Reasons I'm enjoying my time at Yale, round 2:

• Cognitive science is awesome. Potential major?
• Berkeley College has a new juicer in the dining hall. There's something really comforting about starting the day with a glass of fresh-squeezed OJ.
  
• "Sexy" was a vocabulary word for Chinese 150 last week (性感).
• The Farmville Facebook app is absurdly addicting. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't start, seriously.
  
• My other addiction at the moment is Swiffer-ing.
• Coffee (hot or iced) is $1 at Atticus until unemployment decreases.
• The Berkeley courtyard:

(photo by Eric)

By the way, check out this crazy map of Walmart's growth, 1962-2006.
http://projects.flowingdata.com/walmart/

Pizza

For some unnatural reason, Stanford still hasn't started its school year. As a happy result, I met up with Ben today, who flies to California later this week. We headed to New Haven's fabled Pepe's, about which I'd heard many reverent superlatives, but I hadn't had the chance to visit (sorry, they don't deliver).

It would be remiss of me not to mention that Pepe's probably has the worst service I've ever experienced this side of the Atlantic—the first thing you see as you approach the restaurant, appropriately, is a large red stop sign on the door that bluntly tells you to wait outside until someone comes to get you. Somehow, in our daze of excitement and hunger, we missed the sign and accidentally stepped inside, where we were greeted by an unpleasant "Step back outside!" Eventually, a waitress came and informed us we could head to table 25, which was being cleared.

15 minutes later, my first bite was all it took to render the poor service less than irrelevant: the generous layer of sizzling mozzarella atop a thin Neapolitan pie crunched perfectly between my teeth and essentially left me in bright-eyed wonder. I'm generally not a big fan of pizza, but honestly, Pepe's is truly exceptional. Dear Yalies, even if you have to take a cab, go try a slice (which might quickly become two pies).

The Room

Dear Yalies, now that the posters are up and the speakers plugged in, feel free to invite yourselves over.

from the window: Harkness Hall, Bass Library and Calhoun College

I just came to the somewhat startling realization that this is my 11th dorm room (five during summer programs, four in high school, one last year).

. . .

After a sunny week of invigorating New England autumn weather, the weekend has been very wet and dreary. At the moment, I'm coping with a large mug of white tea and a recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 2 in C minor performed by Rachmaninoff himself. There's something truly arresting about listening to an musician play a masterpiece of which he composed every note. Appropriately, amid the cascade of Russian Romanticism, I'm also trying to navigate my International Studies reading on the fall of the Soviet Union.

Back in New Haven

Shortly after the annual whirlwind of moving in, I already find myself swamped with work the first full week of classes. Here are the five courses I've settled on for this term:

• Introduction to Cognitive Science
• Brain and Thought
• International Studies: Contemporary Challenges
• Advanced Chinese
  
• Advanced Korean
  

These six credits (language courses are 1.5 credits) compose a remarkably symmetrical schedule: I begin every weekday at 10:30, have lunch from 1:00-2:30, and am done by 3:45 (3:20 on Tuesdays and Thursdays).

In general, I'm genuinely very excited about my classes this term (much more than last year). Unfortunately, I probably won't have much free time to blog while at Yale. That said, I discovered blogging to be enjoyable and somewhat therapeutic this summer, so don't be surprised to see occasional updates on my life this semester!

qotd:

"Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen. Vielleicht leben Sie dann allmählich eines fernen Tages in die Antwort hinein."

"Live the questions now. Perhaps then, some distant day, you will gradually live your way into the answers."

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet