Wild horses

The past two years, I've attended the NCACS conference with my school. This year, the conference is being held in Colorado, which is too far for my school to get to. Next year, after I graduate, the conference is actually going to be held at my school. Of course.

To replace the trip, we tried to plan an outreach sort of thing, where we'd travel around and say hello to some of the other alternative schools. For whatever reason, all the plans lost momentum and eventually fell through. Finally, one stuck. A two-night trip to a state park.

So it is that tomorrow I'll be speeding towards Maryland with a few of my friends, and a few kids I go to school with. There are some cool people going, so I think it should be a pretty good time. My biggest fear is that somebody gets caught doing something stupid and everyone gets stuck in meetings.

But yeah. I'll take photos and stuff. I'll have my cellphone with me, but I don't know if I'll get a chance to recharge, so I'll only have it on for a few minutes a day to check my messages and such. I'll also check my email, and I'll probably twitter some too.

The title comes from where we'll be camping. Apparently it's got wild ponies running around. I may try to ride one.

Meet the Grandparents

I spent Thursday through Sunday in Cape Cod with Rachel. Her grandparents live up there and Rach's parents joined us Saturday.

Things got a bit of a rocky start. We wanted to have more time up there than we if went with her parents, so we decided to take a greyhound out of Philly. We managed to get on the 8:30 bus, but that where things stopped going our way. Basically it was just a run of misinformation and bad luck that had us sit in NYC for four and a half hours.

I was pretty nervous about things, to be honest. I have met Rachel's grandparents before, but seeing people at dinner is different from living with them for four days. Most of the anxiety was from that I knew her grandparents are fairly devout Catholics, and even though I'm always pretty careful on the subject of religion, I was afraid of a misstep.

Fortunately, there weren't very many awkward moments. Though of course I absentmindedly ordered a sausage-and-egg breakfast sandwich Friday morning. I tried to hide the meat in the egg, but it didn't really work. Other than that it was a good time.

Mostly we just drove around and looked at beaches. It was extremely cold and windy, but many of the views were breathtaking. The food was also delicious. The highlight was undoubtedly when I bought my tiny red accordion. Rachel saw how much fun I was having with it and had to pick one up for herself.

It was a great weekend and I'm really hoping I get invited up again. Maybe when it's not so cold.

Daytripping

The bus ride was indeed an adventure! No worries, everything ended up just fine, but it was a memorable experience. Getting down to Philly was not much trouble at all, I rarely had to ask for help and when I did people were generally helpful.

As soon as I got into Philly, I had to get on a train to see my grandmother. Luckily, the surgery went really well, and now all the trickiness is left up to the post-op care. Making sure she doesn't get pneumonia and whatnot. She was happy to see me, it was nice. I also saw my mom, which made me feel guilty, since I got her sick with whatever it was I had a week and a half ago.

Then I got back on the train to go back into Philly to hang out with Rachel. We played around with a polaroid camera, had a paper airplane-building competition with her parents after dinner (I won! I spent first grade wisely, what can I say), then went to draw in the park. After that we went to see RJ's one-act play being put on at Temple. It was really good, the script was obviously quality but the actors did a great job with it. We see two other one-act plays there, one was pretty generic, the other was really good.

Early the next morning I had to get on a bus to go back up to Canada. I got out of Philly fine, the trouble started in NYC. First thing was that I had no idea where I was supposed to be for my bus, and none of the information booths seemed to be manned. I finally found one person who was surprisingly and fantastically competent who helped me.

I was supposed to get out of there on the 11:45, so I guess my first mistake was getting in line only twenty minutes early. The bus got there, twenty minutes or so late because they couldn't find a driver for it, and I was the fifth person too many for its occupancy limit. I had gotten talking with the man behind me, who was also headed to Ottawa, and he talked to the person who seemed to be in charge. She said they were trying to arrange a second bus for us.

Needless to say, the second bus never came. It finally came time for the next bus to arrive, the 1:30, but we weren't even able to get onto that until 45 minutes later. Then they found a second bus, for the people who would have been bumped from the 1:30. I thought, okay, this is a small setback, and everything was fine. We hit Albany all right, I got a tasty ice cream snack, and we switched buses because the other one could hold eight more people or something strange.

We drove and everything was fine. My seatmate was a little creepy, but whatever. I was rocking out to Gogol Bordello's fantastic new album, Super Taranta!, and reviling Iron & Wine's new album, The Shepherd's Dog. It's customary (ahaha look at the pun) to hit the big duty free before crossing the border, so the tourists, dolts, and smokers can buy their related paraphernalia. Keep in mind that when we finally stopped we were literally in sight of the border.

I got off the bus, wandered through the duty free, and got very depressed by the schlock. I got back onto the bus and the bus driver announced that the bus was broken. Some sort of electrical malfunction. He was going to call and get a mechanic, but it would take at least an hour and a half for one to get there. I got back off the bus and bought a large bag of mini-Twix and an orange soda.

Things got a little confused. We drove from the duty free to a gas station, then back to the duty free, and actually went back and forth like that a couple more times. I never found out why. Amidst the conflicting information and the angry protests of my stomach, I decided there wasn't anything productive I could be doing, and fell asleep.

Two hours later I woke up and everyone was getting off the bus. After a moment's panic I deduced that someone had sent us a new bus to get on and that's why people were on the move. I grabbed my stuff and went with them. We finally were over the border at around midnight. Customs had gone fine, way smoother than one would expect, and we arrived in Montreal around 1:30 AM.

It's a popular bus route, the one from and to Ottawa, so a bus runs every hour - before midnight. The next bus to Ottawa wasn't until 5:30. Thus it was that I slept for the first but I'm certain not the last time in a bus station. Luckily the man (he said he had majored in philosophy but worked in pensions) that I had befriended back in NYC was in the same boat, or, well, bus, as me, so I was fairly confident that he would prevent anyone from stabbing me and/or stealing my bag while I was asleep.

I got the 5:30 no trouble, and ended up getting back to the house at around 8:30 - only slightly over 24 hours after I had left Philadelphia. I showered, threw stuff out of my bag and other stuff into it, and went to class.

I'm going back down to Philly this weekend. What are the odds that the bus I'm on would break down again? No really, I'd like to know.

Classes this week have been going all right. Notable things:

Monday, Rabbi Ely Braun came to my religion class to do a lecture on Sukkot and to do a bit of a Q&A thing too. He was awesome. It was great.

Tuesday, I had a philosophy test. It took me 24 minutes to finish it, then I spent the same time over again checking it three times. Then I left.

Tuesday, after Greek, I finally got to see parts of Ottawa that aren't part of the university campus. I had some time before my ride back, and I spent it on a fun and informative walk around the city with Katie. I picked up the new Spoon album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, which I am enjoying so far, from one of the many record stores that seem to be around. I appreciated getting the inside scoop on Ottawa, I'll have to provide a similar service for Philly if she ever visits.

Tomorrow, I have a test in Greek. I've been keeping up pretty well in class and getting decent enough marks on all the homework and quizzes so I'm not too worried. I have a guilty hope that the test will go quite badly for some my classmates, just because there are some people in there that I'd rather not have to see three times a week. We'll see.

Decision/vacation

Two Fridays ago I went down to Washington D.C. to get my student visa and maybe do a little sightseeing. As it turned out, both my mom and I forgot a couple of crucial documents that rendered the trip impractical. However, we did get to go on an insider's tour of the Capitol Building, and that was very cool.

The day after that we went to the Philadelphia Zoo. It was a little more boring than when Rachel and I went, it was hotter out and the animals seemed more lethargic and depressed. The good thing is that I had brought my real camera along and was able to take many pictures. I did go up in the Zoo Balloon for the first time. Normally I have problems with height, but I seem to be able to deal with that in most situations. Overall it was a pretty good day.

Then the next day I was coerced into going up to Canada to my mom's new place to supposedly help her move some books. The drive up was pretty heinous, we left about seven hours after we were supposed to and didn't get in to our hotel until four in the morning. The days we spent in Ottawa I mostly spent on my own walking around the city, mostly on the Trans Canada trail.

Sometime within these days I finally came to a decision on whether or not to go to Canada for school and attend the University of Ottawa. It wasn't an easy decision to come to, as one can imagine, and I really did put a lot of thought into it, and talked to all my closest friends about it. In the end, I came to the conclusion that yes, UOttawa would be a great academic opportunity, but in every other way it would be bad for me.

So, I'm not going.

We're still figuring out exactly what my options are for staying here. I'll probably move in with my dad, but school-wise, things are still hazy. I might do what I did last year, or I might go into a traditional school to finish out senior year, or maybe something else. It's an ongoing discussion.

I had to decide against going, though, and after I did I was amazed that I considered going to be a serious possibility. Yeah, UOttawa would be good, academically, and probably look good on a college application, but I'd be in another country, eight hours from everything I knew. Rightly or wrongly, I've always placed a huge importance on personal relationships. Being socially isolated in another country, living in an area where a large part of the population is not English-speaking, would be horrific.

Going to Canada would have been, in many ways, the easy decision for me. I'd know exactly what I was doing and what I had to do and where I'd live and all of that. By choosing against that, I've complicated things for myself. I guess I'm really just hoping that I did the right thing. I do feel confident that no matter what, things will work out for me.

Anyway.

Before we left Canada, we went to this place called Parc Omega, this awesome drive-through nature reserve where the various animals actually wander up to your car and you can feed them carrots. It was mostly ruminants, but there were some fenced off bears and wolves too. It was awesome.

Last Thursday I went over to Gabo's to celebrate her birthday. It wasn't a real party, she's going to have a big one next week. This was just so we could hang out. I was a little confused, just because of how my mom had been haranguing me about having to get a lot of work done, but I'm not really complaining. We had a good time.

The next day I got in the car with Ben and began heading down to the Outer Banks. We picked up Gus in Virginia and stayed in a motel over night. The next afternoon we arrived. I think we should be getting back Saturday night, so I suppose I'll try to have a trip post up sometime after that.

Stone Harbor

Last Wednesday I hit the road to Stone Harbor with Quiggy and his mother, my eighth grade math teacher. You'd think that would be a more awkward situation for me, but I've had plenty of time to get used to it. According to his mother, on the ride up we spent more or less the whole two-and-a-half hours chattering like a couple of teenaged girls. I am unable now to recall what we talked about. I suspect mostly it was reciting Penny Arcade cartoons to each other.

Quiggy and I are pretty big nerds. Thus it was that the first thing we did when we arrived, after bringing our luggage in, was set up his television and Wii and start playing the copy of Call of Duty 3 that I gave him. Since it was rushed to market in order to be a launch title, it's lacking in features, like multiplayer. So I'd watch him play and make fun of him occasionally, but I make fun of him pretty much no matter what he does.

Other games we played included: Balloon Fight, Bomberman '93,Donkey Kong Country, Mario Kart 64, Metroid Prime 1 and 2, Military Madness, Soul Calibur 2, Super Mario Bros., Super Smash Bros. Melee, Zelda (the first one, Ocarina of Time, and Twilight Princess), and Wii Sports. I wouldn't say that either one of us really dominated in multiplayer. There were some games I was better at, because I had more practice, and some I sucked at. Likewise for Quiggy.

We settled into a routine pretty quickly. Generally, the day proceeded like this: We would wake up. I'd mess around on my laptop and Quiggy on his Wii. Then we'd get some breakfast. We'd mess around, usually playing video games, until lunch. After lunch we'd relax and let the food settle and then we'd hit the beach for an hour or two. Then we'd shower and mess around again until dinner. After dinner was when things most varied. Either we'd play more games, or watch a movie, or go into town.

I like Stone Harbor a lot. It's not very crowded, at least compared to Ocean City, and the downtown is very nice. It has a world-class ice cream parlor (Springer's) and far too many places selling fudge and taffy. It has bookstores, a great toy store, a movie theater, something like three mini-golf places, and really anything else you could ask for. Somehow it avoids feeling really touristy, which is always a plus.

The days seemed to fly by and before too long it was time to head back. Our last night there we went to the Boardwalk, where I resolved that the next time I was there I'd bring something to juggle with. I saw some bereft-looking teen doing a couple of passes, not very well, but he had managed to collect a couple of coins. I could tell that novice though I am, I was at least more skilled, so I figure if I get bored I could do something productive. We also went to an arcade and played some Galaga and some House of the Dead 3.

Our real last day there we went to the beach one last time before lunch. After lunch we packed up the van and headed back, though not before stopping for one last piece of deliciousness at Springer's. In the car we watched Batman Begins, an excellent movie. It conveniently was almost exactly the length of the trip back.

I did manage to pick up a bit of a tan, almost enough to make me look normal. I sunburnt one shoulder (my left one; I don't know how) and my hair is a lighter blonde than when I left. It was a good trip. Quiggy's going to Europe for three weeks soon so I won't see him until later this summer, but I'm thankful for the time we spent together.

Then yesterday I drove up north to visit a college and spend some time with my mom before she leaves for a little vacation. We got stuck in a thunderstorm so we didn't actually get in until earlier today. The college I visited is the same one my sister is attending, which of course makes me want to avoid it, but it actually seems like a nice place. I'm going to have to catch a train tomorrow back into Philly, but I've got no idea when exactly that's happening. All I know is it'll be kind of nice not to do any more traveling for a while.