Actually, receiving a package is a funny thing to watch. The mailboxes are right there when we walk in the door and any packages received are placed on the floor. Everybody knows when someone gets something. Usually the mail arrives while we're in class, so break time is like going down the stairs Christmas morning and seeing what Santa brought, except in our case it's the postman. And just like on Christmas, everybody wants to watch you open your package (really we're all secretly hoping there's food in that rather large box, food that you couldn't possibly consume all by yourself. Suddenly you find yourself with many more friends than you thought). So opening a package is basically a group event. Unfortunately I snapped the safety scissors I've had since kindergarten in my haste to open one, but now that means I get to use my new knife. It is currently sitting in my pocket. Aw yeah. So, many thanks to everyone who sent me packages! They were much appreciated and shared well.
We're very busy doing the work we neglected to do for the past three weeks, creating annotated bibliographies for each of our projects, finding last minute sources, and talking with professors. I gave a presentation today on agriculture in Oahu and it went quite well. My face didn't turn bright red and the biggest mistake I made was making a reference to "eating your family". What I meant was "eating food you made with your family". I guess cannibalism is relevant to studying French Polynesia, though, since explorers always expected to find them on the islands.
Oh, Sunday was a fun little adventure. Four of us drove to Pie in the Sky for some noms before what we anticipated was going to be a long day of getting work done (you see, that work still hasn't gotten done seeing as I am sitting here writing this rather than annotating my bibliographies). I wanted to see the Nobska Point lighthouse before we left Woods Hole, so after a brief deliberation we drove out to the point and took some pictures, driving past the ferry to Martha's Vineyard in the process. We casually talked about going there, and Michelle casually looked up the fare and the next departure time: 15 minutes. So we got in line, parked on the ferry, and went to the Vineyard. No big deal. It was neat seeing the island all covered in snow, and we drove around the NW and NE portion of it. There wasn't much open, it being the winter season and all, but it was still pretty. I can't imagine how busy it is in the summer. One our stops was in Edgartown, an old whaling town settled in 1641, and a man outside the pub caught us walking down the street like fencers walk during a match: heel, toe, step. He commented on it, but wasn't quite sure what we were doing. I don't think we're quite sure what we were doing.
Sunday night we had dessert at my professor's house which he designed himself. It's one of the coolest houses I've ever seen, designed to mimic a ship and it has all sorts of memorabilia from his trips around the world. When he was 10, his family took 3.5 years to circumnavigate the globe on a boat his parents had saved for 18 years to buy. Talk about being accomplished, and all before the age of 14.
Nobska Point from the ferry
Edgartown
*"Word my bird" is just something we've started saying...doesn't have much significance, really.
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