Monday, December 9, 2013

Some Last Hoorahs

I said my first goodbye the other day to my professor Dr. Jereon Smaers whom I'd met with weekly to work on my paper regarding sociality and brain evolution. I got pretty lucky scoring an independent study at a school this big. No doubt I've learned the most of all my anthropology classes simply through our discussions. I'm so thankful for the opportunity. After leaving his office I felt a wave of nostalgia with the realization that I have a little more than 1 week left here. So strange. These feelings didn't subside at my last ballroom practice when I received a touching card from my team. The first of the goodbye tears were shed. I'm really going to miss being around them all the time.

I went to the city on Thanksgiving Day to see the Macy's Day Parade with several friends. Despite worries of it being freezing and windy, we were sheltered by the big buildings on Central Park West. We got to our spot with an hour and a half to spare. Though the wait was long, it was totally worth it.

A couple days later I decided to go NYC on my own for what might have been my final trip for a while to the city. I leisurely arrived around noon, taking the subway and getting some local coffee and pastry before making my way to the American Museum of Natural History. It was nice because I was on no one else's agenda. I toured the entire building and scribbled off the rooms on my map as I went. My favorite was the early human ancestry room. I knew exactly what each description was talking about and in fact found some facts that were a bit dated. At least I know I learned something at SBU :)

I then walked across Central Park and made my way to Korea town where I pleasently ate sushi all by my lonesome. So much people watching you can't do with another person distracting you. After I made my way to Grand Central Station, a destination I've been meaning to see as it's the background of my blog. I squeezed into a tour group where I heard the city recently spent much time and money cleaning and restoring the building for it's 100th anniversary. The nerd in me was happy. I've been a sucker for historical facts ever since APUSH :)

Finals week is here, and today is Reading Day. Apparently at exactly midnight everyone screams out their window and it sounds like a bloody murder fest. I'll be sure to get a video. For now it's back to studying.