Well the last 48 hours for me have certainly been hectic and full of many changes. I graduated on Sunday with my BA and I am so happy. Our commencement was actually pretty good for the most part, Daniel Brooks, who works for the NYT actually gave a really good, funny, sometimes crude, inspiring and sobering commencement speech that I hope had several people pause and consider what he was saying. Yo Yo Mah also played the cello. Both of them received honorary degrees. I was so happy to toss my hat and cheer and then rip off that ridiculous cape-thing, is it a hood? and take off my robes. I swear the point of what you wear to graduation is to humiliate you.
I'd like to apologize in advance for my writing, I am now....27 hours with little to no sleep. I'm trying to not let jet-lag affect me all that much on this trip so I want to fall asleep in the evening.
Anyway, there was one thing that made the graduation not so fun, I won't go into details but someone I know and liked ended up being accused of a very heinous crime by one of my friends and that person was escorted out of my mini-commencement by the police. It was a bit hard to see and definitely ruined the joyful mood my friends and I were feeling. It was also the only thing we seemed to talk about after commencement.
In other news, nothing new on the BU front. I expect they'll email me on June 1 to let me know their decision so it's just waiting, and waiting, I never realized how suck wait-lists are.
Well Monday morning I headed out at 8:30am to catch a flight from Logan to JFK and then from JFK to Munich and from Munich to Tirana. The first flight went smoothly but the Lufthansa flight was delayed on the tarmac for over 2 hours and made us arrive a half hour late to Munich. My first flight across the ocean wasn't bad, there was pretty hefty turbulence but I didn't mind that. The only problem was my luggage was over weight. I'll just check a second bag when I go back, my suitcase is huge. (it barely fits in the hotel's elevator).
Sadly because the flight was delayed I had to rush through Munich airport and didn't even get to really try and see anything or absorb it. It seemed like a nice place, although the airport security seemed a lot more laid back and lax, which was frustrating to try and rush through security check to board my flight.
Met up with my fellow late-comer and he's a cool guy. Probably not into what I'm into in terms of entertainment but we've bonded over being the 2 who are behind.
Tirana is insane. I thought New York City or Boston was bad but this place is really awful for traffic. Everyone's bunched up, horns blaring all the time and pedestrians sure as hell better get out of the way if they want to live! Also, the way they park here is odd, some people park like we do in the US and others are half-way up the curb or trapping people in, or just parking perpendicular for some reason.
Our leader of our field school met us at the hotel (I got in a quick shower, thank goodness!) and took us to a restaurant then gave us a small walking tour of the city. I wish I could see more but I'm so tired I can barely keep my eyes open or spell properly. In any case tomorrow we head to Butrint where we will be for 2 weeks. Hopefully the day long bus ride won't kill us and we can all enjoy the beach side city as well as some courses in Osteology, my favorite subject.
I never expected Tirana to seem so...foreign. Which sounds stupid but I thought that streets and cars looked similar enough not to be so confusing but the streets and cars here seem so different. The look and feel is just...foreign. As well as how the people act. I was accosted by a little girl begging me for money, I obviously didn't give her any, I may be naive but I am not stupid. It's just interesting to me. I look forward to more exploration of the unfamiliar familiar.
I went out tonight with the group of people that I'm going to the field school with, they all seem pretty cool but I think I'm a bit too geeky for them. It's ok though, I just won't talk much about video games or bad movies. I hope that I can be friends with everyone. Time since sleep now: uh.......32??
Bed time.
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