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September 3, 2005
You know...
...I'm really trying to come up with a good excuse for not posting for a while. It turns out I don't have one. Things have been rough for a couple of weeks, but that's really no excuse at all. As hard and as crazy as it's been there have been enumerable points of light amidst the hardship. And it’s really been a shame that I haven't spoken about it yet. The challenge has been... uhhhhh... a challenge... but so much fun so far. The people in my program have been so awesome so far, and, despite my misanthropic attitude, I've managed to have made friends.
I think I've missed this whole past week, which is a total waste. I was obsessed with trying to figure out how to post pictures that I lost sight of the opportunity to document the experiences I was going through, for better or for worse... which is what this is supposed to be all about, really. Yes?
Yes. This week was pretty cool. I'm not sure what they called Week 4 of the Summer Institute, but I call it Adventure Week. Day 1 we went to the Wiccahisson Valley, which is, incidentally, spelt wrong (so don't Google it), and a really neat place... yes the best I've got right now is "neat." We hiked through the woods and identified trees, shrubs, and the herbaceous layer; herbaceous basically means poison ivy (Rhus toxicodendro {italicized}, dumbass jerk!). We were all assigned a plant in one of the preceding categories and had to speak about it in the field. Mine being Quercus alba {italicised} i.e., white oak. Glorious tree.
Day 2. Valley Forge. Home of George Washington’s winter camp, year, 1777, +- a year. History is not my strong suit. Sorry, Pops. Great variety of stone and plant life, by elevation (and the deer browse line's a bitch!); learned an extensive amount of plants by given name, Latin name, and seeing the damn thing.
Day 5. Drunk... ooops... fill in later days 3–5. Had too much fun at Sally's B-day party, tired. Played darts, mostly won... lost a few, had a kick with some new friends; Adam, Doug, Sally, Jen, and quite a few jerks who aren't in are program who turned out to be pretty cool... who knew... palled up with the T.A. of our Media class (drawing) so hopefully will get an easy 'A', but unlikely... still working on the graphite skill...
Until we meet again...
Posted by austin at 3:12 AM | Comments (10)