Arrivée!

So I'm in France now! Weird.

This will be brief because I don't think I've ever been more tired in my life, but I wanted to update everyone. After my 27 hours straight of travelling (Boston to Iceland, Iceland to Paris, TGV to Nantes, car ride to Bois de Cené), I met the Badaud family and got shown around their house and expansive yard. Such a yard could not possibly exist in the Silicon Valley, where acreage half that size is commonly a million dollars. Anyway. They have lots of chickens, ducks, birds, a cat, fish, a pond, and a swimming pool. I then was shown around the family furniture store, where I met lots of family members whose names I will not remember. Then we all had dinner together, along with my host sister's best friend, who talks too fast for me to understand. (The Badauds clearly understand what it's like and speak slowly and clearly, to my relief.)

That's all for today. I really like this family and they seem practical and smart, like our brains can work on the same wavelength. I am exhausted and grumpy from travelling, surstimulée from all the French and different things like backward lightswitches, weird toilets, and cheese for dessert, but I have really high hopes right now for how this year will go. I think the Badauds and I will do just fine. :)

Berkeley

On Tuesday, my brother Alex and I drove up to Berkeley, where he goes to college. We spent the day moving him into his new house (shared with three roommates). We had to reassemble his bed and assemble his new ikea desk. I've discovered that ikea furniture is fun, and that non-ikea furniture that is old and lacking instructions is difficult to put together. But in the end, we succeeded with the help of our good friend Tim, and spent the rest of the day organizing Alex's things (whether he likes it or not...), getting ribs for lunch, and playing with his roommate's kids, who were visiting for the day. They are about seven and three, extremely energetic, and left us absolutely exhausted. To reward ourselves for a move well-done, we found a Thai restaurant conveniently only a block away from Zendo (the new house). Thai is pretty much our favorite, and they had decent pad thai and curry, though not exceptional.

Zendo is only a block from San Pablo Avenue, a very downtown-ish street with lots of restaurants and small shops that runs all the way through Berkeley. It's about three miles from campus, but Alex has a bike and will do fine. I was particularly charmed by the area: very much like San Francisco in weather and small, odd houses and shops, but cleaner, nicer, and smaller.

On Wednesday, we ran errands in the morning, buying the few things we'd forgotten to bring with us, and were on campus by 10:00. I quickly discovered that asking my brother, of whom I am very fond, to show me around was a mistake. He is a math major with a minor in computer science, so he knows where exactly two buildings are: Evans Hall and Soda Hall. We soon resorted to calling Tim, who is an eagle scout and therefore must be better oriented than Alex, and proceeded to climb lots of trees while we waited for him. Berkeley, I was surprised to discover, is actually a very green campus. I didn't mean “green” as in environmentally friendly, though I suppose that could also be true. With its fog and cooler weather, it is a far lusher place than Sunnyvale, covered in beautiful grass, ivy, and sprawling California oaks that are perfect for climbing. This combined with the beautiful, old, impressive Roman-style architecture left me quite visually struck by the university.

When Tim arrived, we followed him around to find all his classes for this semester, as classes began on Thursday and Tim is an organized sort of fellow. This provided me with some sense of having seen lots of the campus, though I was quite disoriented and don't know how much I saw or didn't see. Then we decided to try getting into the main stacks again, having been rejected the first time because I lack a Cal ID. Seeing lots of books is a must for every college tour, I believe, because it makes me very excited and says a lot about the school. So we walked around the library for awhile until we found an information desk, and asked if I could have a visitor's pass. Actually, Tim did the asking, since he is a redheaded, harmless-looking nerd who is also very good at talking to people. Alex and I also look fairly innocent but lack the necessary coercion skills. The guy at the desk told us helpfully which other desk to go to, and that we should sound more like we had a research project and less like it's a tour. So Tim decided we were researching LBJ (a favorite topic of his), and we got ourselves a visitor's pass.

Berkeley does indeed have lots of books. Alex was astonished that it was not above and beyond anything I'd seen previously. This, I explained to him, is because I have now done eight college tours, while he hasn't done any. All colleges have big libraries. Some colleges have enormous libraries. I believe the biggest ones I've seen were at McGill, Minnesota, and Berkeley, and I do not think Berkeley is the winner, though it is difficult to estimate on that scale. Anyway, we spent awhile wandering around the stacks and then went for lunch at La Burrita, a great Mexican place right next to campus. By this point all of us were a little tired and I was a little dehydrated, so we split and went home. At 2:45 I decided I could still beat the rush hour traffic home instead of waiting for 9 or 10 at night, so I said goodbye to my favorite brother and came home to wish my mother happy birthday.

My overall impression of Berkeley: Wow. I was not expecting to like it so much – not expecting that the city would be so charming, or the campus so beautiful, or that it would feel enough different than home that I could stomach living there. But it does! It is all of those things, and if there was a bat's chance in hell I could get in, it might well threaten my plans for Madison. Fortunately for Madison, my GPA and test scores are above average for Berkeley, but below average for going to Berkeley from my sickeningly competitive high school.

In other news, T minus 5 days until I fly to Boston. T minus 7 until I fly to Paris.

Summer 2012! French Camp, Wisconsin, and CU Boulder

Well, I suppose I should say something about the 6 weeks of vacation I just had. Here's an outline, so you don't get confused: On June 24, I flew to Minneapolis where my aunt lives for a day, and the next day went off on the long bus ride to Bemidji. There, I spent 4 weeks at French camp, canoeing through the Voyageur National Park and the BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area). After camp, I went home with my dear friend Solange, who lives at Hackensack, the neighboring French camp to our Voyageur. (Except by the time we got there, it was second session and had become Italian camp.) I stayed with her and her wonderfully hospitable family for 3 days, until my parents picked me up in the Cessna and we continued on to Wisconsin. We stayed at my aunt and uncle's cabin on Lake Wyandock for one week – just like we've done every summer since I was old enough to not drown (maybe 4 years old). Then, on the return journey, we stayed 2 days in Boulder, Colorado, where a good friend of my dad lives. He was in Atlanta on business, but let us stay in his house while I checked out the University of Colorado, Boulder. We returned home from all that on August 2^nd.

As you can see, I've been busy. Now that you have a handy-dandy outline, I'll do my best to flesh it out a little.

French camp is incredibly hard to describe. I think (I hope) most people experience something like it at least once in their lives, be it summer camp, band, theatre, any really good group of people working for a common cause. Voyageur has really become my family. Even though there are new people every year and some people don't return for a 2^nd (or 3^rd, or 4^th) year, it just becomes a nebulous and flexible family. I spend the other 11 months of the year feeling homesick for camp, and then one blissful month where my only complaint is the number of mosquitoes and the fact that all the tents are broken. Imagine loving something so much, and then trying to describe it to your friends back home, who have no frame of reference for it. It's tough.

We spend the first week at base camp, learning how not to die in the woods. We learn how to canoe, make fires, pitch tents, use the camping stove, pee in the woods, and sing Voyageur songs. This is my third year at camp, and I'm sort of a hardcore camping fiend, so I spent a lot of this time hanging out with my new idol, a counselor named Paul. He likes fixing things, and is actually a genius at it. You don't need to be a genius to fix things, but if you saw how creatively and effectively Paul does it, you would agree with me. Anyway, base camp is pretty dilapidated in parts, because no one ever has the time to fix it, and I'm pretty sure we're the only CLV camp without a handyman/janitor/fix-it sort of guy on staff. (CLV is Concordia Language Villages, that runs 15 or so different language camps including Voyageur, where I go, and Hackensack, where Solange lives.) So I followed Paul around during week #1 and fixed things. I've never had more fun during a week 1 of Voyageur, which I usually think of as the Boring Week.

We also do lots of team bonding, usually the last few days of week 1. It's very important to be good friends with your brigade and to trust each other, because in the woods, you put your life in your friends' hands. If your friends are stupid or thoughtless campers, there are thousands of accidents I could think of just waiting to happen. My brigade was called Montreal, and it was probably the best brigade I've ever had. We were all there for 4 weeks, not 2. We were small – 6 campers and 4 counselors. (If you are surprised at the high ratio, remember that we spend all this time in the woods and it is far more dangerous than most summer camps.) For the first time I've seen, we had an even gender ratio – I've been in 2 brigades in previous years that were all girls, and that is way too much estrogen for me. And no one was there who thought they were going to Princess camp, our neighboring French camp across the lake where they live in châteaux and wear dresses and make-up every day. We always get a few of those, and it's tough for them to get used to Voyageur. Three of us were in our third year, and the other three had no difficulties acclimating to the woods. It was amazing. I started to realize during the last one or two days of week 1 that we were all in for something special.

Week 2 is spent in the Voyageur National Park. This was my 4^th time in the VNP, because last year we also spent weeks 3 and 4 in the VNP due to not having enough counselors to split us into two groups, and therefore being too large a group to be allowed in the BWCA. So many of the lakes and islands we passed were familiar to me, and brought back a lot of really good memories. I can't really go into a whole lot of detail as to what we did without typing up my whole 61 page packet of letters I sent home to my family, describing every single campsite and the exciting events of each day, but I can describe a typical day.

We usually wake up quite early, somewhere around 5:00am. In previous years this hasn't always been the case, mostly because I've always been with a fantastic counselor named Louis who really likes sleeping. But this year Louis didn't show up because he got kidnapped by pirates (or decided to become a paramedic, but I like my story better). So we got up early, packed up the camp in 30 minutes to an hour, canoed for another 30 minutes to an hour, ate breakfast on some rock sticking out of the lake, or in the canoes, or on shore, or wherever. Then we canoe until around lunch-time, when we find a campsite, pitch the tents and a tarp, and eat lunch. Then we usually took a siesta during the hottest hour of the day, went swimming afterward, and had the last hours of daylight to make dinner, work on projects and homework (since 4 weeks of French camp is technically a year's worth of high school, we have lots of homework), and write letters. We'd eat dinner watching the sunset, which is glorious without exception in the North Woods. Then we'd run into our tents for the night to escape the mosquitoes, and my tentmates and I would discuss philosophical subjects for several hours while the counselors yelled at us every 30 minutes to be quiet and go to sleep. They have a theory that I never sleep, because I'm always the first one up in the mornings AND stay up all night talking with Solange about philosophy. Jean-Luc has a suspicious theory that I secretly have an alarm, because I couldn't possibly be waking up so early on my own. Teehee. The real secret is just that I sleep incredibly well in tents, especially with all the sunlight and exercise we get. At home, I need almost as much sleep as a normal person, but in the woods 6 hours is more than enough.

Last night in the VNP, at Lake Mukooda. The sunsets are always like this:

That's how week 1 went. It was magnificent. We came back to base camp and bid a tearful goodbye to the 2-weekers (but they were all in the other brigade, so my group wasn't too teary). Then we had International Day, known as I-Day, a phenomenon that I've heard lots about but never went to because we were always in the BWCA. This year they changed the schedules, so we got to go. It's where all of the Concordia Language Villages get together at Waldsee (German camp) and, well, celebrate our international-ness. There's games and songs and food and lots of people wandering around speaking different languages. This year, unfortunately, we had the “rain plan” version, because the other camps are under the impression that villagers will melt in the rain. This meant that we went to Princess camp instead, along with 2 or 3 other camps – so that if it started raining, everyone could fit inside. There were other mini I-Days at Waldsee and Norwegian camp, I think. It was interesting and had some very good moments, like when we realized we'd forgotten to make a Voyageur flag, so Michel ran up onstage holding a rain jacket as our flag. It also had a few moments that I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at: Michel, Ousman and I had a conversation with a few princesses from Spanish camp that went roughly like this:

Princesses: “Hey, are you guys Voyageurs? Do you really not shower for a whole month?”

Us: “Yup, it's true. But we swim in the lake.”

Princesses: “Eeeewww. That's GROSS. Do you guys really eat squirrels?”

Us: “Yup. Well, not only squirrels. But they certainly supplement our diet.” (There's a rumour that Voyaguers all hunt and eat squirrels, and we do our best to keep this rumour going. This year I tried to make it true, but squirrels are fast and really hard to catch!)

Princesses: “REALLY?”

Us: “Yeah. Actually, see these leather nametags we have? That's squirrel skin.”

Princesses: “...Are you just pulling my leg?”

Us: “No, really.”

Princesses: “...Yeah right. Liars.”

So it kind of made me happy because they were SO naïve and princess-y, and it kind of made me sad because after they decided we were lying to them, they didn't believe ANYTHING we'd told them about our lifestyle, and most of it had been true. It also made me sad because they were just so catty and mean, which is unfortunately how a lot of people are in real life, but not at Voyageur. At Voyageur I try to forget about real life, which is pretty cool most of the time but not as awesome as camp at all, and they were a sad reminder of the sort of person from real life that I try not to associate with.

But my favorite part about I-Day, besides Michel's rain jacket flag and seeing Louis, the counselor who got kidnapped by pirates, was the closing ceremony. We all walked to Waldsee for a big closing ceremony with all the camps, because Minnesota is weird and had decided not to rain all day. Each camp had a presentation on the theme of “Live together, Speak together.” The Voyageurs are famous for having bizarre presentations that leave people talking about it far longer than any of the well-rehearsed dances from other camps. It's also a tradition to come up with it 5 minutes before performing, but this year we actually rehearsed it three times the day before.

Dahveed, the dean, came up on the circular stage with a giant frying pan, hit it three times with a metal pole, and yelled “VOYAGEURS!” The Voyageurs, hidden all around the circle of listeners, yelled it back to him. He then yelled “A L'ATTAQUE!”, we yelled it back, and ran up on stage. We began to sing a chaos of 3 different songs, stopped, yelled at each other, began again with 2 different songs, stopped, and began fighting each other with fists and large styrofoam swords. Then four “demons” dressed in black covered the mob with a giant tarp, and Bras-Forts (with HATE and IGNORANCE written on his back in duct tape) came out to the theme of Darth Vader, and said something along the lines of “bwahaha, I've won!” Then tiny, cute Aicha came out all dressed in tie-dye. She handed flowers to the demons and started a chant: “Vivez ensemble, Parlez ensemble,” which means “live together, speak together.” So all of us came out from under the tarp, wrapped Bras-Forts in it, and carried him offstage, dancing to some catchy Quebecois rap. Everyone loved it, even if they didn't really understand it.

After I-Day, we had “credit weekend,” where we go into town and get to buy new supplies – say, for example, if you were like me in my first year and brought a rain jacket that wasn't actually waterproof, you could buy a new one at Gander Mountain. Minnesota is an odd place – it can be blazing hot, and then some clouds roll in and it pours buckets of rain for several hours (while still being fairly hot, temperature-wise) and then suddenly disappears and the sun comes out. That is a very normal day in Minnesota. Anyway, so credit weekend was fun. We all bought “Gander bands” at Gander Mountain, like Silly Bandz but with animals. I had a deer and a Jean-Luc-osaurus that was probably supposed to be an eagle. We terrified the customers at Target and then ate at a Chinese Super Buffet where we met a really funny man who recognized us from I-Day.

Finally we left for the “immense voyage.” 7 hour drive up to Canada. Voyageurs have the best road trips ever. We spend all 7 hours listening to catchy French, African, Cajun, or Quebecois music, usually singing along. In Canada, we visited Old Fort William for two days, which is a recreation of a fur trading fort. The first day we took a tour and wandered around the fort, seeing what there is to see. Everyone was supposed to do a historical project on something at the fort, be it the canoe-makers (which I did two years ago), a historical figure like cartographer David Thompson (which I did last year), or the doctor, the Ojibwe women, the tin-smith, the farmers, etc. I don't actually need school credit, I just do camp for fun, so I wasn't stressed out about doing the project or not and didn't even choose a subject the first day, preferring instead to wander the fort and talk with all the interesting people who work there.

At Old Fort William, there are certain events that repeat every day, because they relive the same day in June, 1815. Every day there's the arrest of the blacksmith, Alexander Fraser, and also a "fire" in the square that we helped put out with this big old-fashioned firetruck:

Day 2 is spent in the private Fort William library, which is not open to the public except if you pay them. I LOVE this library because I'm a complete history nerd. It is chock-full of original sources. You can read actual diaries of important men in the fur trade, letters they wrote, etc. I made a beeline for the “Bio files” which are kept on hand to educate the staff of Old Fort William. If you are assigned to be Alexander Fraser for a day, you'll go to the library and read the bio file on Alexander Fraser so you'll know who you are, how to act, and what background to fill in if the tourists ask you personal questions. I researched Lord Selkirk and the Red River scandal, which was a fascinating part of the war between the two big fur trade companies, the Compagnie de la Nord-Ouest and the Hudson Bay Company. I'm such a nerd. I could live in that library.

After visiting the fort, we drove back down to the BWCA, where we spent the remainder of the second two weeks. Picture a daily schedule roughly like that of week 2, except the days were often longer, sometimes canoeing for 7 or 8 hours a day. We also added portages: we didn't do a single portage during week 2, but we averaged about 4 portages a DAY while we were in the BWCA, because we took a route that led through the interior lakes, which is beautiful and isolated and you'll never see another canoe group, but is sort of a pain in the shoulders (literally) to get to. For the first time I learned to portage a canoe by myself, and did so for almost every portage. The canoes we have, let me add, are the oldest and heaviest type of alumacraft imaginable. They're about 80 lbs. per canoe. Woohoo!

My brigade for this second two weeks was called Les Hipster Canards (the Hipster Ducks), and we were almost the same as Montreal except we lost two boys, added one girl, and lost two counselors. It was a lot of fun, and we were also a very tight group. We played lots of aqua-Ultimate (frisbee in the lake!) and loved to climb trees and big rocks. Fortunately we stayed pretty close to the other group, Les Barbes de Plusiers Jours (the Stubble) and met with them often to hang out during the day, since we were all good friends at this point.

It passed too quickly, as always. I don't want to write about all our farewell rituals, because I'm still in denial that I've ever left. So soon I was with Solange at Hackensack, where her grandparents own the land and rent it to Concordia, and her dad is the handyman. I helped her and her family with the daily bathroom cleanings, the recycling, and the brush clearing. It was really fun, and I envy Solange for having grown up at a camp with so many things to do every day. Soon my parents came and stayed for a day with us at Hackensack in one of the guest cabins. They came unannounced, as my father is prone to overestimating the time it takes to get anywhere, so fortunately for them, Solange's family was flexible and welcoming. The last morning at Hackensack, Solange and I made pancakes over a campfire just because we missed cooking over a fire.

The week in Wisconsin was relaxing and lovely. My aunt is a terrific cook, so we always eat like kings, and though my cousins did not make it up, my uncle came just for a weekend, so it was nice to catch up with family. Every day went roughly like this: wake up, spend the morning reading (I got through Catch-22, A Spell for Chameleon, Almost French, and Catcher in the Rye during just that week), go running around 11 for 5 miles with my dad, come back and swim across the lake and back, eat lunch, and spend the rest of the day swimming, learning to windsurf, cooking, canoeing, or reading. I was very active and got to keep my canoe muscles for a little while longer, but nothing was required or stressful. It was really a vacation for my brain, which didn't have to do anything the entire week.

Then came the CU Boulder visit. I'm not going to do a whole long write-up about it like I did for the other colleges, mostly because this post is already far too long. But I will just say that it's a beautiful place to live, very active and intense, where everyone goes skiing and mountain-climbing on the weekends and bikes everywhere in town. The college is a good school with lots of options – the sort of thing I'm looking for. The campus is beautiful. I was impressed, but didn't fall in love with it like I did with Madison, Seattle, and McGill. I think my biggest problem was just that, coming from the North Woods, I couldn't possibly imagine living in a place with so little green. It's just too desert-ish. But it's a good safety school for me, and I wouldn't mind going there at all. However, I'll probably apply early to Madison and possibly Seattle and see what happens. I'm too lazy to apply everywhere, especially since I already think I know where I want to go.

Well, that just about covers it. My 6 weeks away from home. It's actually the longest period of time I've ever been away from home, even though I've been doing 4 weeks away just about every summer for 7 years or so. Now I have a month at home before a much longer vacation, and so far I've been using every day to prepare. Getting all my paperwork in order, insurance, bank card, getting a new computer, figuring out what to pack, etc. etc. Turns out, moving abroad isn't very easy. But I'll be a pro after this.

Spring break: Backpacking and More College Tours

Backpacking:

I've been backpacking in one form or another many times before, but this was special – just my friend Chandra and me, alone in the woods, without parents or other guides to save us from any mistakes we might make. She's 19 and I'm 17. In another day and age it would've been common for us to be backpacking around Europe for months, instead of a short 4-day backpacking trip only an hour's drive from home. But we've grown up in the era of too much security and not enough responsibility, and it seemed a little bit scary. I am incredibly thankful that we have reasonable parents who've let us grow up, and not in the glass bubbles some of our peers seem to be raised in.

We'd been planning for weeks, and left fairly early that Saturday morning, with all our things packed in the back of Chandra's tiny car, and we drove for what seemed like hours up the winding road to Henry Coe National Park. We came in the middle of a bike race, so driving up the hill was a slow and scary obstacle course. When we finally got to the top and found parking, we got our camping permit from the rather astonished volunteer rangers (at the mileage and length of our trip – I guess they're more used to day hikers) and set off into the wilderness. We ate lunch maybe an hour later, on a green and flowering riverbank, absolutely gorgeous like everything in Henry Coe in April. By afternoon we had already passed our last human beings as we continued down Poverty Flat Road to Arnold's Horse Camp. First day in, and I already messed up with the navigation – we missed the turn-off to Shafer Corral, but we continued down the road another way, and I do not think the distance was significantly different. We were quite pleased with ourselves when we got to our campsite for the night – I think it proved to us that we could do it, we were in shape enough and determined enough to master anything Henry Coe could throw at us. Gleefully, we explored the creepy old house on the hillside, only slightly concerned that the roof would fall in on us as we poked around the wrecked interior. At first I was very unsettled, as the whole house seemed like someone had just up and left. The mattresses were still on the bed frame, though long since eaten and torn apart by countless rodents. A wire chair remained on the porch, looking out at the river. But after we'd explored each room and been satisfied with its vacancy, I was no longer disturbed but charmed by it. We were further charmed by the dilapidated outhouse with a toilet that no longer connected to a tank – we could see daylight through the bottom of the toilet, and decided maybe that wasn't the best place to do our business. We camped down by the river, within sight of the old house but fairly far away from it. I attempted to carve Chandra a spoon, as she had forgotten to bring hers, with limited success. We cooked thai chicken for dinner, admired the stars, read Act I of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aloud together, and slept. I slept like a log in our cozy tent, far warmer than our last year's backpacking trip in February; Chandra was less fortunate in her sleeping ease, but was at least warm enough.

The creepy old house:



Day 2: Arnold's Horse Camp to Mississippi Lake. At first the road and the creek were synonymous, which was lovely. We decided not to change into our watershoes and just get our boots wet in the hopes that they'd keep us cool during the rest of the day. Soon the road turned up sharply away from the creek, and we began the grueling climb up Bear Mountain. Each peak we thought the last – we saw no higher peaks around it and assumed we could go up no further, but there was always yet one more peak beyond the one we had just crested. Water supplies and morale dwindled, directly proportionally. (t = -k(water); water = k(morale)) Our differences in body type began to be apparent, as I could not last forever with a pack on my back, and Chandra could not go uphill as fast as I wanted to. I began to race up to a bit of shade, throw off my pack in relief, and wait for her to join me, at which point the process would repeat. When we finally crested the last peak and could see all the park unfold around us, as if we ruled every last solitary mile of it, we rejoiced – or at least, I did. Chandra wasn't feeling well enough to rejoice at much of anything. We still had a long ways to go before we hit a stream, and I wouldn't let us take a significant break, and certainly not lunch, until we found it. Chandra began to run out of steam. I, oblivious, continued powering through, in that looks-impressive-but-after-the-adrenaline-wears-off-I'm-going-to-fall-over sort of way. I began to ration my water. Fortunately, she kept drinking, aware that dehydration + colostomy = disaster. Unfortunately, it didn't work – some combination of lack of food, rest, and water made her intestines knot up, a very painful malady she had experienced once before in the hospital, shortly after surgery. We finally reached the stream and pulled out lunch. She couldn't eat, and curled up in a ball around her stomach. I began to notice what I'd been too tired to see before, that she was really not okay. Problem. I gave it a good hour, hour and a half, and then insisted that we had to continue, had to reach camp before sundown. Stoically, she agreed, and we continued along the now much more pleasant path to Mississippi Lake. The path and the creek crossed each other many times, and both were lined with pale green grasses and tiny bright yellow flowers. Chandra couldn't enjoy the view, and I too became increasingly aware of her pain as we went on.

Here's the view from the top of Bear Mountain. You can see the trail winding down below on the exposed ridgeline. No shade, no water, no flat trail.



We finally reached the lake. I set up camp and Chandra retreated to the tent, hardly saying a word. She had the sort of look on her face that was painful to even look at, knowing what her insides must be doing to her. She said she wasn't hungry, so I made myself a little bit of bean soup (unappetizing – I could have improved it with jerky and cheese, but wasn't in the mood) and set up my own sleeping bag outside to avoid being thrown up on. Most campsites are only campsites in name, small flat spaces you can imagine pitching a tent on, but Mississippi Lake actually had an outhouse and a picnic table which I slept on to stay out of the morning dew. It wasn't bad – I've always wanted to sleep under the stars, and it was warm enough, but I still stayed awake a long time listening to Chandra vomit and wandering what on earth I was going to do. I wrote in my pocket notebook to sort out my thoughts:

Plan A) Chandra gets better and we continue in the morning as planned

Plan B) Wait another day for it to subside (Chandra's one previous experience with her malady had lasted 15 hours; she expected this one to be comparable) and to rehydrate, then hike out. (Advantage: no splitting up. Disadvantage: Parents would freak, not knowing where we are, I wouldn't leave on time for college touring.)

Plan C: I hike back to HQ tomorrow, leaving Chandra here by Miss. Lake. I then either drive her car as far in along the road as possible, meeting her at... Los Cruzeros? Or I drive until I find cell phone reception and get help. (Advantages: getting Chandra out faster. Disadvantages: splitting up, too many variables (who gets the pump? Etc.), sounds dangerous.)

I tried to think coldly, logically, pushing away my fear for my friend, and, equally, my desire to be heroic, the side of me that wanted to hike the 12 miles out to base camp all in one day to rescue my friend. The conclusion I came to (after talking it over with Chandra, in one of her less vomit-filled moments) was that, out of plans B and C, B was the better one, because of the dangers of splitting up. We go into the woods in partners for precisely situations like these, so I could take care of Chandra when she was sick, and vice versa if that had happened.

Predictably, the night was restless. I woke in the grey predawn light, and tried to care about the next few hours, but was too cold and sleepy. But when I heard Chandra stirring in the tent, I was suddenly wide awake, aware that in the next few minutes, I'd know which plan it would have to be. She unzipped the tent. As soon as I saw her face, I thanked all the gods I've heard of and don't believe in, and several that I've never heard of. Plan A! She felt better!
She later told me she'd woken at 4 or 5 in the morning, her intestines no longer in knots and her colostomy bag starting to fill. She cleaned up her vomit with water, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper, though (impressively, I must say) she'd gotten most of it into the plastic gallon ziplock bags she'd brought for her austomy bags. We had celebratory hot drinks and oatmeal, and started off on Day 3.

Mississippi Lake in the morning:



Day 3: Miss. Lake to Los Cruzeros

Uneventful morning, except for meeting two young backpacker men who, amusingly, hadn't yet learned the backpacker etiquette that says you are ridiculously friendly to everyone. They seemed slightly taken aback with my presumption that we would stop to discuss where we'd been, where we were going, and how beautiful the weather was. We also found a giant metal ball in a field. We still have no idea what it was. (There are more pictures on facebook!)

Lunch at Willow Ridge Spring. A very pleasant afternoon (especially since we had about 1,000 feet of altitude to lose between the spring and Los Cruz) that heated up as we went, until we arrived sweaty and victorious at Loz Cruzeros, our campsite for the night. The afternoon was still quite young, and we spent much of it happily submerged in the icy river, sunburning ourselves. We only put on pants when some mountain bikers showed up unexpectedly, but I don't think they noticed us until we were clothed. Lazy, well-earned afternoons in the sun – I wish my whole life consisted of them. Los Cruz is also my favorite campsite in Henry Coe, even though last year I had a nasty experience with a tick on that same riverbank.

Los Cruz, from high up on the trail:



Day 4: Loz Cruz to HQ

Largely pleasant, uneventful day. Anything seems doable after nearly being defeated by Bear Mountain, I suppose. We didn't make it out by the overly optimistic 1pm I had told my father, and it was about 4pm by the time we were finally home. We were disappointed not to have time for the traditional post-backpacking Subway trip (we can usually eat a footlong apiece, after 4 days of camp food and strenuous exercise), but I wanted to be in Oregon by nightfall. So we got home, I took a 5 minute shower, hopped in the car again, and left with mi padre to go college shopping.

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College tours and TSA shenanigans:

(Sadly, I forgot the camera and don't have any pictures to break up this second massive wall of text. Use your imaginations.)

We landed at around 8:00 Tuesday night in Eugene with the weather closing in fast – my dad was considering landing on some other dirt strip if he couldn't make it to Eugene. (In case you're new here, my dad is a pilot, and we were flying in his Cessna 185.) It wasn't obvious which way to go once we'd landed and found tie-down spots at the base of the old control tower, so we started walking (in the rain) to the brightest lights, which was the main terminal. As we got closer, we saw the outside of the connecting tubes and things that mean a commercial airport, which I didn't know it was at first. Most airports we end up landing at are little dirt strips, often with not even a control tower. It was cool to see the commercial stuff from the outside. But we couldn't find a way inside the terminal, so we decided to follow the right-hand rule and walk around it. My dad's idea was to walk over to the other airplane parking terminal, where the tower told us we could park for $60, or at the base of the old tower for free. Pshaw. Not a lot of tough decision-making there. But I said no, of course we'll find a taxi where the main terminal is, to take away commercial passengers. So we kept looking for a way in, and ran into someone, a guy named Dan. I even walked toward him, hoping for directions, but he was Not Nice and deemed us a "security breach" as we were inside the "secure area." He asked how we got in, which gates with big red flashing lights and Do Not Enter signs we had gone through -- we'd gone through none, because we'd just walked over the tarmac where the airplanes go. (Dan insisted that that was impossible – we couldn't have walked over the tarmac because that would be dangerous, and surely my father as a pilot would know better. Apparently it didn't occur to him that we have to park on the tarmac, and thus must walk on it unless we spontaneously develop powers of levitation.) Throughout the whole incident as they were investigating us, we kept insisting (the truth) that we'd just walked in a straight line from our airplane looking for a place to go, and there were no gates or signs or nothing. They didn't believe us. It was very frustrating.

So Dan took us inside and soon he had a little clan gathering of TSA officers mumbling to each other in a confused little circle about what to do with us, as we sat on some gate waiting chairs and looked cold and innocent. Dad said "Well that's one way to get inside." I laughed, but they kept us there for about 2 hours, so it wasn't really worth it. I think there were about 8 TSA guys just standing around trying to figure out what to do with us, which led me to remark quietly to Dad, "You know the WPA and PWA of the New Deal, how FDR kept creating jobs for the sole purpose of employing people? Ahem. TSA." Only the WPA and PWA were actually more useful than TSA. Anyway, they took our bags and jackets and shoes, scanned them and us, scanned them again, took out all the fishy things my dad has in his toilet kit (pocketknife, credit card knife, leatherman, but strangely enough not his cutlery knife (could do more damage than credit card knife) or can opener or anything), and swabbed all of them for drugs/nuclear radiation remnants or something as well. Everyone was pretty civil to us (the police officer was actually really nice, asked me about my college visits, and just seemed to realize it was a random unfortunate situation) except Dan, who clearly thought we were idiots and seemed to have a little testosterone problem going where he needed to be so important as to make us a really big deal. We overheard him on the phone with lots of people: "...check and make sure they did not place any suspicious packages..." "did not ask directions from tower..." Yeesh. I think if the first person to have seen us had been anyone but Dan, they would've just pointed us the way out and not made such a big fuss over it. So we just chilled (literally, as they took our jackets) and made small talk for 2 hours while Dan called the head TSA person of the whole NorthWest region of the US and she called her superior and he probably called his superior. (Too much bureaucracy, anyone?)

Eventually they let us go, and that was that, with vague threats of an "investigation to follow." We got into our hotel at around 10pm, and had burritos from a fairly delicious 24hour Mexican fast food place next door. I would say these shenanigans make for an interesting story, but it was just frustrating and not particularly eventful. Now, if Dan had tackled us to the ground and we'd been hauled away in chains, that'd be another matter entirely...

I tried to keep the incident from affecting my opinion of Eugene, and I'm unsure how successful it was. I pretty much liked it, the university far more than the town. The town was very football-crazy and sort of... full of hillbillies, since I can't think of a more polite way to say it. That might just have been the TSA folks and the cab drivers, though.

I do love the weather, undeniably. I love the proximity to great outdoors experiences and the lovely campus covered in big old mossy trees, ready for climbing. The academics were fairly unremarkable, as fairly well-qualified big colleges go. In general it merited a spot on my list, but not particularly high.

We decided to leave after my tour, as the tour was very long and there was nothing more I particularly wanted to investigate. We landed in Seattle in the afternoon, and had a few hours to kill before dinner – naturally, we went and watched the Hunger Games, since there was a movie theatre right down the street from our hotel. I loved the books. The movie was okay, but didn't do the book justice.
Then we went and found some delicious Indian food. We ordered 2 entrees and a naan and got enough food for dinner then, lunch the next day, and a little left over. Yum.

Thursday was our extra day, since my tour was on Friday. We were initially going to try to move everything earlier, but the weather forecast didn't look good until Saturday, so we just booked an extra night at a hotel (a different one, actually, since the first one was full). We spent our morning at the famous underground tour of Seattle, which was quite funny and informative, and then back to the hotel for Indian leftover lunch. I attempted to do homework but fell asleep, and then we spent late afternoon and evening exploring the University district and getting delicious Thai food. (Man, Seattle has some top-notch restaurants!)

The University District is like a little college town inside a nice big city, which is just about perfect. Seattle in general is lovely, enough culture and nightlife for any city girl, but covered in green-- ivy, grass, trees, because of the constant rain (another bonus). It's also a perfect city in location, to feed my hunger for the outdoors: right near the ocean, next to Lake Washington, near mountains for skiing and forests for hiking, generally in the midst of outdoorsy opportunities. My tour of U-W in the morning was equally promising: We had a very engaging and funny tour guide who appeared to love his school, the campus was beautiful, and they have a lot of programs and options, especially study abroad programs, even to strange and fascinating places like Antarctica, Cameroon, Senegal, Madagascar, and all sorts of places most universities don't travel to. Splendid!

I guess there really wasn't that much remarkable, except that it's exactly what I'm looking for (along with Madison and some of the others): a big, good university in a nice location. Doesn't sound remarkable, but most colleges manage to fail at least one of those criteria. After our tour, we briefly explored some stacks (which I try to do in every college tour, though no college has yet managed to beat McGill in terms of impressive libraries), got lunch in a res hall cafeteria (pretty tasty), and wandered through the music building, listening to a pretty darn good jazz band in rehearsal. In the evening we wandered over to the Museum of Flight, but were 40 minutes past closing time. Seattle thoroughly explored, we ate some Thai and Indian leftovers and went to sleep, to fly back home first thing the next morning.

Choices! It's not going to be fun choosing. Can't I just go to ALL the universities?

For REALS for Reals Going to France

Woah.

Apparently my interviewer was being pessimistic when she said I wouldn't know my host family, school, or city until summer. I got all that information TODAY along with my official acceptance letter. Basically my reaction was lots of excitement, followed by disbelief (this is just a really elaborate hoax they're playing on me, right?) followed by a few minutes of nervousness followed by more excitement.

I'm going to live in a very small town (population 1750) about 45 minutes SW of Nantes, according to google maps. Close to the beach, close enough to a big city, but in a nice rural area, the land lot four times as big as ours (that's what you get for living in Silicon Valley, of course), with a swimming pool, my own room, and cats, birds, and poultry. It sounds perfect – right down to the lack of dogs, which I was concerned about since someone told me dogs are much more common in France. No snow, unfortunately – France west coast weather is remarkably like US west coast weather. Given that it's a rural-ish area, the school is 11 km away, but there's a bus.

The family: a mom, dad, 16 year old girl, and 19 year old guy. Perfect. I'm guessing it'll take me awhile to be able to speak with the teenagers, as they will most likely use slang and speak more quickly, but it'll be nice to have people my age, especially if I go to the same high school as the girl, which I think is the case. They're very active, love sports like skiing, hiking, and biking, love to travel, socialize often, and seem like very kind and interesting people. I loved the introductory letter they wrote to me – they said all the right things. I hope with all my heart that they will like me and I will like them and we will all get along splendidly.

I've already packed up my things over and over in my head. What will I bring? What will I say to them when I first meet them? How will I survive with a more difficult high school system in my second language? How will I make friends, not being able to rely on my dry wit showing through the language barrier? My French is so rusty. I need to practice – I'll make it a goal to listen to French youtube videos every day to improve my comprehension, which is the most difficult part of languages for me (even in English I have trouble understanding what people say). My head is bursting with a thousand different irrelevant questions, or rather, concerns I shouldn't bother thinking about yet. I'm a bundle of excitement and nervousness. How will I last through 59 more days of school, focus on AP tests, finals, SAT IIs, etc., when I have an adventure this massive in front of me? I have second-semester senioritis to the worst degree, and I'm a junior.

I'll leave in late August, and be gone for 10 months.

I've been planning this since this past August, so why is it only now that I'm realizing what I'm going to do, and just how crazy it is to pack my bags and go live with a family I've never met, in a language I've never spoken growing up, to live for a year in a country and culture utterly foreign to me?

This is ridiculous. I'm so excited. More on this later, that isn't just me babbling incoherently.

FRANCE

After a very long day of history bowl and getting lost in cars, I finally had my interview with CIEE. And guess what they said? I'M GOING TO FRANCE NEXT YEAR! Woohoo! They don't know where I'm going to be yet or who my host family will be -- in fact, I probably won't know that until July. But they are for sure going to find me a place.

I am so. ridiculously. excited.

The Great College Tour Odyssey

This February break I went college touring with my mom! We flew to Montreal, wandered the city Sunday, saw McGill University Monday, flew to Detroit, rented a car, drove to Ann Arbor, spent the night, toured U-Michigan the next day, drove to Madison, Wisconsin, stayed two nights with a campus tour in between, visited lots of relatives on the long drive from Madison to Minnesota, stayed with cousins and aunt and uncle, toured U of M, chilled with a camp friend, and flew home. Whew. (That was intentionally a run-on sentence to convey the amount of relaxation found in this vacation.)

McGill/Montreal:

(View from our hotel window)

Montreal is gorgeous. I want to live there so badly. The St. Laurence was frozen over and you could go ice skating on it, or watch the big boats and dream of romantic adventure on the high seas. The buildings are a mixture of very old: gorgeous churches of tall stone, statues, cobblestones, and very new: beautiful modern architecture like the building of colored blocks like I used to play with when I was younger, glass and tall and stuck together.

Unfortunately my impression of the local food was not entirely favorable, but it's likely that I just didn't know where to look. My mother and I got the impression that a large part of native cuisine has to do with barbequed meat of some sort, and, while we aren't vegetarian by any means, we are more fond of fruits, veggies, and grains than red meat and potatoes. Everyone is bilingual, which is incredibly charming – at restaurants, they will greet you with a cheerful “Bonjour Hello! Je peux vous asseyez May I find you a table?” and continue with whichever language you answer in. Disappointingly, I only had one real conversation in French, with our “I speak small English” cab driver on the way into the city. He was very complementary about my grammatically interesting French and I was entirely pleased to discover that the things I learn at camp and in the classroom are in fact applicable to the real world. Weird! Sometimes I wonder if the words they teach us are just made up, and real French is completely different. How would I know? Well, reassuringly, I wasn't completely wrong. Everywhere else it was easier just to speak English, so I only got to practice eavesdropping in French and not speaking it.

McGill was also wonderful. The campus was quiet – I hadn't known they were on a mid-semester break. The tours had all been booked months in advance because it was President's Day, and everyone drove up for the day from New York and Boston. But I tagged along on a tour and pretended I'd been signed up all along. McGill is a great school. The few disadvantages to it in my mind (I plan to major in Undecided) are that its colleges are more separate (there is no one giant liberal arts and sciences college like at Madison, but rather separate colleges for science, art, music, medicine, etc.) and that most people seem to go in knowing what they want to do. Quebecois students come in as sophomores, having already chosen their major and done an intermediate program. You don't have to declare a major when you apply, but you have to know what college you want, and it seems to be less easy to be indecisive than in US schools.

What else struck me about McGill... it seems very independent, almost as if Canadians actually trust their kids to grow up after high school, and college for us Americans are more like in-between houses for those almost responsible enough to live on their own. There's less housing on campus, though many freshmen do live on campus, fewer people in your face telling you to go join this club and that club – there are still clubs to join, but you might have to go search them out. That could be both good and bad. I can unfortunately picture myself, hermit that I am, living in my single dorm room (very few doubles!) and not being brave enough to venture out and make friends. My mom remarked that if McGill seemed like the ideal academic environment, but less friendly than I might want in a college, perhaps I should go there for grad school.

But anyway, enough about the downsides of McGill! I really, really loved it. The people were nice, the buildings pretty, the library more impressive than any of the other three universities' libraries, the academics seemed intense but fun, and I heard from our tour guide about a lot of activities that I got really excited to go join. Apparently someone decided to take advantage of willing but broke college students, so there are lots of programs at McGill where you can go volunteer in another country (Peru is apparently popular) and they will pay your way! And there's clubs and sports and everything else you'd expect in a big university – it just seems a little bit harder to find.

I also was fortunate enough to talk with a linguistics professor. My cousin Laura went to McGill and hooked me up with her undergrad adviser. I think most of my questions were too vague for her, asking about university policy in general rather than the linguistics department (and she may have been disappointed that while I'm interested in linguistics, I don't have my heart set on majoring in it). I did, however, ask one question she really liked, and promised me she would go ask her friend the dean about it and get back to me. It was about the possibility of studying abroad in countries McGill doesn't usually send people too, such as Cameroon. My camp counselors have virtually all studied abroad in Cameroon with our camp director's program that partners with universities to do so, leaving me with a hankering to go see Africa. So the question was half about flexibility of McGill in general and half about that specific situation. The answer was the same in all four schools: we don't really know, but you could try, I guess! Hah. We shall see then.

So in conclusion, I loved McGill and Montreal, would be super excited to go there, and is currently #2 on my list (a very close and tentative runner-up especially because it is so very different from choice #1!)

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor:

Ann Arbor has been described as the perfect college town. I was not especially taken with it, maybe partly as a result of staying in a cheap motel and having the closest restaurant to us be Big Boy's. But what little town there was (and really, Ann Arbor is so dominated by U-Mich that there's hardly anything to it) had more of a trashy middle-of-the-country feel to it than I had hoped. Ah well. I'd also like to live in a town that has a little more than just a university, a motel, a gas station, and a few eateries.

That morning established a pattern for the next several days: a presentation in the morning by an admissions officer about the school, your study options, and the admission process, followed by a walking tour given by a current student. The presenter was excellent: funny, informative, proud of U-Mich but not too in-your-face about it. My favorite part might have been when she asked for a show of hands for the Michiganites, then asked where they all lived: they each pointed to a spot on their hand. Mind blown! Makes me want to go live in Michigan, so I can use my hand as a map.

Our tour guide, unfortunately, was not so charming. Pleasant enough, but a sorority girl with annoying speech habits: like, awesome, definitely, actually, and totally became words I never wanted to hear or speak again. My mom and I also exchanged appalled glances when she mentioned how nice it was that the library was mostly duplicated online, since going into actual libraries with their “scary stacks” is a traumatizing experience. What did you go to college for, girl? But she showed us some lovely places on campus. The law quad in particular looked very Hogwarts-esque with its impressive stone buildings under a blanket of white. That day was the one day during our trip when it snowed, fat, heavy flakes that covered everything in a surprisingly short time and then melted all away in the afternoon. (HEY LOOK SNOW! Also this is the last time I remembered to get out my camera... I apologize if you wanted pictures of Madison or Minneapolis.)

After our tour I met with a friend, a Homestead band alumna who's a freshman at U-Mich. She likes college well enough, in her quiet “well, now I'm here” sort of way. She didn't have too much trouble finding friends even though it's a big school, though by no means likes everyone in her dorms (she did mention a certain level of annoyance at the preponderance of sorority girls, from which I sadly conclude that our tour guide was not a one-off). She likes her classes, though says she underestimated their difficulty. In short, I'm running out of things to say, because there wasn't a whole lot that was remarkable about U-Mich. It's just a big state school that happens to have really good scores. I think I would be happy anywhere I went – I've spent a lot of energy the past few years trying to figure out how to be happy – and would find good friends and good classes and altogether have a successful experience. But U-Mich, while a good school, didn't make me fall in love with it the way the other three schools did. In conclusion: Michigan is a beautiful state, but I didn't like Ann Arbor that much, and Michigan is a good school but #4 on my list (out of the ones I visited).

University of Wisconsin-Madison:

My aunt and uncle, three cousins, my grandma and her three siblings, and my grandpa's brother all went to Madison – basically everyone on my mom's side of the family except my mom, who did the black sheep of the family thing and went to Minnesota, and her father, who didn't get a degree. So I have a lot of family history there, and I've grown up hearing my big cousins' stories about crazy Madisonian college life. I still have a cousin, a first cousin once removed (is that right? My mom's cousin?), a great-aunt, and some second cousins who live in Madison, so we crashed on several different couches to try to see them all.

Madison, let me tell you, was exceedingly convincing from the start. We stayed with my cousin Jocelyn, in her neat little studio apartment with her adorable kitty. Jocelyn is a lot of things I want to be: independent, adventurous (she's currently in France and/or Morocco, because as she put it, “I could afford a bigger place, but hey, travel!”), hard-working (as a nurse, which seems like a great job), smart funny beautiful etc. So of course when she tells me how glad she is that she went to Madison, and her pride in her school is really obvious and genuine, I assume it must be a pretty kick-ass place to warrant such praise from a girl with high-standards. In the morning I wandered around til I found the student union, sat through a reasonably entertaining presentation, and then went on my tour with a senior double-majoring in journalism and political science. She was everything a tour guide should be as well – intelligent, friendly, proud of her school, fun-loving, knowledgeable, and in general made a great impression. We walked around campus, which is gorgeous, even in the middle of a strangely snow-less winter where there are neither beautiful white drifts nor green grass and flowerbeds. The lake was frozen over and looked very tempting. I learned about Hoofers, the wilderness club, and the crazy things they do (WANT.). The Lakeshore dorms (where everyone in my family has stayed, as opposed to the more urban, party-centric Southeast dorms, which I thought were some of the only ugly buildings on campus) were lovely – a nice walk from everything, right by the lake, quieter... We walked through classrooms, talked about academics (which sound remarkably flexible for a big university), and were shown some nice museums, shops, etc. Some numbers that I like very much: 50% study abroad before they graduate – wow that's high. 60% come in undecided – Yay, it's easy to be undecided here! And the giant liberal arts and sciences college that I mentioned earlier – I wouldn't have to try transferring schools. What else. Madison itself is a beautiful little town, dominated by the university and the capitol buildings, but with more to it than Ann Arbor. The eating, shopping, and living options all looked much more favorable. A small town, a beautiful town, a friendly town, but a big enough town to not just be a school in the middle of nowhere. Far from it! Aaahh everyone's just so friendly and fun.

I could picture myself at Madison more easily than anywhere else. I know I'd live in the Lakeshore dorms, and join Hoofers, and jump in the lake in the middle of summer and maybe in the middle of winter for the Polar Plunge. I'd study abroad, that's for sure, and major in maybe three different things all at once in the nice convenient college that contains nearly all my interests. I'd go tray-sledding in winter all the time. I'd join a wind ensemble – not world-renowned, but good, and I've heard the conductors are great. I'd take serious classes and fun classes, learn about medieval weaponry, all that craziness. I'm close enough to my aunt and uncle in Minneapolis, and my great-aunt and -uncle in Viroqua, that I could have closer places to go for holidays than all the way back home. It's close(ish) to camp. It's just so easy and so pleasant to picture myself there. As I went to sleep that evening, I had a mental battle: I didn't want to pick favorite schools, I just wanted to get a flavor for all of them! So that I could apply, find out where I'm accepted, and THEN pick favorites. But I guess it didn't work that way. Cause now I really want to go to Madison. Choice #1.

University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities:

My mother's alma mater. In Minneapolis, which is another big old beautiful city, crackling with culture and things to do. But... really big. The city itself feels less friendly because it's not at all dominated by the university. On the other hand, the U, as they call it, was extremely friendly despite its vastness. As soon as I walked in the door of the welcome center I was accosted by a really cute student with a bright smile who helped me check in, gave me a folder of information, and pointed me to the information session room. The music playing in the room until the session started consisted entirely of things on my MP3 player: Vitamin String Quartet's cover of My Chemical Romance and the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song. Good first impression: check. The speaker was also entertaining and informative: they have lots of great programs though unfortunately different colleges for sciences and liberal arts. But you can make your own major! And they have lots of great clubs you can join, such as the Guys Named Mike (which might even beat U-Mich's squirrel feeding club – and holy mackerel, they have fat squirrels in Ann Arbor now). Then our tour was also nice, a very eager-to-please young man who burbled a constant stream of information about all the opportunities and activities you can join. We walked through academic buildings, dorms, sports areas, student areas/libraries, etc., all beautiful. It's a very nice campus. Just a little more urban than Madison, and though cities are nice, I think I really value greenery. After the tour we went back to the welcome center to ask yet another supremely helpful, smiling, cute young man which library we should go visit (we had made a point of visiting at least one library at every university, as a litmus test for overall academic quality). We proceeded to get happily lost in an academic library, a map library, and then a music library, before our grumbling stomachs urged us over to Annie's Parlour, which my mom has called the best place to get mushroom burgers and ice cream sundaes ever, a fact with which I now concur.

I loved the U of M, and would be extremely happy there. But it was hard to even fully appreciate the place when I'd already fallen in love with (an) other school(s). Like McGill, it seems slightly more impersonal and less warm than Madison, but slightly less impressive academically. (McGill's library could make up for a lot of faults, and I could probably ignore the whole having friends bit just by living in the stacks.) In conclusion, it was great, and choice #3 out of 4 doesn't really seem to give it the credit it deserves, but, fact is, everywhere I visited was great.

FINALLY, if you have gotten to this point, here are the big results from my trip: 1) I want to go to college! Yay, college! 2) I want to go to Madison! And McGill! And U of M! Oh god choices. 3) Wow the Midwest is full of really nice people. 4) I can't wait for this semester to be over so I can start my life. Camp, France, college... I'm so excited.