The four-hour, $20 bus ride took us from the cherry tree-lined streets of D.C., past the smoke-puffing factories along the New Jersey turnpike, through the Lincoln Tunnel, spitting us out on the streets of New York. 34th street to be exact! While on the bus, we sat next to a couple of teenage girls from Brooklyn who were enamored with the idea that we were from California, and proceeded to ask us a million questions about the beaches, weather, and celebrities- they really got a kick out of my encounters with stars in Malibu. The two girls then decided that they were going to move to California for college if they could.
Once in New York City, we had to walk a mile or two with our bags over to Grand Central Station to catch the train to Connecticut to visit our friend, Amina, at Yale. (We'd return to NYC later).
Looking up the Empire State Building
On our way, we ended up walking right under the Empire State Building, past Harold Square, and up Park Avenue where many tall, skinny women in high heels were busily walking to their destinations. With all the walking in N.Y., I don't know how they do it in such high heels! I was wearing my comfortable merrell mocs! Grand Central Station was beautiful and historic- as I took a picture of the schedules, a stereotypical couple embraced.
Grand Central Station
We bought our tickets to New Haven, and got onboard the train for the two-hour ride up the coast. The train conductor came through to collect our tickets and was dressed just like I'd imagined a conductor to look- with the little hat and everything!
Tickets, please!
After arriving in New Haven, we walked a couple miles to Amina's house through beautiful, elm-lined streets- although, since it was still a little chilly in Connecticut, the trees were still void of leaves and blossoms. While walking through a crosswalk, a car hit me! Not hard or anything, but it bumped me! It was a guy turning right without looking in the crosswalk- he was stopped, and just started edging out all of a sudden and hit me. Bryan and I were astonished! The guy apologized profusely, and since I wasn't hurt, we continued on our way.
Once we met up with Amina, the one thing that was new about her and shocked me was that she had her nose pierced! It looked worldly and exotic, but also out-of-character for my totally straight-edge friend! After greetings and embraces, Amina immediately took us on a quick tour of some of the more historic buildings on the Yale campus.
College buddies
Everything seemed to have such a history! From the Beinecke Rare Book Library which houses a large collection of rare books and manuscripts- including the Gutenberg Bible, to the secret society of Skull & Bones …
Amina in front of the Skull and Bones Secret Society
Most of the architecture is in the Gothic style- you could spend days just looking at the details around campus!
The overall feel of Yale reminded me of Hogwarts from Harry Potter! They have 12 residential colleges where incoming undergrads live and take their classes in for all 4 years; most of the residential colleges have underground tunnels that take students to the dining hall, libraries, printing presses, gyms, dark rooms, etc.- all underground! Each college has their own Dean, Master, and affiliated faculty (like Hogwarts!). The big mystery for Bryan and I was, how do they pick which incoming students go to which residential college? A sorting hat??? No, apparently it's mostly random and students can't pick where they get placed. The residential colleges looked really cool to live in, and students get their own rooms—total opposite of the 7-story dorms with 3 people stuffed into tiny rooms I lived in at UCLA!
Gate to a Residential College
The magical, gothic illusion of Yale was shattered for me, however, when I learned on the official campus tour that most the buildings were not built in the 1700's when the campus was founded- but rather, most were built from 1917-1931! Not only that, the illusion was created by the architect, who faux-aged the buildings by splashing the walls with acid, deliberately breaking their leaded glass windows and repairing them in the style of the Middle Ages, and creating niches for decorative statuary but leaving them empty to simulate loss or theft over the ages! What a façade! Totally fooled me! I wish I hadn't found out that information, though, as it ruined a little of the impressiveness of the buildings.
"Grad Students" being intellectual in the graduate student lounge, aren't they just so smart?
We finished our first day in Connecticut with DELICIOUS, brick-oven, garlic and mashed potato (yes, mashed potato) pizza and fresh-brewed beer from the restaurant BAR (a Yalie favorite). One thing to note: Connecticutan's attitudes. Gosh! I had heard of their coldness and rudeness from Amina, but I didn't understand it until I experienced it myself!! From the rude waitress at BAR who didn't smile once, to the students on campus I tried to start little conversations with! It was like I was in the twilight zone! For example, one evening I saw a guy walking with a French horn on campus… having played the instrument for 10 years myself, and not being a very common instrument, I said to him, "Yay, French horns!" He gave me a snooty look and walked the other way! Ah! How rude! Amina and Bryan joked that he probably ran back to his residential college and in his nerdy brain (yes, he was totally a nerd) thought that I liked him and would tell all his nerdy friends about the encounter and the weird girl he thought was hitting on him. A hard blow for a friendly person like myself. With my ego (slightly) bruised, the three of us headed to an evening lecture for Amina's class and went home soon after.
The next morning we woke up bright and early to head to NYC for the day, returning to New Haven late in the evening. I'll skip the NY day for now (leave it for the next blog) and summarize our last day at Yale…
Our plan was to go to Amina's American Studies lecture that morning, have lunch, and then go to the Peabody Museum of Natural History while Amina was teaching her discussion section. But, our morning didn't go exactly as planned. After grabbing chai teas, we walked a mile or so to the lecture hall and were about to go in when Bryan couldn't find his glasses in his pocket (he was wearing his sunglasses). So, we left Amina and went to search for the glasses- at the coffee shop, on the sidewalk, retracing our steps everywhere! I even went in asking all the little stores if anyone had turned glasses in… just an exhaustive, two-hour search! And, to no avail! We were seriously bumming, when a shop worker mentioned that she thought she saw a glasses case in the gutter when she parked her car earlier! Could it be? Were they ours?? Sure enough, wedged between her tires and the curb were Bryan's glasses. We were so thankful for her help that we bought some tea from her shop and gave her a hefty tip.
Bryan and I in the Yale University Library
By then Amina was out of class, so we met back up with her and headed to lunch at a little Indian restaurant with good food. Afterward, when Amina had to go back and teach her discussion, Bryan and I decided to go on an official Yale tour since the campus seemed to have so many unique buildings (this was the tour when my illusion of Yale was shattered). The tour was very interesting, with our guide telling great stories of how the Frisbee and hamburgers were invented in New Haven, and about famous graduates like Eli Whitney, Sinclair Lewis, Presidents Taft, Ford, Clinton, and the Bushes. After the tour we headed to the Peabody Natural History Museum, which is most notable for its "Great Hall of Dinosaurs" - something Bryan had been looking forward to visiting to see a famous 110-foot "Age of Reptiles" dinosaur mural (I don't know… it's a paleontologist thing…) The museum was pretty cool, and Bryan was all into the fossils and the mural.
Bryan with his precious fossils and dinosaur mural
One cool fact, the Peabody Museum is the only museum to have a brontosaurus on display… a fossil which was incorrectly identified, and later proved to be an Apatosaurus. (Remember learning about that dinosaur controversy back in elementary school?).
After the museum, we met back up with Amina to visit the beautiful main Yale library, which was designed to look like a cathedral with the card catalogues as pews, and the confessionals as phone booths.
Carrying Amina's books (she has to read one book a day!)
We left early the next morning to allow Amina study for her PhD oral examinations, and headed to the big apple for our last few days on the East Coast.
Once in New York City, we had to walk a mile or two with our bags over to Grand Central Station to catch the train to Connecticut to visit our friend, Amina, at Yale. (We'd return to NYC later).
Looking up the Empire State Building
On our way, we ended up walking right under the Empire State Building, past Harold Square, and up Park Avenue where many tall, skinny women in high heels were busily walking to their destinations. With all the walking in N.Y., I don't know how they do it in such high heels! I was wearing my comfortable merrell mocs! Grand Central Station was beautiful and historic- as I took a picture of the schedules, a stereotypical couple embraced.
Grand Central Station
We bought our tickets to New Haven, and got onboard the train for the two-hour ride up the coast. The train conductor came through to collect our tickets and was dressed just like I'd imagined a conductor to look- with the little hat and everything!
Tickets, please!
After arriving in New Haven, we walked a couple miles to Amina's house through beautiful, elm-lined streets- although, since it was still a little chilly in Connecticut, the trees were still void of leaves and blossoms. While walking through a crosswalk, a car hit me! Not hard or anything, but it bumped me! It was a guy turning right without looking in the crosswalk- he was stopped, and just started edging out all of a sudden and hit me. Bryan and I were astonished! The guy apologized profusely, and since I wasn't hurt, we continued on our way.
Once we met up with Amina, the one thing that was new about her and shocked me was that she had her nose pierced! It looked worldly and exotic, but also out-of-character for my totally straight-edge friend! After greetings and embraces, Amina immediately took us on a quick tour of some of the more historic buildings on the Yale campus.
College buddies
Everything seemed to have such a history! From the Beinecke Rare Book Library which houses a large collection of rare books and manuscripts- including the Gutenberg Bible, to the secret society of Skull & Bones …
Amina in front of the Skull and Bones Secret Society
Most of the architecture is in the Gothic style- you could spend days just looking at the details around campus!
The overall feel of Yale reminded me of Hogwarts from Harry Potter! They have 12 residential colleges where incoming undergrads live and take their classes in for all 4 years; most of the residential colleges have underground tunnels that take students to the dining hall, libraries, printing presses, gyms, dark rooms, etc.- all underground! Each college has their own Dean, Master, and affiliated faculty (like Hogwarts!). The big mystery for Bryan and I was, how do they pick which incoming students go to which residential college? A sorting hat??? No, apparently it's mostly random and students can't pick where they get placed. The residential colleges looked really cool to live in, and students get their own rooms—total opposite of the 7-story dorms with 3 people stuffed into tiny rooms I lived in at UCLA!
Gate to a Residential College
The magical, gothic illusion of Yale was shattered for me, however, when I learned on the official campus tour that most the buildings were not built in the 1700's when the campus was founded- but rather, most were built from 1917-1931! Not only that, the illusion was created by the architect, who faux-aged the buildings by splashing the walls with acid, deliberately breaking their leaded glass windows and repairing them in the style of the Middle Ages, and creating niches for decorative statuary but leaving them empty to simulate loss or theft over the ages! What a façade! Totally fooled me! I wish I hadn't found out that information, though, as it ruined a little of the impressiveness of the buildings.
"Grad Students" being intellectual in the graduate student lounge, aren't they just so smart?
We finished our first day in Connecticut with DELICIOUS, brick-oven, garlic and mashed potato (yes, mashed potato) pizza and fresh-brewed beer from the restaurant BAR (a Yalie favorite). One thing to note: Connecticutan's attitudes. Gosh! I had heard of their coldness and rudeness from Amina, but I didn't understand it until I experienced it myself!! From the rude waitress at BAR who didn't smile once, to the students on campus I tried to start little conversations with! It was like I was in the twilight zone! For example, one evening I saw a guy walking with a French horn on campus… having played the instrument for 10 years myself, and not being a very common instrument, I said to him, "Yay, French horns!" He gave me a snooty look and walked the other way! Ah! How rude! Amina and Bryan joked that he probably ran back to his residential college and in his nerdy brain (yes, he was totally a nerd) thought that I liked him and would tell all his nerdy friends about the encounter and the weird girl he thought was hitting on him. A hard blow for a friendly person like myself. With my ego (slightly) bruised, the three of us headed to an evening lecture for Amina's class and went home soon after.
The next morning we woke up bright and early to head to NYC for the day, returning to New Haven late in the evening. I'll skip the NY day for now (leave it for the next blog) and summarize our last day at Yale…
Our plan was to go to Amina's American Studies lecture that morning, have lunch, and then go to the Peabody Museum of Natural History while Amina was teaching her discussion section. But, our morning didn't go exactly as planned. After grabbing chai teas, we walked a mile or so to the lecture hall and were about to go in when Bryan couldn't find his glasses in his pocket (he was wearing his sunglasses). So, we left Amina and went to search for the glasses- at the coffee shop, on the sidewalk, retracing our steps everywhere! I even went in asking all the little stores if anyone had turned glasses in… just an exhaustive, two-hour search! And, to no avail! We were seriously bumming, when a shop worker mentioned that she thought she saw a glasses case in the gutter when she parked her car earlier! Could it be? Were they ours?? Sure enough, wedged between her tires and the curb were Bryan's glasses. We were so thankful for her help that we bought some tea from her shop and gave her a hefty tip.
Bryan and I in the Yale University Library
By then Amina was out of class, so we met back up with her and headed to lunch at a little Indian restaurant with good food. Afterward, when Amina had to go back and teach her discussion, Bryan and I decided to go on an official Yale tour since the campus seemed to have so many unique buildings (this was the tour when my illusion of Yale was shattered). The tour was very interesting, with our guide telling great stories of how the Frisbee and hamburgers were invented in New Haven, and about famous graduates like Eli Whitney, Sinclair Lewis, Presidents Taft, Ford, Clinton, and the Bushes. After the tour we headed to the Peabody Natural History Museum, which is most notable for its "Great Hall of Dinosaurs" - something Bryan had been looking forward to visiting to see a famous 110-foot "Age of Reptiles" dinosaur mural (I don't know… it's a paleontologist thing…) The museum was pretty cool, and Bryan was all into the fossils and the mural.
Bryan with his precious fossils and dinosaur mural
One cool fact, the Peabody Museum is the only museum to have a brontosaurus on display… a fossil which was incorrectly identified, and later proved to be an Apatosaurus. (Remember learning about that dinosaur controversy back in elementary school?).
After the museum, we met back up with Amina to visit the beautiful main Yale library, which was designed to look like a cathedral with the card catalogues as pews, and the confessionals as phone booths.
Carrying Amina's books (she has to read one book a day!)
We left early the next morning to allow Amina study for her PhD oral examinations, and headed to the big apple for our last few days on the East Coast.
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