The half term holiday was a welcome break from Haverford’s student-imposed work-hard-play-hard ethos. I spent three days in and around Philly, then travelled to Washington, D.C to visit friends (Rachel and Clair) from Haverford, and then caught a bus to New York to visit a couple of friends and my cousin.
DC is a great city because even though you’ve seen it a million times on TV or in films, walking down a road and seeing the White House a mere forty feet away is pretty exciting (maybe just for politics junkies, come to think of it). The journey there, however, was hell. A quick word of advice: never take Greyhound buses – they overbook, they make promises they can’t keep, and they keep you waiting in grim bus stations filled with people straight out of a Jerry Springer show. But $76 out of pocket (after the bus was delayed by 3 ½ hours I gave in and took an Amtrak train), I arrived in D.C and immediately felt as though I was in an episode of the West Wing.
The White House (as if you needed telling).
Rachel’s dad is an economist at the Federal Reserve, and he took Rachel, Clair and I to lunch there. It was all very exciting – we had to be background checked before we were allowed in, which wouldn’t have been a problem except I gave the security officials my British passport number in order to gain clearance, but it doesn’t have a visa in it as I’m here on my American passport. I spent the night in fear of immigration officials, a fear which (thank God) never materialised.
Lunch at the Fed was lots of fun. I’m a big geek, so to see the meeting rooms where Ben Bernanke (the Fed’s Chairman) makes all the big decisions was really quite exciting. Afterwards we went walking around the Georgetown area, a very pretty and incredibly wealthy district packed with designer boutiques and women toting tiny dogs.
Having learned my lesson about Greyhound buses, I took a Bolt Bus (direct, cheap and with free wireless) up to NYC, and arrived deep in TriBeCa four and a half hours later. I met up with my friend Ben and his friends, and chatted and drank the evening away in a bar in Brooklyn’s chichi Park Slope neighbourhood. The next day I schlepped over to my cousin’s apartment in midtown Manhattan, and then spent an interesting afternoon in Chinatown whilst my friend Laura practiced her Chinese.
Chinatown, New York - A shop that only sells one type of grapes.
On Saturday, my cousin and I queued for cheap tickets to see Avenue Q. If you haven’t heard of it, imagine a dirty version of Sesame Street with songs called things like ‘Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist’. After that, my cousin had been given free VIP passes to watch a band called The Secret Machines, which was exciting as we got to watch from a balcony, above the madding crowd.
I was really ready to return to Haverford by Sunday. I didn’t think that I would miss it whilst I was away, but found I was homesick on Saturday night not just for home, but for Haverford too.
The hefty workload returned first thing Monday. But on Tuesday I went with the two other members of my English class and our professor to watch Tom Stoppard’s Rock N Roll, formerly of Broadway, at the Wilma Theatre in Philly, all paid for by the college.
It’s been a ridiculously exciting week, and I’m looking forward to a rest. However, it’s Hallowe’en this weekend, so I don’t think that's going to be possible.
Don’t let the ghouls get you.
