when we get home! We fell asleep listening to the music that came from Jake's room. He's a great musician! ^,^

July 1: To start the morning, Annette and I talked to our family on Skype for almost half an hour (our brother Adam was quite appreciative of the Animaniacs cartoons we'd sent him ^_^). I'd wanted to go to the theater that day, but we found out online that there was nothing good playing besides UP, which we've seen already. Just Ice Age 3, which we've heard from reviews is stupid, Transformers 2, which we'd like to see but don't want to without seeing the first one, and a couple other movies we've got no interest in.

So instead of going to the theater, we had fun watching trailers of upcoming movies on YouTube. The movie I was most impressed with was 2012. It's directed by the same guy who did Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. Man, that guy is obsessed with the end of the world! But I liked all those movies and think that this one looks awesome too. Check out these links:

Trailer 1

Trailer 2

We had the rest of the day to pretty much do what we pleased, so we decided to go to the Arnold Arboretum, a place we went to last year that has acres of trees and flowers and is really beautiful. Unfortunately it was raining when we got there, so it wasn't much fun walking around all wet. But we found a good shelter and hung out there for a period. It didn't let up for quite a while. Annette and I still had a good time talking and stuff, though. We scratched our initials in the wood of the bench with our apartment key, so we could remember our time there.

Eventually we left the Arboretum and took the train back to the same Barnes and Noble we'd gone to yesterday. We stayed for a couple hours. So relaxing to be safe and dry in a bookstore while it rained outside. I was able to read another 10 chapters from Dark Infinity, though I'm still not even half-way done with that book. I was reading in the kids section, so every so often I'd look up from my book and observe the antics of cute toddlers. I love watching young kids.

I forget what we did later that night, because I neglected to write any notes for the day. In fact, after today, I haven't written any notes at all, because I thought I'd be able to remember everything by myself. Well, I can remember the big things, but not necessarily the other things. Still, lucky I'm doing this in broad strokes.

July 2: Uh, basically the only thing we did on this day was take a tour of MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Maybe you've heard of it. You learn to be a big scientist there. Again, Annette and I got largely lost in the area. So we were around half an hour late or something and the tour started without us, so it seemed like the whole adventure had been for nothing. But lucky for us, after wandering around the campus a while and admiring the buildings by ourselves, we spotted a big group of people following someone. It could only be the tour. So we went there and made ourselves blend in with the crowd and acted as if we'd been there the entire time. Wasn't that hard.

Even though we'd definitely missed a large part of the tour, I really liked it. The school is really large and amazing, with a cool history. The guide told us about the funny pranks MIT was famous for doing, like putting a police car on top of a building or something. He showed us inside these funny looking buildings that, from the outside, looks like strange architecture that belongs in a theme park, but inside is pretty normal. He also gave us a couple good anecdotes about his time as a student. He was a pretty good tour guide to keep the attention of all those people by himself.

After the tour was over, Annette and I had fun walking along Newbury Street, which is famous for it's various stores and restaurants that are fun to window shop at. We got a couple gourmet slices of pizza from the Upper Crust. Spinach, tomato pieces and garlic. Very tasty. Even though I'm not a big fan of tomatoes, on pizza it's delicious.

I honestly don't remember anything that happened after that, but I'm sure we watched some more Animaniacs that evening.