I'm lovin' it

This phrase, coined by the fastfood chain that need not be named, describes my present state of mind very well. Only two weeks ago, I wouldn't have expected to feel like I do. But I am very happy about everything that is going on. I'm lovin' it!

I have so much to tell and I am sure that I will have so much more to tell in the coming weeks and months. But ironically, things are getting so busy that it will get more difficult to tell it all. I'll try to pick out the best and most interesting parts.

Let's start where the previous entry ended. The final weekend of July, we saw the last of the Music on the Green concerts. This time, Los Lobos were performing. Don't feel bad if the name doesn't ring a bell - I had to look them up myself. But I'm sure you know their most famous hit - "La Bamba". With some friends and some beers added to the concert, it was a good evening.

Afterwards, I went to Helen Hadley Hall, one of the graduate dormitories, where I met Soojin, a Korean girl who was an incoming FES (School of Forestry and Environmental Studies) student like me. A lot of people were moving out of the dormitory and had to clear their rooms. They had accumulated more stuff than they had come with and had to leave a lot behind, so the corridors were like free yard sales. The scavenger in me could not go home with empty hands, and I took a very colourful lamp, some rope - which I still have not found any use for but you never know - and a couple of cups. My living was slowly filling up with free stuff - I had already received a free couch from someone, and had found a very nice fauteuil on the street the night before.

On Sunday, Soojin and I went shopping to Walmart for MOD stuff. MODs are technical skills modules which we would be taking in the coming weeks, and which also serve as a means of getting to know the fellow students. Some of the essentials we had to buy were insect repellent, a headlight and hiking boots - it will be a close encounter with Nature...

The next days were spent on getting more free furniture and more importantly, finding the third housemate. Sarah, a girl from Washington DC, was the second, and we both preferred the third to be an FES student. I had posted an ad for our place, with both of our profiles, on the School’s website, but of the 3-4 people that responded and were really interested, only one decided that he wanted to join us. His name is Jonathan. However, he had to make sure that he could sublet his other place, otherwise he would have ended up with paying for two rooms. So Sarah and I decided to offer the advertisement to a larger public, placing it on Craigslist, the free ad-website which everyone in the US uses and where I myself had found my place. In less than one day we had 15 responses, and about 7 people came over to see our apartment and were all quite excited about it. Sarah and I wanted to get the quest over with, so we gave Jonathan until Wednesday 1pm to make up his mind, otherwise we would take someone from the craigslist candidates. Fortunately, Jon called in at 1pm on Wednesday, saying that he was coming to live with us.

On Wednesday evening I went to the train station to pick up my very first official couch surfing guest, Markus from Heidelberg. He needed a place to stay while he would be looking for an apartment himself, as he would be at Yale for 11 months, doing research in psychology, more specifically in the field of the formation of small children. After installing him in the apartment, we went to Rachel’s. She had made an excellent lime cake and we had some, with ice cream, in her sauna-like living-room, while talking about Rocky Balboa, Yale’s naked parties (civilized cocktail parties but without garments), and the Harvard-Yale rivalry. Markus (and I) had learned a lot about the University we were going to attend…

The next day, Thursday the 5th of August, the Forestry School program finally took off, starting with two days of orientation exclusively for the international students. It was wonderful! The first day was a mix of eating (breakfast and lunch were provided), getting to know the other students, and a very impressive introduction to Yale, the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and the amazing array of services offered to us. For every possible problem we might have, there were people to help us, and this was emphasized several times. At the end of the day, I felt incredibly proud and happy to have landed at Yale. They were going to take care of us, that was sure.

When all the talks were over and we were excused, I had the impression that everybody would just go home. This was not right, I felt, this was totally wrong. I had met this group of very cool and interesting and beautiful people from all over the world, and I really wanted to get to know them better. So I did something I would normally never have done. I got up from my seat, asked if I could make an announcement, and told everybody that on Thursday nights GPSCY (Graduate and Professional Students Center at Yale, “Gipsy”) had free beer until 10pm and that we should all go there.

Taking the initiative to get up and talk to 45 more or less strangers with very high profiles took some courage, but I’m happy I did. Some complimented me for it, saying that they were waiting for someone to organize something, others asked me for detailed directions and exchanged phone numbers.

We had a great time at the bar. Although we had to pay 4 dollars to get in, we made sure we more than compensated for it with free beers. There were about 15 to 20 people from the program, and we talked and drank and all got to like each other. I had brought Markus, my couchsurfer, and he was having a good time too, becoming as much part of the group as the people in the program.

On Friday we had more getting-to-know-each-other games, more introductions that made us feel even more important and even better taken care of (and that somehow made the tuition seem less expensive because it showed that you do get value for your money), and more eating (breakfast, lunch, plus ice cream in the afternoon). Again, I was afraid of the group falling apart for the weekend, so I took the lead and invited everybody to my place at 8pm for drinks, saying that afterwards we might go to GPSCY again for the karaoke night.

We never got to GPSCY, but had a great party at my place. The couches were still out on the porch and it was an ideal setting for some drink and some talk. As a lot of the people that showed up had Latino blood running through their veins, the party slowly expanded to my carpeted living room and by 11pm it had turned into a dance floor, mainly for salsa but also for very expressive and experimental dances led by Markus – involving throwing a bag of chips around and walking like an Egyptian. He had already become our adopted Forestry friend (or honorary Forestry student) and would attend each of our events during the next days, even after moving into his own apartment and ceasing to become my couchsurfer.

Sarah, my housemate, had arrived on Friday evening with a carload of stuff. On Saturday we went shopping together for some stuff for the house and for groceries, and in the afternoon she took Markus, Soojin, Naazia (a wonderful Canadian girl with Pakistani roots) and me to the beach, where we hung out some hours and some of us swum in the very small area in which we were allowed to do so. Hungry from the sea breeze, we went to try the allegedly best pizza in New Haven, the one from “Peppe’s” – we ordered to take away because there was a queue of an hour outside, waiting to be seated. Without meaning to be pretentious in any way, the only thing I could say about the pizza was that the clams had sand in them (a property apparently appreciated by Americans because it means that they are fresh), that they were huge, and that they tasted okay – apart from the sand. Maybe the only Italians that emigrated to the US were those that didn’t know how to make a pizza…
The plan for the evening was to meet up at my place, have some beers, and then go downtown to a sheesha bar (or hooka or waterpipe bar). By now, I had become the “party-hub” as someone had termed me – no-one in Belgium would ever have thought this, including me. I considered this a very nice compliment. As the sheesha bar had neither beer nor airconditioning, we hit an Irish pub and then went to a dance bar. Just as we got on the stage, the lights went on and everyone was kindly kicked out. The time was 1:50am – absolutely awful. In this respect, Connecticut really disappointed me, together with the entire ‘party gang’. We talked for a bit to a hysterical girl from California and then walked into the night and home.

A tight group of international students had formed by now (including Markus), emphasized by a facebook group exclusively for us. But on Sunday, the Others were joining us. All of the students, both ‘domestic’ and international, gathered under the big oak tree at Marsh Hall (one of the oldest buildings of the School of Forestry) to be welcomed by the dean and to get an introduction to the coming three weeks of MODs. It took less than two hours and nobody hung around for very long, so in the evening we had a barbeque at Juan’s place (Mexican student) with only little US contamination (benign though).

Last Monday MODs started, and the whole group (of 150-ish students) was divided over three modules. Some went to the Yale-Myers Forest, others to the Great Mountain Forest, and I was in the group that stayed in New Haven for the urban module. It was probably the most ‘boring’ module, but I still enjoyed it very much and it was interesting. The first day was spent on identifying plants in the morning and on learning about ubran watershed and sewage systems in the afternoon. We went home with an assignment – everybody had to draw a card with a plant name written on it, and would have to prepare a 2-minute presentation about it, as original as possible. Some danced, some did a game, some made a song, some made pancakes (for the sugar maple) and some recited a poem. I did the latter. As I put quite some effort into it, I want to put it here in my blog. My plant was the hay-scented fern, and I chose to create an acrostic poem for it (the first letters of each bar form the name of the plant). It goes like this:

High in the air you need not look for me

As it is close to the ground that I want to be

You will probably find me among many a kin and friend

Somewhere in between Arkansas and Newfoundland

Cows might mistake me for their staple because, well,

Even though I don’t look like it, we share the same smell

Not everybody likes me that much, however

Trees in particular, because it can take almost forever

Eras and eras, for them to grow beneath my shroud

Dear sunlight is for me and all below is left without.

Foresters regard me as invasive, which is such a harsh way to say

Even for acid deposition they would make me pay!

Real gardeners, they at least see my beauty and grace

Now, you should be able to put a name to my face!

In the evening we got delicious freshly-made pizza at the Yale sustainable farm. I had a new couchsurfer and had taken her to the dinner. She was a Chinese semi-professional chess player who had started studying in the US and was touring Connecticut in August to play chess tournaments. That day when I had picked her up, she told me she had just won the first prize at one of the tournaments! It was a very interesting girl which unfortunately I did not get to know as well as I would have liked to because I was out of the house for most of the rest of the week.

On Tuesday we went around some blocks inserting tree diameters into a central GPS system (quite high-tech) and in the afternoon we had a GIS (Geographical Information Systems) class, taught by a tattoo-covered guy who represented the entire Yale GIS-department. He was pretty cool, and we all enjoyed listening to him in the AC atmosphere of a library basement. In the evening I hosted another party at my house (I wanted to keep up my reputation) but unfortunately the rain kept some people from coming.

On Wednesday we did some tests on water samples taken from a stream in the morning. In the afternoon we were driven to Beaver Ponds park where we helped analyze the plant population and its distribution by carefully mapping the plants in a transect and identifying them. In the evening the TA’s (teaching assistants – students who help to organize the MODs) had organized a barbeque and after I went to two house parties at other students’ places – the entire group was bonding, fantastic!

Thursday was no doubt the most fun day of the urban MOD. First of all, the weather was very tolerable, less sunny and less humid, and second, we were out all day. In the morning we planted trees in Beaver Ponds park – we felt some inches closer to Nature when ours was up and firmly rooted – and in the afternoon we did the opposite – pulling out invasive species and plainly chopping entire Norway maples. Thursday evening was once again devoted to GPSCY – free beer until 10pm – and we were finally able to become members. $15 gives you free entrance for an entire year and I’m sure we’ll break even within the next three weeks. I met some new FESers and found out that somehow I had earned myself the name “party-Simon”. This made me very happy because it means that people like to come party at my place and feel welcome – what more could someone desire?

Friday was a lazy day. It started by me waking up early and going to Kroon Hall to check my e-mails because the people in my house before me had almost simultaneously cancelled gas, electricity, and Internet. The first two were easily taken care of, but Internet would take longer and it had died the day before.

The entire class of 2012 was gathered in an auditorium and we got talks on New Haven, safety, the program, as well as health insurance and IT. I skipped the latter two because we had already had the presentations at the orientation for international students. Instead I went home to prepare for a weekend in New York City, once again.

I left for New York with Sarah two days ago. Sarah is a lovely fellow student (though she’s into the real thing, forestry, whereas I’m into environmental management) and I could stay with her friends in Brooklyn together with her. We had a very tasty burger and went to see an art exhibition at the coffeeshop where her friend works – an intensely New York experience, I felt. We ended the night at an open-air bar – Sarah, two of her friends, and I – where all of a sudden a rather drunk man came to the table, kindly asking one of the girls for a cigarette. He flooded them with low-level compliments (“You’re hot!”) and we will always remember his reaction to being turned down: “Later, you’ll be old and bitter, and I will have a house on the hill like Beyoncé” We agreed that he had thought about this beforehand, and on the way home we had immense fun trying to complete his rap song for him.

On Saturday we strolled around Brooklyn, caught up on some rest in Prospect Park observing squirrels after an enormous breakfast at Tom’s Diner – apparently the best breakfast place in New York according to some renowned newspapers. We then went back to Sarah’s friends’ apartment to try their home-made fruit-infused alcohols. They had created two nice combinations – one was rum with raspberry and currents, the other bourbon with cherry and cinnamon – hats off!

The weekend was the start of a week of all sorts of activities organized by the New York City Couchsurfing group – the event was named NY CouchCrash – and Sarah and I went to a BYOD (Bring Your Own Drink ) rooftop party near Central Park where we met a lot of interesting people: a German who was on a 6-year sailing trip and had just come transatlantic, a Spanish aunt and nephew from La Rioja, two boys from Dijon one of which was going to look for a skiing job in British Columbia… There were also familiar faces from New Haven – Couchsurfing is a beautiful concept and has an amazing network.

We had also briefly met Naazia who was in New York to see family, and she insisted on taking us to thé Canadian place in New York – Tim Horton’s, a Dunkin’ Donuts-like store. We had eaten our sandwiches in the outside air by Broadway.

On Sunday we had some errands to run. After a nice brunch - I had huevos rancheros and they were yummy – we traveled to Grand Central, with stops in between to buy pins for Sarah, hiking pants for me, and we indulged in some edible delights. I, initially reluctantly, spent almost 3 dollars on a cupcake from Magnolia Bakery, but it was worth it! The best cupcake I ever had, of that I’m sure. I had also wanted to go to Grom by the way, the Turin ice cream chain which has the best ice cream I ever had in my life, but we didn’t make it there so it’ll have to wait for the next time. Maybe for the best, because I had already spent enough for the weekend – high time to go back to New Haven!

Huevos rancheros

I am listening to the traffic jam information of 7am in Belgium, and realize that it’s time to finish this entry because I still have to pack my luggage to go camping for four days in Great Mountain Forest. Those who went last week said it was extremely fun, so I’m really looking forward to it. I just hope that I won’t run into any poison ivy…