It's been the general consensus that the topics we've been researching for our final project, an Atlas of Polynesian information, is like finding a needle in a haystack. Well, not quite that difficult, but there isn't a lot of information on, say Missionaries in the 21st Century that either exists or isn't in French. I suppose that's why we're working on the Atlas, to provide a pool of resources for the public who want access to this information.
C House was pretty quiet this weekend. My class went to Boston on Friday to visit the Peabody Museum and to view a Harvard collection of scientific instruments from the 18th and 19th centuries. Both were pretty neat, though we weren't allowed to touch anything in the Peabody museum when we went back to the storage collection because everything was dipped in arsenic or some other poison to kill any creatures that might be living in the objects. The curator basically told us we would die if we touched them. Got to see some pretty neat things, but I had a reaaally hard time with the no touching rule. I wanted to touch everything. There were shields made with human hair, fishing hooks made out of shells and bones, paddles, and thousands of other items. Anyway, four of my housemates stayed in Boston visiting their manfriends or regular friends, so it's been a pretty relaxing weekend. Last night A House hosted a cake party where each house had to bring a cake for a competition. We thought ours was the bomb, with a map of French Polynesia with red and yellow layers inside to represent earth's crust and mantle, but ours paled in comparison to the others. I think ours tasted the best, however. And we had a bunch of leftovers which is good because our house has had a serious lack of desserts lately. That was remedied Friday when we made cake and three different types of cookies. And bought ice cream, but how could we not? It was buy one get one free... Such an influx of desserts made us consume our weight in them. To work off some of that dessert, we began making a music video and mid-dance someone knocked on our window and scared the bejesus out of us. The funny part is, we caught it on video. I have never seen such looks of sheer terror.
Went into Woods Hole yesterday for dinner with Gossner and Kaitlin and we ate at the Fishmonger's Cafe. In true New England style I ordered a cup of clam chowda and of course it came with oyster crackers. Next I want to try lobster. I also ordered some hard cider and when I handed the waitress my ID she looked at it funnily and said, "Ohio"? Apparently they don't get many Ohioans on Cape Cod in the winter. After that ensued a discussion at the table on how to pronounce "Maumee" and I told the tale of the Indian mother whose child was swept down the river calling, "Mommy" which is truly how Maumee got it's name. Truly.
I promised I would talk about equatorial crossing traditions, which we've been researching. Before you cross the equator, you're a lowly Pollywog. After, you're a Shellback. But you don't just *BOOM* become a Shellback. There's a ceremony you must go through, the details of which I am unsure of, but I've heard rumors of shaved heads, tattoos, piercings, and other such things. Not sure how you feel about that one, Mom and Dad. I think we'll be crossing the International Date Line as well. How cool would that be?
Oh, and if you're wondering about the title of this post, it's a word I came upon in Wikipedia. I'm going to make you look it up, though. It's nifty word, I recommend it, if only because it feels cool in your mouth to say it.
A ceremonial paddle in the Peabody storage collection
Our cake with Tahiti, Christmas Island (an atoll), and the Hawaiian Islands
The Fishmonger Cafe
If you cross the equator at the date line, that makes you a Golden Shellback....
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