Many things happened since the last posting. Mom came for parent's weekend and we escaped the clutches of the Institvte on an expedition of orange, yellow, red, and all the colors of autumn in Western Massachusetts. We went hiking up to the highest peak (yeah...you can actually do that here without having to put on an oxygen mask or something). We went apple picking. We walked the path of transcendentalists.

And the next few weeks. Confusion. A whirlwind of ideas, and inch after inch of burning coals to walk across.

And at the end, I kind of realized why I was here. In other words, I settled on a major. Two majors that is.

What you ask? Oh read on, read on....

Last night Quentin and I wandered around boston taking photos. This was a great help since I have absolutely no direction when it comes to navigating cities.

Anyway...here are the results. And later in the post...pictures of Saber aka Kitty.com!

When I go home I have to make sure to take some night shots of Seattle. There's something about cities at night that I really like...probably the lights. Heh. During the day cities just aren't that great for me...I prefer nature.

Nature. Snoqualmie. North Bend.

Yeah, I really miss home. Sometimes I wish I would have gone to UW, like most of my friends. Sometimes I wish I would have gone to study in Germany. Sometimes I wish I would have taken a year's break before MIT.

I wish this...that...but now I'm here, and I guess I better live with the consequences, right?

Four weeks have passed since the start of the school year.

Autumn is here, and shades of red and gold are popping up here and there around Cambridge. In a few weeks they will have all fallen to the ground.

I have a four day weekend, and today I wandered around Cambridge with no real direction to where I was going. If I saw an interesting side street, I went down it. If a house caught my eye, I would pause to look at it. It was a nice break from my studies.

And that brings me to my other topic. Classes. Yes, they have been tough, and I've failed a couple tests (or barely passed if you look at the curve). For once I'm not at the top of the class. For once I'm actually finding it difficult to absorb every bit of information. It's quite disorienting. Frightening. Petrifying. Sometimes I want to go home.

But then I have these little triumphs. Small breakthroughs. And I'm lifted higher out of my misery. But at the end of the week, when I take the time to breathe a little, I realize how much I've actually learned. In the end, these are just growing pains.

Wow, it's been a while hasn't it? A lot of things have happened between the last time I posted and now, so I'll try my best to sum it up.

Hall rush landed me in 3rd East of East Campus, otherwise known as Tetazoo (Third East Traveling Animal Zoo).

I can sum this hall up in about one word: Insane. And I like it.

For example...some Tetazoo-ans became a little upset with the whining going on in house government, so they decided to wage a water war to lighten things up.

No hall was spared...

So, a lot of things have been happening lately. One of which was the competition for the DEECS pre-orientation program. Our team worked on the robot until 2 am that morning, desparately trying to figure out why the heck it kept spinning in circles. The code was logically sound, and we even re-soldered some of the wire connections. Then at like 1 am, we decide to replace the cricket board (the main circuitboard) with a new one...and BAM, everything worked perfectly. A few minutes later, we were ready to head back to our dorms. LOL.

And if you look closely, you'll see the result of our late night insanity all over the robot. And yes, those are nunchucks.